Has Slack killed email? Not quite. Rather, it seems the number of software applications people use at work just keeps snowballing, and the lot of them is getting unwieldy. Is there a blanket solution handy to collect them all in a single meeting place?

Smartsheet Inc. wants to be the landing spot for all of them with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface.

“What Smartsheet’s is trying to do is really roll those all up under a kind of unified view — parts of project management, parts of task management, a lot of pieces to really add that top-level management,” said Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

Smartsheet is both competing and collaborating with some of the most popular work applications, like Slack and Microsoft Office 365. It’s gaining momentum in the market, and its subscription-based software as a service model lets customers vote with their renewals.

Frick and co-host Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara) spoke during today’s Smartsheet Engage event in Bellevue, Washington. They discussed the future of work and Smartsheet’s market positioning. (* Disclosure below.)

A spreadsheet? Really? Really.

At its inception 12 years ago, Smartsheet’s idea to build an all-encompassing SaaS work application designed like a spreadsheet elicited some funny looks. The company’s chief executive officer, Mark Mader, has recounted these criticisms in the past.

“Something interesting that [Mader] said is that that’s a construct that 400 to 500 million people understand,” Martin said.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, Smartsheet hitched a wagon to it and filled it up with its own features, as well as partner apps. It’s hoping to combine all of it into the preferred flexible, customizable work app.

“Smartsheet is a little bit different, because they want to be the primary way, but they want to integrate with all these other applications and other SaaS applications as well, so that you can create that kind of user-specific dashboard for [an] objective,” Frick said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Smartsheet Engage event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Smartsheet Engage. Neither Smartsheet Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo courtesy of Smartsheet Inc.