Slack Raises $120 Million, Now Worth $1.2 Billion
Vancouver-born Slack confirmed today that it has raised $120 million in new investment, for a post-funding valuation of $1.12 billion.
The round was co-led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures with the participation of all existing institutional investors and a few new ones, including Yammer founder and former PayPal COO David Sacks. The company plans to use the new investment to aggressively market the product as well as fund international expansion and strategic acquisitions.
Slack previously raised $60 million from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel Partners and The Social+Capital Partnership.
Launched publicly in February 2014, Slack is used by 30,000 active teams to send 200 million messages each month. The growth to date has been entirely organic; the company has yet to hire any sales or marketing staff. Driven by recommendations from existing users and near-perfect retention rates, Slack’s growth has resulted in high conversion to paid tiers: more than 73,000 of its daily active users are paid.
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“The world is in the very early stages of a 100 year shift in how people communicate, and we’re determined to push the boundaries,” says Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and cofounder.
“As the leader of a brand new product category, we have a huge advantage right now. These next 6 to 18 months are going to be critical for growth and this funding round gives us unlimited flexibility to ensure that Slack’s momentum will continue to pick up steam,” he added.
Slack’s goal is to become “the bottom layer of the business technology stack.” In addition to the core messaging product, which allows for simple group and one-on-one communication, Slack offers a robust API and integrates directly with 60 other business services to bring all communication into one place.