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Slack to live-stream pitch to shareholders on Monday ahead of direct listing
Slack, the ubiquitous workplace messaging tool, will make its pitch to prospective shareholders on Monday at an invite-only event in New York City, the company confirmed in a blog post on Wednesday. Slack stock is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange as soon as next month.
Slack, which is pursuing a direct listing, will live stream Monday’s Investor Day on its website.
An alternative to an initial public offering, direct listings allow businesses to forgo issuing new shares and instead sell directly to the market existing shares held by insiders, employees and investors. Slack, like Spotify, has been able to bypass the traditional roadshow process expected of an IPO-ready business, as well as some of the exorbitant Wall Street fees.
Spotify, if you remember, similarly live streamed an event that is typically for investors eyes only. If Slack’s event is anything like the music streaming giant’s, Slack co-founder and chief executive officer Stewart Butterfield will speak to the company’s greater mission alongside several other executives.
Slack unveiled documents for a public listing two weeks ago. In its SEC filing, the company disclosed a net loss of $138.9 million and revenue of $400.6 million in the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019. That’s compared to a loss of $140.1 million on revenue of $220.5 million for the year before.
Additionally, the company said it reached 10 million daily active users earlier this year across more than 600,000 organizations.
Slack has previously raised a total of $1.2 billion in funding from investors, including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Social Capital, SoftBank, Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.
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Slack’s product chief is out ahead of direct listing
Slack is losing its chief product officer, April Underwood, ahead of a direct listing expected in 2019. Tamar Yehoshua, a long-time Google vice president, has been tapped to fill Underwood’s shoes as Slack’s new product chief.
Underwood joined Slack, the provider of workplace communication tools, in 2015 as its head of platform after a five-year stint as Twitter’s director of product. She was promoted to the chief product role about 10 months ago. Underwood is also a founding partner of #Angels, an investment collective that pushes to get more women on startup cap tables.
In a Medium post announcing her departure from Slack, Underwood said she planned to focus on investing full time.
“One common story you hear when you talk to founders is that their idea ran as a background process for many years until it moved into the foreground and became a calling too loud to ignore,” Underwood wrote. “And now, I can truly empathize with founders — because that’s happened for me. Investing, which started as a side hustle for me and my #Angels partners, has emerged as the pursuit too inspiring and energizing to be relegated to my spare time.”
During her tenure, Underwood had a hand in crafting Slack’s investment fund — a pool of capital supported by Accel, Index Ventures, KPCB, Social Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Spark Capital that has invested in 49 projects building on top of Slack to date.
Slack, led by founder and chief executive officer Stewart Butterfield, is said to be preparing for a direct listing, meaning it will go public without listing any new shares, with no lockup period and no intermediary bankers. Valued at roughly $7 billion, Slack has raised more than $1 billion to date from GV, IVP, T. Rowe Price, SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins, Accel and others.
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Slack adds Edith Cooper to board of directors
Slack had added Edith Cooper, who most recently served as the global head of human capital management at Goldman Sachs, to its board of directors. As Slack prepares “for accelerated growth at scale,” Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield wrote in a blog post today, Cooper marks Slack’s second independent board member.
“She has an unrivaled depth of experience in the hardest… Read More
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Slack names Allen Shim as company’s first CFO
In a blog post this morning Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield announced the company is naming long-time employee Allen Shim as the company’s first CFO. “Today, I’m excited to announce another milestone: Allen Shim has been appointed Chief Financial Officer for Slack,” Butterfield wrote in the blog post. He went on to describe Shim as his right hand man, who has been with… Read More
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Threaded messaging is coming to Slack
In an interview with Walt Mossberg, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield said threaded messaging — perhaps one of the service’s most important missing components — is finally coming. Butterfield told Mossberg that Slack had been using threading internally for months while testing what the best version of the tool would be for the service, which will hopefully come out in the… Read More
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Meet The People Vying For The Founder Of The Year Crunchie For 2015
The 9th Annual Crunchies are almost upon us. On February 8, luminaries from some of the best and brightest startups around will descend upon San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House to take part in an event that’s best described as the Oscars of startups and technology. And now it’s time to take a look at the Founder of the Year nominees. Read More
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Slack Preps For IPO, Even If It Doesn’t Want Or Need One Soon
When Slack’s IPO window opens, it wants to be able to quickly spring into the public markets. Otherwise it could see sour conditions or botched IPOs by other tech companies shut the window before it rings the opening bell. That’s why Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield says its already getting its ducks in a row so its poised to IPO when the time comes. Today, Butterfield The Australian… Read More
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Slack Has Seen 8-10 Acquisition Offers So Far
Speaking onstage at the Code conference, Stewart Butterfield, CEO of work collaboration startup Slack which launched two years ago, fielded a question about his company being a prime acquisition target at a time when valuations are high. Slack’s most recent funding valued it at $2.8 billion. Read More
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