Slack ($PRIVATE:SLACK), the workplace collaboration software used by tens of millions of people globally (including us at Thinknum Media), made a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange this morning on June 20. Its reference price was $26 a share, but its Initial Pricing Indication is set for $30-$34 a share. It opened at $38.50 a share, beating all those estimates.

Although the route it has chosen to go public is unconventional, Slack might just be the summer blockbuster stock of 2019, especially when considering how healthy it looks in terms of data we're tracking. In short, Slack is hiring at a healthy clip, has tens of millions of hours logged by happy users, and has seen excellent review ratings by verified users.

A top (and well) reviewed piece of software on Gartner Peer Insights

As we covered before, Slack is one of the most-reviewed pieces of software on Gartner Peer Insights, a website that asks vetted information technology or end-user professionals to share experiences and recommendations on products they use in their businesses. It's only topped in volume of ratings by Zendesk ($ZEN), which has seen its own shares rise about 500% from its 2014 IPO. That Slack has a better rating percentage than Zendesk is only further evidence of its bright future. 

Among products with over 10,000 individual ratings, Slack is the only team-collaboration product. It also scores well with an average rating of 93.76% across 24,029 reviews from 2016 to April 2019.

Product Brand

Product Name

Rating Percentage (Average)

Rating (Count)

Zendesk

Zendesk

86.58%

33,944

Slack

Slack

93.76%

24,029

Intuit

QuickBooks Enterprise

90.80%

20,000

Salesforce

Salesforce

87.83%

20,000

Asana

Asana

87.62%

13,895

Atlassian

JIRA

86.40%

12,200

TSheets

TSheets

94.71%

11,454

Dropbox

Dropbox Business

91.47%

10,979

Microsoft

Skype for Business

86.11%

10,880

Atlassian

Trello

91.14%

10,000

QuickBooks France

QuickBooks

90.80%

10,000

Google

Google Docs

95.40%

10,000

Microsoft

PowerPoint

93.21%

10,000

Intuit Canada

QuickBooks

90.80%

10,000

Google

Drive

96.06%

10,000

Intuit

QuickBooks

90.80%

10,000

The only business products that rival Slack's rating with the same volume of reviews are products from Google ($GOOG) and TSheets ($PRIVATE:TSHEETS), a time tracking and employee scheduling app. But still, these apps have half the number of reviews that Slack does on Gartner, clear indications of its popularity and user advocacy.

After pre-listing clean-up, a healthy hiring clip

Shortly after Slack announced its confidential S-1 submission, the number of job openings at the company dropped by a few dozen positions. However, after a late winter slowdown, Slack started listing openings at its highest levels since we started tracking it in July 2016.

IIn the weeks leading up to its Direct Listing, Slack is consistently hiring people for Customer Success, Enterprise, and Customer Experience categories. In other words, the company has already shipped its killer software (and gone under its redesign), and has kept a steady hiring flow of people to help it maintain customer satisfaction, which can be seen on Gartner Peer Insights.

Right around the 39th week of 2018 — late September — the number of Finance and Accounting job openings shot up and stuck as a consistent top-10 division for job openings at Slack. That could have been a clue into when Slack was wanting to prep its paperwork to the SEC.

In any case, Slack appears to be pointing towards success through the numbers it has released publicly, as well has left publicly for us to pick up the pieces. When it directly lists on the market next week, there will be plenty of investors keeping watch of how it continues to grow out, as well as keep those who submit peer insights happy about the quality of the product.

Further Reading

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