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Slack prices IPO at $26 per share
Slack’s public debut is happening Thursday on the NYSE and the company has set a reference price of $26 per share for its direct listing, according to WSJ, which would value the company at around $15.7 billion.
The company’s stock is expected to pop at open, according to the WSJ’s sources. Slack is pursuing a direct listing, eschewing the typical IPO process in favor of putting its current stock on to the NYSE without doing an additional raise or bringing on underwriter banking partners.
This isn’t a first for the technology industry, as Spotify did the same thing about this time last year, but it is still an outlier in terms of common practice for startups looking to the public markets for their liquidity event.
Slack, launched in 2013 by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield, was initially built as a side project to support team communication for Butterfield’s game company Tiny Speck. In the intervening years, it has risen to become one of the most recognized enterprise communication tools currently available.
Update: Slack’s pricing and symbol, ‘WORK’ are now officially confirmed.
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The Slack origin story
Let’s rewind a decade. It’s 2009. Vancouver, Canada.
Stewart Butterfield, known already for his part in building Flickr, a photo-sharing service acquired by Yahoo in 2005, decided to try his hand — again — at building a game. Flickr had been a failed attempt at a game called Game Neverending followed by a big pivot. This time, Butterfield would make it work.
To make his dreams a reality, he joined forces with Flickr’s original chief software architect Cal Henderson, as well as former Flickr employees Eric Costello and Serguei Mourachov, who like himself, had served some time at Yahoo after the acquisition. Together, they would build Tiny Speck, the company behind an artful, non-combat massively multiplayer online game.
Years later, Butterfield would pull off a pivot more massive than his last. Slack, born from the ashes of his fantastical game, would lead a shift toward online productivity tools that fundamentally change the way people work.
Glitch is born
In mid-2009, former TechCrunch reporter-turned-venture-capitalist M.G. Siegler wrote one of the first stories on Butterfield’s mysterious startup plans.
“So what is Tiny Speck all about?” Siegler wrote. “That is still not entirely clear. The word on the street has been that it’s some kind of new social gaming endeavor, but all they’ll say on the site is ‘we are working on something huge and fun and we need help.’”
Maybe I make a terrible boss, but at least I know it. Work with me: http://tinyspeck.com/jobs/cptl/
— Stewart Butterfield (@stewart) July 10, 2009
Siegler would go on to invest in Slack as a general partner at GV, the venture capital arm of Alphabet .
“Clearly this is a creative project,” Siegler added. “It almost sounds like they’re making an animated movie. As awesome as that would be, with people like Henderson on board, you can bet there’s impressive engineering going on to turn this all into a game of some sort (if that is in fact what this is all about).”
After months of speculation, Tiny Speck unveiled its project: Glitch, an online game set inside the brains of 11 giants. It would be free with in-game purchases available and eventually, a paid subscription for power users.
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Flickr Comes To Gear VR With 360 Degree Photo Viewing Experience
Flickr’s 15 billion photos are there for our consumption at any time, but beyond seeing static photos there hasn’t been much of an experience upgrade over the years for diving into the world around you. Today, Yahoo has announced a new Flickr experience powered by Oculus for Samsung Gear VR. The team says that over the years, users have uploaded “tens of thousands” of… Read More
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Google Photos’ Unlimited Free Storage Could Clobber Apple’s Expensive iCloud
How much does a terabyte of photo storage cost? On iCloud, $240 a year. Dropbox, $100. Microsoft OneDrive, $84. Flickr, $25.
Google, $0. It’s free on desktop, Android, and iOS.
Today, Google announced its new Google Photos product, which offers unlimited free storage of photos and videos. The only limits are that photos must be under 16 megapixels, and video resolution is capped at 1080P. Read More
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Flickr Announces “20 Under 20″ Collection Of Young Photographers
In an effort to promote young artists using its service, Flickr has put together a collection of 20 artists under the age of 20 who have shown exceptional talent in their early work. Users can choose their favorite photographers from the group and nominate their work in three different categories: creativity, technical skills, and strength of overall portfolio. Read More
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