A short excerpt of Stewart Butterfield (Slack co-founder & CEO) reflecting on Slack's evolution: initially conceived as a product, Slack has become more of a platform because communication itself functions as a platform. He emphasizes focusing on where the company can create real customer value, and using delivered value as the long-term measure of success.
There was definitely conversations and kind of idle speculation about Slack being a platform at the moment that we were getting started in developing it. But we definitely thought of it as a product. And now that's definitely not true anymore because communication is a platform. Like activity, it's so hard to know in advance. So that choice up front, it's more like figure out where you can generate real value for people and pursue that. And if that ends up being a platform, good. If it ends up being a product, good. And that's, I think, one thing that we do stay focused on completely because in the long term, the measure of our success is the amount of value we deliver to customers.
