Slack直接上市首日市值逼近200亿美元，押注聊天将取代邮件

做的是什么生意

Workplace chat software built around channels and a searchable record of every conversation — Slack grew from a tool made for a failed video game into a verb for messaging colleagues.

启动资金：Per CNBC: more than $800M in cash before listing; its last private round raised $427M in 2018 at a $7.1B valuation.

起因

Slack was publicly released in 2014, but it came from an internal chat platform Stewart Butterfield's team built while making a video game that failed — the second failed game venture for Butterfield, who had co-founded Flickr after an earlier game attempt and sold it to Yahoo for around $25 million in 2005. The name stands for 'Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge,' a record meant to spare teams spread across North America the confusion of email.

经过

In five years Slack grew to more than 10 million users and became a verb — 'I'll Slack you.' In the fiscal year that ended on 2019-01-31, revenue nearly doubled to about $400 million on a net loss of nearly $139 million. Butterfield kept the company independent despite acquisition interest from Amazon, Google and Microsoft in 2017. Instead of a conventional IPO, Slack chose a direct listing — only the second large tech firm to do so after Spotify — with the NYSE setting a $26 reference price and no underwriters issuing new shares.

结果

Slack's stock opened at $38.50 on 2019-06-20, 48% above the $26 reference price, rose as high as $42 and closed at $38.62, putting the company's value at about $20 billion against a $7.1B valuation from its 2018 private round. Analysts quoted by NPR still saw a hurdle: proving to non-tech companies that Slack is more than chat while Microsoft Teams competes for the same users.

可借鉴之处

直接上市仅适用于无需IPO资本的公司：约4亿美元收入和8亿多美元现金使Slack的无新股上市可行，从而将定价风险转移给市场。