A Slack Story

A Slack Story

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Saying No Nicely
Sitting next to the money agrees. Saying dates; always listening. From product strategy to business practice. Slack in 2014.
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James Sherrett
Ending Marketing, starting Accounts
From Part 1 to part 2 of A Slack Story. Thank you. A quick recap. Are you listening? I'm listening.
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James Sherrett
Please sit next to the money
Slack starts to take off. Is that with or without me? The polite struggle for control. I get hired, fired, not hired, then — what? “Please sit next to…
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James Sherrett
3
Learning from the first 1,000 Slack invites
16 observations from the first 1,000 Slack invites. What seemed to work? Who had we invited? The lies that hindsight tells us.
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James Sherrett
2
You put your name on every job you do
$20 to stack a cord of wood. What is culture? Starting to define Slack culture in stories.
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James Sherrett
2
Talking with customers
Mostly listening to customers. No one pays for chat. Finding our frame. What makes Slack work for teams? What I heard you say.
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James Sherrett

March 2025

#zork
How a classic text-based game informed how we built Slack. The single-player experience sucked. Work as role-playing game. From Zork to Slackbot.
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James Sherrett
2
Preview releasing Slack
First launch of Slack to the world. Burndown to Preview Release. The Status Game of Silicon Valley. Now what, Slack?
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James Sherrett
Something We All Work On
Finding Slack's go-to-market. We didn’t sell saddles. But we needed to sell Slack. Getting over the Suck Hump.
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James Sherrett
So, what is Slack?
Creating 5 options to answer the question: What is Slack? Learning about each option. The MAYA principle. Finding our tone and market.
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James Sherrett

February 2025

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