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Slack invests $2 million in 11 startups that integrate with its chat platform
Since debuting nearly three years ago, Slack Technologies Inc.’s chat platform, Slack, has quickly become one of the most popular team communication tools around thanks partly to its incredibly powerful integrations. In December, the company announced that it would be creating an $80 million fund to invest in its thriving development community, and today Slack revealed that it has invested nearly $2 million in 11 different startups.
According to Slack, the purpose of its fund is to create a thriving development ecosystem around its platform.
“When we started the Slack Fund, we thought a great deal about what it takes to build an ecosystem — an ecosystem where a good idea can become a lasting business, and where we, together with our developers and partners, can dramatically shape the future of work for the better,” the Slack team wrote in a blog post on Medium. “To build this kind of ecosystem you need a shared mission, great developer products, a solid distribution mechanism and finally, to help apps make it in the long run, money.”
Slack noted that in addition to the $1.97 million it has put into the 11 startups, the venture capital community has invested more than $30 million total into the teams. Here is the full list of startups: Abacus, Automat, Birdly, Butter.ai, Candor Inc, Growbot, Konsus, Lattice, Myra Labs, Wade and Wendy, and Sudo.
The programs created by these startups provide a number of useful integrations for Slack, including an expense reporting tool, a talent recruitment bot, a project management system, and more.
“Companies funded by Slack represent only a tiny slice of the broader Slack platform — there are now over 600 apps in our App Directory, 200 added in the last two months, and 90 percent of paid teams on Slack actively use apps,” the company said on its blog.
“These are all very promising signs, and they bolster our belief that this is our collective moment to shape the way that millions of people do their jobs. This is why we have the Slack Fund: to help teams join us in building the future of work.”
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