Messaging Startup Slack Launches App Directory And Creates $80 Million Fund to Invest in Other Startups

Slack Technologies, a Silicon Valley company which owns team communication app Slack announced that it has launched a third-party App Directory aimed at being the de facto source for certified integrations. Slack is also forming an $80 million venture fund to invest in other startup funds. Slack has also reveals that it now has 2 million daily active users, a 16 percent jump from October, when the service had 1.7 million users. It also now has 570,000 paid seats, up from 470,000 two months ago.

Bloomberg reports that, Stewart Butterfield, chief executive officer of Slack, said his company is contributing more than half of the total fund. The rest will come from some of Slack's own backers. The fund will invest about $100,000 to $250,000 in smaller startups building applications that work with Slack's messaging service, Butterfield said.

While Slack has been valued at $2.8 billion, it's unusual for such a young company to fashion itself as a corporate investor. The company's main product, which lets businesses create chat rooms, share files, and send animated GIFs, is just two years old. Butterfield has talked publicly about how easy it's been for the company to raise capital-so much so, apparently, that it's committed more than $40 million to investing.

Traditional corporate venture firms often use investments as a way to explore potential acquisitions, but Slack may take a different approach. The company, which has made two acquisitions in its lifetime, isn't focused on developing a list of companies to buy one day, Butterfield said. "We can't preclude the possibility that we would ever acquire someone we invest in, but that's not the point," he said. "Hopefully, we actually make some money on our investments."

Instead, Butterfield said the purpose of the fund is to show that viable businesses can be built on Slack's platform. "It could be something that would replace a wiki, or allow you to check on your 401(k) status in the form of a bot, or something that we haven't imagined at all," he said. The Slack fund's backers include Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Bloomberg LP is an investor in Andreessen Horowitz.

According to Venture Beat, there are 150 apps available for users to integrate into their Slack teams, including those that come from companies like Twitter, Dropbox, Trello, and Google Drive. Until today, the current integrations were all lumped together, but now they're going to be categorized just like you'd find within the Google Play Store or App Store. With Slack's App Directory, everything becomes easily centralized for the user, which will aid in discovery. It could also enable the company to restrict certain apps from being displayed if they don't pass muster.

The Slack App Directory will help Slack users find and set up the apps that are needed for work. lack tells us that developers have created 4,000 different apps for the platform, but only 150 have been vetted well enough to be counted as official integrations. The company believes that releasing an App Directory will help avoid an organizational problem, as more apps get approved.

Slack has evolved into a foundational tool of the workplace. Since everyone needs real-time online chat, it can become a de facto social layer for the enterprise. Facebook used login to become the social layer for tons of consumer apps. That made the platform harder for users to quit. Slack could do the same for business. And with users actually paying every month, platform lock-in becomes an extremely powerful and profitable strategy.