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# Slack That
This start-up that wants to kill email is about to be worth €3.5 billion
Do you Slack?
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SLACK, THE STARTUP Silicon Valley can’t get enough of, is all but done with a fresh new round of financing.
The deal is expected to close in just a few weeks but many of the details are already worked out.
Sources with knowledge of the deal told us where things stand:
- Slack is raising $200 million.
- The valuation will fall between $3.7-$3.8 billion (€3.3 – €3.4 billion).
- Thrive Capital, a New York-based fund run by Harvard graduate and Oscar Healthcare founder Joshua Kushner, is leading the round. There is also tonnes of insider support from previous Slack investors.
It was a competitive round that was fairly drama free, we were told.
Keep in mind that, until the round is officially done, things are subject to change. But those details are not expected to shift drastically.
Slack is a popular communication and chat platform for businesses. It allows groups to private message each other or participate in group channels. It has a nice subscription revenue model humming along, too.
Of its 2.3 million daily active users, nearly 700,000 pay Slack for more services and features on the platform, which comes out to about $64 million (€57.3 million) in annual recurring revenue. And it launched just about two years ago.
Its European headquarters is based in Dublin, employing 100 people.
One day, Slack hopes to replace email as the main form of electronic communication for businesses.
Thrive has previously made early-stage investments in startups, but the firm is now beginning to compete with bigger, older firms in California on larger and larger deal sizes. It previously invested in Instagram, just before it was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. Thrive has also backed Irish brothers, Patrick and John Collison’s payment company Stripe.
The Information first reported that Thrive could be involved with the $200-$250 million fundraiser, and the $3.6 billion valuation on Tuesday followed a Wall Street Journal report that the work-chat application was raising another big round.
Slack raised $160 million nearly one year ago at a $2.8 billion valuation. Microsoft reportedly thought about buying it for $8 billion but ruled against it.
This round will put its amount raised to date at over $500 million.
Stewart Butterfield, CEO and founder of Slack, previously cofounded popular photo site Flickr. A Slack spokesperson told Business Insider:
“There has always been a great deal of investor interest in the company, and we expect that to continue. However, we have nothing to announce and nothing else to add at this point.”
More: One of the world’s hottest startups has landed in Dublin – and they’re hiring
