Slack, the enterprise collaboration platform co-founded by Stewart Butterfield, today confirmed that it has closed a $120 million round of funding, co-led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures with the participation of past investors including A16Z, Accel Partners and The Social+Capital Partnership. We first reported on this fundraise last week.
The valuation is at $1.12 billion, post-money.
The company has now raised $180 million in total — an astounding amount if you consider that it only came out of beta earlier this year, but less so when you consider some of the traction that it has picked up in that time:
The company says it now has 30,000 active teams teams who send over 200 million messages each month, with more than 73,000 of the daily active users registered as paid seats. From what I understand the company has done a solid job in converting users from free to premium tiers — the paid tiers essentially give employees more capacity on the platform — and has been equally good at keeping users engaged beyond those crucial 30-, 60- and 90-day windows when people often drop off after initial enthusiasm about a service. It also says that it is now pulling in $1 million each month in recurring revenues.
Butterfield, who was also the co-founder of the photo-sharing site Flickr (now part of Yahoo), started the service as a by-product an earlier gaming startup, Glitch, as a way for geographically dispersed team members to communicate with each other. When Glitch didn’t work out, they decided to see if Slack had legs of its own, and seems to be part of a much wider trend, in the words of Butterfield.
“The world is in the very early stages of a 100 year shift in how people communicate, and we’re determined to push the boundaries,” says Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO and co-founder in a statement. “As the leader of a brand new product category, we have a huge advantage right now. These next 6 to 18 months are going to be critical for growth and this funding round gives us unlimited flexibility to ensure that Slack’s momentum will continue to pick up steam.”
As part of the investment, KPCB’s John Doerr and M.G. Siegler of Google Ventures are joining Slack’s board of directors as observers alongside the current board of directors: Butterfield, Andrew Braccia (Accel), John O’Farrell (Andreessen Horowitz) and Mamoon Hamid (Social+Capital).
“Never before have we witnessed so much user love for an enterprise software platform,” said Doerr in a statement. “Slack puts all of your team’s communications in one place, instantly searchable and available wherever you go. Life is a lot better with less email.”