- Slack’s $2.8 Billion Dollar Secret Sauce — Medium
- The Nuggets translation Project
- Translator: Zhang Xiaobo
- Proofreader: CaesarPan, CDpath
“What is the secret to Slack’s success? What have you done specifically for them to make it so successful? I hope you can help me build a product that is just as good.” A voice crackled from the car’s bluetooth. On the other side of the phone was a potential client of mine, the CEO of a successful SaaS software company, who wanted to hire us to help redesign his product. So I began to tell the same story I had told hundreds of times.
Almost every day over the past year, I’ve been asked the same question by clients, investors and fellow designers who want to reverse learn the secrets of Slack’s success. The world is talking about Slack these days, and now it has an incredible valuation of $2.8 billion, tens of thousands of users, and it’s growing fast.
Why do people ask me about Slack? Here’s the thing. I run a design agency called MetaLab. You may not have heard of us because we’re usually behind the scenes, but I’m sure you’ve used one of our products. In late 2013, Slack hired us to help them turn an early prototype into a blockbuster product. We designed the logo, the website, the Web app and the mobile app, all of which we did in six weeks. After a few minor tweaks, by the time we took it to Slack, most of the product design was exactly the same as the original.
Slack is by far and away our most successful product in nearly 10 years of business. Slack is now valued at $2.8 billion, has more than 200,000 paying users, and the best thing about it is that people have been talking about its great design, which I didn’t expect.
In July 2013, I received an email from Stewart Butterfield. I recognized the name immediately. He was the co-founder of Flickr, which he started and sold to Yahoo. In an email, he said he was shutting down Glitch, a game he’d been playing since 2009, and trying to do something new. He wanted us to help him design a new idea for team chat.
We’re all big Campfire users, and we’ve tried a lot of similar imitations. I think the need for chat has been addressed. It’s a saturated and noisy market, and it’s hard for a new product to stand out in that market. However, I was excited to have the opportunity to work with Stewart, and I thought it would be fun to try and solve some of the problems that Camfire still had. So we worked together and everything was ready.
Some early iterations (2013)
On day one they showed us early prototype designs that looked like cobbled together IRC (Internet Relay Chat) in the browser. It’s ugly and unrecognisable. And six weeks later, we had the best work of our careers. So how did we turn browser IRC into the now-beloved Slack?
Trying to analyze the reasons for success after the event, such as the taste of water, is difficult to explain. All we wanted to do was work on the design and iterate over and over again until it looked good. Slack is no exception, and we haven’t worked any magic along the way. But looking back, there are some key factors that made it so successful.
“Fun” is a word you often hear when you listen to people talk about Slack. It doesn’t feel like boring work, but rather relaxing, even if you’re using it to get some work done. But when you get down to the nitty gritty of it, it’s almost like any other chat app. You can create chat rooms, add chat members, share files, group chat or private chat, etc. So what makes Slack so exceptional? I think there are three key factors.
Logo Design (2013)
In such a noisy, saturated market, it takes some way to get noticed. Most enterprise software is like a cheap party suit from the 1970s, all in cold blues and grays. So, starting with the logo, we made Slack look like when a paper vase explodes. Full of vibrant blues, yellows, purples and greens. We gave it a game-like look rather than a traditional enterprise collaboration tool.
HipChat vs. Slack
Which one would you prefer to use? Their functions are similar, but one looks dull and dull while the other is vibrant and fun. The difference is that Slack uses more lively colours, sleek sans serif fonts, friendly ICONS and ubiquitous smiley faces and ICONS.
Slack is rich in interesting interaction details. The Logo is loaded with an animated splash of color, the content of each module slides in from the top of the screen, and the screen flips like a playing card when switching teams. The entire product interaction is done in a pleasant, effortless swipe and jump. These designs not only make it easier for users to understand the logic of the product, but also make them smile.
“We gave it a game-like look rather than a traditional enterprise collaboration tool.”
Have you ever walked into a room and felt cheap beyond words? A professional architect walks into the room and gives you a detailed list of problems: uneven walls, cracked wood floors, hollow doors and cheap hardware. But most people, ordinary people, have an intuitive sense of cheapness. Like a fine house, great software has hundreds of details that give users satisfaction and pleasure. The excellent transition effect in the application brings people such a delicate feeling. Slack is like a well-built house that is fun and satisfying to use.
And Slack’s success depends not just on its polished look and feel, but also on its unique delivery. In Slack, every little part shows off its playful humor. While competing games usually show only a loading progress bar, Slack shows a funny prompt like, “Want to whip dessert faster? Dump a bag of Oreos on the floor and eat them on their stomachs like cattle and sheep.” Bringing some fun interludes to a boring day, Slack is like your nifty robot assistant, rather than a boring chat tool like its rivals. It’s like the funny TARS in interstellar versus the cool HAL9000 in 2001: a space Odyssey.
Slack:
TARS: Is everyone ok? Do I have enough slaves for my robot colony?
Competing goods:
HAL9000: I can give you full assurance that I will return to normal work. I remain extremely enthusiastic and confident about the task.
Even Slack’s Twitter account looks more like an emoji-loving comedian than a billion-dollar enterprise software company.
People tend to humanize everything from pets to inanimate objects. We think the car looks like it’s smiling, or a distant lamb looks lonely. Slack’s sprightly interface, pleasant interactions and jocular copywriting style combine to give it personality. This personality touches users: they care about it, they want to share it with others, they feel like it’s more of a partner than a tool.
“Slack is like your nifty robot assistant, not just a boring chat tool like some of its competitors.”
When I was a kid, I loved a burger joint called the White Spot. It started as a small shop in front of a baseball stadium, and 85 years later it has become a large chain store all over Canada. What is the secret of its success? It’s the “triple-O” secret sauce they sprinkle on all their burgers.
I used to badger my parents to take me to the White Spot for a burger instead of cooking at home. Until my dad said one day, “We make our own burgers at home,” he said, “and you know the secret sauce is mayonnaise, ketchup, and a little seasoning, right?” Sure enough, we made the burger at home and proved that the secret sauce they claimed was nothing more than a concoction of convenience store condiments. Anyone can make it, but very few people know how or care how to make it, and they keep it a secret.
Slack’s secret sauce, too, is the right mix of condiments and ingredients we all know. But getting the ingredients right can be very difficult. There’s nothing special about Slack that Hipchat and Camfire can’t do. They’re essentially similar corporate chat apps, but Slack is fun and fun to use, and the combination makes it feel like a real friend in your life. It is TARS, not HAL9000.
In the past few months, rivals seem to have finally caught on. They all began to imitate each other and concentrate on improving the design, but it was too late. Everyone has chosen their robot assistant, and Slack has taken over.
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