Slack's rapid growth is starting to slow down

The past two weeks, Slack has been among the discussed topics. We first saw Facebook revamp its FB Work to WorkPlace that hit headlines as a Slack competitor, and then Google decided to integrate Slack into its G Suite . And, why not, it is one of the most prefered communication platform at workplaces. The company has penned down a blogpost to reveal some numbers too. It has 4 million daily active users, 5.8 million weekly active users, more than 1.25 million paid users, and 33,000 paid teams.  Slack has been showing some rapid growth with about 33 percent increase in daily users and 63 percent paid seat growth, all of this between the time frame of December 2015 to May 2016. However, according to Techcrunch, it is now facing a  slight slump. Founded in 2013, Slack has raised roughly $540 million. It recent raised $200 million in April, which valued the company at $3.8 billion. Techcrunch points out, “That gives it a current annual run rate of $100 million. That’s not much for a company with over 650 employees across 7 offices that was valued at $3.8 billion when it raised $200 million in April.” In the past we’ve seen startups hit scaling issues, and the reports online suggest it may have trouble scaling further. However, some others believe that the phenomenal rate at which it grew could be drawing attention to the slight drop. If we take a closer look at its growth in the said time period, then it means Slack went from two million to three million active users, which is 50 percent growth and the number of paid seats jumped by 63 percent. That pretty much explains why companies are emulating it to woo enterprise users. For instance, Facebook Workplace is like an intra-office platform to keep employees connected. Your Workplace account will be separate from your personal account, and only visible to members of your team.  But, in terms of software integration, Slack has a lot to offer, and the newbie WorkPlace has some limited options, if reports are to be believed.