A Slack Story Podcast

Stone Upon Stone [0:00] Opening Slack's Dublin offices at the Guinness Storehouse. [0:21] Reflections on the unique character of The Liberties neighborhood, its working-class history, and vibrant street life. [0:59] Descriptions of the old Guinness warehouses, cobbled streets, and its transformation into a startup hub. [1:45] Stories about local shops, markets, and the quirky details of daily life...

Leaving for Dublin 00:00 — Introduction: The Big Move, a new position in Dublin, the decision to move, and the challenges ahead. 00:36 — Becoming the First and facing the unknown The family prepares to be the first to make this kind of move at Slack, with new responsibilities and uncertainties. 01:03 — Family sacrifices Saying yes to big changes, including my wife leaving her job and our son leavi...

Eee Mee Yah and Slack's International HQ Early mornings in Vancouver: Preparing for European calls and the excitement of working with international teams. (0:00) The value of research: Personalizing client interactions and surprising customers with tailored insights. (0:37) Slack’s global ambitions: The growing demand from Europe and the decision to expand internationally. (2:43) The Dublin scouti...

How Slack Built its Culture: Part 3 In this episode, James Sherrett shares the inside story of how Slack’s culture was built and lived, focusing on the daily practices, values, and rituals that shaped the company. Timestamps & Topics: [0:00] Introduction Overview of Slack’s culture journey, the four attributes, and six core values. [1:37] What is Culture, Really? Exploring the meaning of culture,...

How Slack Built Its Culture: Part Two - Eating the Goat This episode, 'Eating the Goat,' explores how Slack recognized and addressed rapid hiring issues and built a strong organizational culture. Slack's CEO Stewart Butterfield used the analogy of a snake eating a goat to describe the current state Slack found itself in. To solve it's problem, Slack developed its Six Slack Values — craftsmanship,...

Inside Slack: Defining Culture with Four Attributes In this episode, James Sherrett shares how Slack began to define its company culture by establishing Four Slack Attributes. Learn about the challenges faced due to rapid growth and how founding personalities like Stewart Butterfield impacted the evolving culture. Sherrett recounts the creation of the four Slack attributes — smart, humble, hardwor...

Building a High-Performance Culture at Slack How did we start to establish a high-performance work culture at Slack? It starts by examining the company's hiring philosophy, rooted in the high expectation of doing the best work of one's life. This expectation acted as a filtering mechanism to identify optimistic and proactive candidates who embraced challenges. Dig into the internal processes and p...

Slack's Rise: From Coffee Shops to Celebrity Endorsements James Sherrett recounts the thrilling journey of Slack's growth and wider adoption, from everyday encounters at coffee shops to attracting celebrity investors like Jared Leto and Snoop Dogg. He discusses the company's transition into larger office spaces in San Francisco and Vancouver and touches on the cultural evolution within Slack. The...

Slack's Billion Dollar Journey: Inside the Fundraising Milestone In this narrative by James Sherrett, the story unfolds about Slack achieving a billion-dollar valuation. It covers the inner workings of living through a significant fundraising announcement and the emotions and routines within the Slack team during this period. Sherrett reflects on the sudden shift in their valuation and what it rep...

Meet the New New Boss: A.J. This episode, narrated by James Sherrett, focuses on the challenges of adapting to new leadership. James recounts receiving an unexpected call from his boss, Allen Shim, Slack's CFO, informing him of his new boss, AJ. He shares his initial apprehensions, the strategic decision-making process, and the dynamics of working closely with AJ. Through detailed notes and reflec...

The First Five: How Slack Hired Its Initial Sales Team In this episode, James Sherrett narrates the story of how Slack hired its first five salespeople. He outlines the challenges of hiring salespeople without prior experience, the development of a candidate evaluation process inspired by Daniel Kahneman's work, and the creation of effective job descriptions. He also details a 5-step hiring proces...

Navigating Rapid Growth at Slack: Customer Segmentation and the Path to Scaling up In this episode, James Sherrett covers the whirlwind journey of Slack's growth from its inception to hitting $10-million in annual recurring revenue in 8 months. He highlights the overwhelming yet exhilarating experience of managing the rapidly increasing customer base. Then how Slack identified three key customer s...

Unveiling Easter Eggs in Slack: A Journey of Playfulness and Productivity In this episode, James Sherrett shares the playful and intricate details behind the design of Slack, highlighting how the software incorporates game-like features known as Easter eggs. The narrative explores various hidden gems like custom loading messages, the self-loathing web socket error message, the story behind the int...

Creating Slack's Launch Video: Behind the Scenes James Sherrett narrates the story of Slack's launch video, produced by Sandwich Video in 2014. He explains the significance of having a Sandwich video for a tech startup, detailing the video's production, the script collaboration between Slack's team and Sandwich, and the quest for a fitting title. The final title, 'So Yeah, We Tried Slack,' emerged...

Slack's Journey to Fair Billing and Effective Pricing Strategies By 2014, Slack saw consistent weekly growth and recognized that once teams started using the platform, they rarely stopped. There were two main growth drivers – acquiring new customers and expanding in existing customers – and two main tensions Slack faced, particularly the hybrid use of multiple communication tools. To address these...

Slack's Early Days: Sonoma Offsite Reflections In this episode, James Sherrett recounts his first offsite experience with Slack in Sonoma on May 15th, 2014. The narrative captures the early, intimate scale of Slack's global workforce of around 30 employees, the significance of in-person interactions in a remote-first company, and the excitement surrounding their burgeoning product success. Sherret...

Navigating Sales in Slack: Early Deals and Hard-Learned Lessons James Sherrett recounts his experiences of closing early sales deals at Slack without a traditional sales team. He describes the significance of celebrating wins through dedicated Slack channels and shares a memorable story about negotiating with Sauce Labs, a customer demanding a discount. The narrative highlights the importance of u...

The Twitter Game: Building Slack's Wall of Love This episode explores how Slack effectively used Twitter to connect with its tech-savvy audience and amplify customer feedback. It details the creation and evolution of Slack's 'Wall of Love,' a curated collection of positive tweets that addressed customer objections and showcased unsolicited endorsements. The narration emphasizes the significance of...

Launching Paid Slack: The Journey from Free to Paid In this episode, James Sherrett shares the story of how Slack transitioned from a free to a paid product. From the early planning stages, the company knew its business model would be a B2B SaaS offering. The script details the use of credits to ease the transition for customers, and the data-driven approach that helped identify key patterns in us...

The Slack Socks Saga: A Quirky Marketing Success In this episode, James Sherrett narrates the fascinating journey of how Slack created custom socks as a unique marketing tool. Starting with a small budget, the team decided to use socks featuring their tartan design as company swag. The process wasn't easy and included a 99-email thread just to finalize designs. Despite initial challenges, the sock...

Saying No Nicely: A Slack Story by James Sherrett In this episode, James Sherrett starts at Slack in 2014 as full-time Director, Accounts. He discusses the evolving roles and responsibilities in a small startup environment, focusing on customer interactions, providing demos, and collecting feedback. A key theme is the philosophy of 'saying no nicely,' both to customers and in shaping product strat...

Transition from Marketing to Accounts at Slack A quick episode to mark the transition of the story from Part 1 to Part 2. A thank you for the audience's support and feedback. A recap of the topics covered so far. A sneak peek into what's coming next, including launching Slack's paid product and creating the Slack Wall of Love. If you're reading this you likely already know about the accompanying p...

Please sit next to the money In this episode, James Sherrett narrates his tumultuous journey at Slack, starting as a consultant in June 2013, navigating through periods of high demand, strategic pivots, and personal struggles. Despite initial setbacks, including a retracted job offer, James continued to show up for work. His persistence and growing alignment with the team ultimately led to his off...

The First 1000 Slack Invites: Insights and Observations In this episode, James Sherrett shares the insights drawn from the first 1,000 Slack invites, from September, 2013. He shares 16 key observations about user behaviour and feedback that contributed to Slack's development and positioning. Despite early challenges, these initial signals of success helped shape Slack's journey to becoming a billi...

A Foundational Slack Story: Craftsmanship and Culture In this episode, James Sherrett recounts a defining story shared by Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack, about learning the importance of reputation and pride in good work at an early age. The narrative underscores the value of conscientiousness and accountability, pivotal to Slack's company culture. Stewart’s father taught him that every...