Picking Up The Slack

The GPOAT (Greatest Pivot Of All Time).

The Slack app has millions of business customers and has become the single leader in asynchronous business communication.

But that’s not how the product was designed – in fact, Slack was one of the most beautiful pivots in modern business history.

What is now the core product of Slack was merely a chat feature of a failed interactive video game.

The game was a venture that the founders had raised money for and had some users. It didn’t take off nearly as expected, and the company’s financial runway was shrinking every day.

However, the leadership team realized that people were using the game even though they didn’t like the playability.

They started asking questions and got feedback that some users were actually only using the game to chat with their friends, because the chat was so easy to use.

As a last-ditch effort before pulling up stakes on the entire venture, they decided to repackage that part of their software as a small business product to replace Skype, ICQ and other legacy chat products that just didn’t measure up to what they had built.

Today one of their ad slogans is “more gets done with Slack”, and as a user for nearly a decade, I wholeheartedly agree.

Is there a pivot in your future?

This is from Trail 9 of Profit Hiker: 11 Trails to gain lasting elevation in your business. Find the book right here and the program over there.