You can say the same thing about Microsoft: while the company was once the disruptive upstart, for decades it has been the default for all of those businesses that Silicon Valley is seeking to disrupt.

I have long quipped that most of Silicon Valley has serially underestimated Facebook because it is the social network of friends and family, and many people in tech are trying to escape said friends and family. And while Slack’s ad may have welcomed Microsoft as a competitor, now CEO Stewart Butterfield is saying that Teams isn’t a competitor after all.įortunately for Slack, that is increasingly true. On the company’s last earnings call CEO Satya Nadella revealed that Teams had 75 million daily active users Slack hasn’t provided a post-pandemic-onset DAU number, but had 12 million last October (Microsoft’s pre-pandemic number was 32 million in early March). Two-and-a-half years later Teams passed Slack in daily active users (DAUs). If you want customers to switch to your product, you’re going to have to match our commitment to their success and take the same amount of delight in their happiness. We love our work, and when we say our mission is to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive, we’re not simply mouthing the words. The advertisement added under that last point: Slack’s “advice” was, naturally, self-serving, at least in terms of how the startup saw their advantages relative to Microsoft to quote the ad: So, as you set out to build “something just like it,” we want to give you some friendly advice. However, all this is harder than it looks. And even though - being honest here - it’s a little scary, we know it will bring a better future forward faster. It’s validating to see you’ve come around to the same way of thinking. We realized a few years ago that the value of switching to Slack was so obvious and the advantages so overwhelming that every business would be using Slack, or “something just like it,” within the decade. We’re genuinely excited to have some competition. Big news! Congratulations on today’s announcements. The text of the ad was condescension cloaked in congratulations: That feeling when you think 'we should buy a full page in the Times and publish an open letter,' and then you do.

Slack ceo