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In a recent interview, when asked about Slack's (WORK) mounting competition, CEO Stewart Butterfield stated: "A smaller company, if it has real traction with customers, in some cases has a bit of an advantage against a larger company with multiple lines of business." He propped this statement up with two case studies: Microsoft's (MSFT -1.84%) Bing vs. Alphabet's Google, and Google Plus vs. Facebook (META 1.54%). In both cases, the plucky young underdog came out on top. Ah yes, Google and Facebook, the Bad News Bears of technology.
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Butterfield's reliance on these tales of modern-day David and Goliath is apt because Slack is a minnow in this pond. It's facing some of the giants of the technology industry, with two of the biggest companies in the world looking to take advantage of the growing internal communication market. Will Slack's user-experience-loaded sling be enough to fend off these behemoths?
1. Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams, which launched three years after Slack, has overtaken it in terms of user base, boasting 13 million daily active users and 19 million weekly active users.
While these numbers don't bode well for Slack, let's look at the bigger picture for a second. Microsoft holds over $130 billion in cash reserves. In April, Office 365 had 180 million users. It has acquired both Skype and LinkedIn in the past 10 years to dominate the enterprise communications market. It's one of the most valuable companies in the world and has owned this space since Windows 95. Its launch of Teams in 2017 wasn't to stake a claim to Slack's throne, it was to try and kick out the impostor who had somehow snuck into the castle.
Butterfield acknowledges Microsoft's embarrassment of riches when it comes to a potential customer pool in the same interview, "if it's based on the bigger distribution, I don't think that's really a threat," reiterating Slack's focus on user experience and quality. This preference of quality over quantity of users is fascinating, mostly because, as a strategy, it seems to be working. Slack claims that 70% of its 50 top customers are paying for a subscription to Office 365. To these users, Slack's offering is so much better than Teams that it's worth forgoing an already-paid-for solution in Microsoft Teams.
2. Facebook Workplace
Facebook has recently announced that its internal communications software Workplace has grown to 3 million users, acquiring a million users in the past eight months. Workplace differs from Slack and Teams in a few ways, the first being its applicability for large enterprises, with 150 companies of over 10,000 users -- including Walmart, the world's largest private employer -- among its customers. These companies use Workplace to bring together workers across all branches of the business on one communication platform.
The second is its push toward video communication. Workplace can facilitate video conferencing of up to 50 people, compared to Slack's limit of 15. It recently announced a number of video features to be rolled out, including an app on Facebook Portal, captioning videos, auto-translation, and peer-to-peer architecture to speed up video transmission. Think in terms of leaving a video message for 10,000 people and you can see the benefit of some of these features.
The third is the pricing. Workplace's business plan comes in at $3 per user per month, compared to $6.67 for Slack's standard plan. This pricing strategy may be enough of a factor for bigger companies to go with Marketplace.
Slack's future
A lot of investors make the mistake of thinking in terms of a zero-sum game. But it's not likely that one company is going to dominate internal business communication.
For Slack to succeed, its competitors do not have to fail. Microsoft Teams and Facebook Marketplace will claim their chunks of the market; Amazon.com is even releasing an Alexa for Business for managers who need at least one person in the office to listen to them, but for companies prioritizing communication in their workplace, Slack will dominate the competition. The Enterprise Collaboration Market is estimated to grow by $17 billion in the next five years, and Slack is at the top of the queue.
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MyWallSt operates a full disclosure policy. MyWallSt staff currently hold long positions in Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Slack. Read the full disclosure policy here.
