Slack rules out IPO this year despite 8 million daily users

Workplace collaboration platform Slack has had a remarkable growth since its launch in 2014. Within a short span of time, the app spread like wildfire in the corporate world and is now on their way to tech stardom. The company that had just 15,000 daily users back in 2014 now boasts of having 8 million daily active users.

In its recent report, Slack, which was founded by Daniel Stewart Butterfield, stated that the company has attained double milestones. Apart from the 33% rise in daily active users to 8 million when compared to 6 million in September 2017, the company claims to have 70,000 paid teams and more than 3 million paid users with over 50% of the users placed internationally.

One of the promising factors is that the company has maintained its torrid growth despite a direct competition from Microsoft (MSFT) that launched ‘Teams’ last year. It is because of this increased growth rate, investors are hoping to get a slice of the hot commodity once they go public. Till last September the company had a valuation of $5.1 billion. Slack that is designed for team-centric messages, usurped Skype to be the biggest chat app.

The company that had just 15,000 daily users back in 2014 now boasts of having 8 million daily active users.

All these years, Slack has been coy about its plans to go public, but the latest statistics gave some hints. After the company named Allen Shim as its first CFO earlier this year, there were rumors that an IPO was on cards.

Despite the great momentum, Butterfield stated that Slack is not going public any time soon since it is relatively a young company and has a long way ahead. According to him, the company would have a rocky ride in the public market as the cloud-based chat app still hasn’t met the business goals.

This decision makes sense as the company still needs to convince major companies to use its tool. Currently, it has become a hit only among startups and small companies. Considering the competition from the tech biggies like Microsoft’s Teams, Google Hangouts by Alphabet (GOOG), and Workplace by Facebook (FB), it will be challenging for Slack to retain its user growth in the future.