Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason
Speaker 1: Kelly and I'm Carol Master. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week Extra. It's our weekly podcast bringing an in depth
Speaker 1: interview you will not hear anywhere else. And this week
Speaker 1: we caught up with Stewart Butterfield. He's the chairman CEO
Speaker 1: of Slack, well known to lots of folks, especially in
Speaker 1: this age of working from home. We're figuring out new
Speaker 1: in different ways to work together remotely, to collaborate using technology.
Speaker 1: We're doing well, I would say overall. I mean, so
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things that threads to separate here. Um.
Speaker 1: Demand on the business is great, UM, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's very encouraging and energizing and kind of UM. Certainly
Speaker 1: in the first couple of weeks of March was like
Speaker 1: a big shot of adrenaline for the team. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, UM, we have a lot of customers, you know,
Speaker 1: more or less every country in the world, there's a
Speaker 1: hundred ten thousand of them. Some of them are are
Speaker 1: really struggling. And I think also when you look at employees,
Speaker 1: it can be difficult to make this transition. Not so
Speaker 1: much the distributed work or working from home or remote
Speaker 1: work stuff. UM, but the uncertainty, you know that, the
Speaker 1: fear about the economic impact, the health impacts. UM. Also
Speaker 1: just the practical reality of being, um, suddenly the primary
Speaker 1: caretaker through the day and the teacher of your three
Speaker 1: year old and five year old if you have young
Speaker 1: kids at home. Right. So it's just it's kind of
Speaker 1: all of the above. It's everything all about. Yeah, it's interesting, Stuart.
Speaker 1: I mean, so much of this and this is dealt
Speaker 1: within the story. And I know you've talked about this
Speaker 1: a little bit. I mean some of what we are
Speaker 1: doing now in many ways, you guys anticipated, like in
Speaker 1: terms of how we need to communicate, what's natural in
Speaker 1: terms of communication, and and yet still I feel like
Speaker 1: we're all being tested and you know, both as humans
Speaker 1: and the technology that we use to to their to
Speaker 1: their very limits. What has surprised in terms of sort
Speaker 1: of synthesizing or maybe bringing those two threads to get
Speaker 1: threads together about our human behavior and technology. UM, those
Speaker 1: are exactly that you treads that what's really been interesting is, UM,
Speaker 1: we wrote in our S one, the document you file
Speaker 1: on your path to becoming a public about the kind
Speaker 1: of the reason we thought we existed and our our
Speaker 1: role in the world, and that was really to help
Speaker 1: organization that achieve greater degree of agility, because in you
Speaker 1: we didn't have a global pandemic in mind when we
Speaker 1: wrote this, but we're talking about just the um ever
Speaker 1: quickening pace of technological change and the changes that has
Speaker 1: consumer behavior, which can cause changes in competitive behavior, or
Speaker 1: which can cause macroeconomic changes. And the common challenge to
Speaker 1: all organizations is the ability to kind of maintain alignment
Speaker 1: in the face of changing conditions and to be responsive enough.
Speaker 1: So this is, you know, again not the example that
Speaker 1: we had in mind, but it's a great frustration of that.
Speaker 1: And um, I kind of it's not funny, I guess,
Speaker 1: but it's it's really interesting to me to think back
Speaker 1: over the last twenty five years and how many large
Speaker 1: organizations had um set up with consultants or had their
Speaker 1: internal strategy teams come up with, you know, here's our
Speaker 1: plan for a talent community, here's what a world of
Speaker 1: work from home would look like, you know, maybe every
Speaker 1: eighteen months or every couple of years over the last
Speaker 1: twenty five years. And if you looked at those plans,
Speaker 1: they would say we would be an eighteen month period
Speaker 1: of pre planning and a multiple year rollout. No one
Speaker 1: if they were asked three months ago what it said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can, we can transition our person company to be
Speaker 1: working from all right, but when something is absolutely required,
Speaker 1: what what had appeared to be impossible is suddenly possible.
Speaker 1: And I think what's really interesting about that is I
Speaker 1: think it will cause some second order and third order
Speaker 1: and even fourth order effects of questioning UM, the assumptions
Speaker 1: that people had about what else was possible, what else
Speaker 1: was limiting their organization UM, and particularly for those UM
Speaker 1: companies or organizations that have been more resistant to digital
Speaker 1: transformation generally, including the demonstration that hey they can do
Speaker 1: it UM and you know, be uh there there's real benefits.
Speaker 1: I mean, in this case, the benefit is survival, but
Speaker 1: but there's other opportunities that I bet we can discover
Speaker 1: if we are have a little bit more of an
Speaker 1: open minded approction stuff. Well, because Stewart and and it's
Speaker 1: interesting to hear you say that, because part of what
Speaker 1: I think we're adjusting to is this notion of you
Speaker 1: can sort of do anything for a week or two.
Speaker 1: But you know, for me, I'm on week six at
Speaker 1: this point, and you can't sort of like fake it
Speaker 1: or kind of pull it all together with like chicken
Speaker 1: wire and duct tape once you're into week six, like
Speaker 1: you sort of got to figure it out because you've
Speaker 1: got to run an organization, which I guess leads me
Speaker 1: to my next question. We only got about a minute
Speaker 1: left and then we're gonna continue the conversation a few
Speaker 1: minut It's like, what sticks here, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of our our behavior and our expectation. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: great question. And um, in some respects too soon to say,
Speaker 1: I think. Um. In other respects though, UM, I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, an open mindedness and increased not reliance on,
Speaker 1: but increased willingness to take advantage of software solutions. And
Speaker 1: of course, you know, one of a software company solve
Speaker 1: like expecting to say that, but you know, But what
Speaker 1: I mean is software and technology generally have automated away
Speaker 1: those things that are most amenable to automation, which tend
Speaker 1: to be those things which are most repetitive, kind of
Speaker 1: mind numbing um or areas where computers are just plainly
Speaker 1: better than people. Computers are better remembrance stuff, they're better
Speaker 1: doing arithmetic very quickly. Um, and that frees up humans
Speaker 1: to do those things that humans are uniquely well qualified to,
Speaker 1: things that require intelligence and creativity, and so um, well,
Speaker 1: there's always some resistance to to change in the backdrop
Speaker 1: of this kind of incredible, global, unprecedented change. Um. The CEO,
Speaker 1: as I've been talking to you, suddenly realize, well, geez,
Speaker 1: that reorder that I had been planning for the last
Speaker 1: six months but I was apprehensive about implementing, Maybe now
Speaker 1: was a good time, you know, maybe that was a
Speaker 1: good time to make some of the changes that would
Speaker 1: have seemed more difficult and normal ends and suddenly it's
Speaker 1: been easy by comparison. Right. Well, we're here with the
Speaker 1: Stewart Butterfield co founder, chief executive officer Slack on the
Speaker 1: phone from San Francisco. Sister. One thing I was curious about,
Speaker 1: because you know, we heard from Netflix last night and
Speaker 1: we know they've had to jump into man with everybody
Speaker 1: streaming you guys, I'd love to get an idea of
Speaker 1: how how many more people are on your platform and
Speaker 1: the kind of growth you've seen. And I know, from
Speaker 1: what I understand from reading, your attention rate tends to
Speaker 1: be well over I'm curious how much of that you
Speaker 1: expect to stay with you on the other side of
Speaker 1: the virus. Unfortunately, got to be a little bit careful
Speaker 1: because we're in our quiet period of leading up to earning.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no problem. We have made some public statements
Speaker 1: there UM and you know, one of the things we
Speaker 1: saw was a huge increase in net new customers. So
Speaker 1: as of last report, we had UM a hundred and
Speaker 1: ten thousand customers around the world. Obviously there's you know,
Speaker 1: five hundred and fortune five hundreds, so at least a
Speaker 1: hundred nine thousand, five hundred. These are not fortunate five
Speaker 1: hunding companies, their small businesses UM and we saw surge
Speaker 1: in Japan and South Korea earlier, followed by Italy and
Speaker 1: then UM the rest of Western Europe UM and then
Speaker 1: the US. So obviously kind of coincident with the spread
Speaker 1: of the virus and the spread of concerns around it.
Speaker 1: We also saw an enormous increase in utilization among our
Speaker 1: gust and users, so UM around increase and message ascenter
Speaker 1: user per day. We saw expansion among existing customers. But
Speaker 1: you know, looking a little bit more forward, we try
Speaker 1: to be really pragmatic. We had to do our earnings
Speaker 1: on March eleven. I think it was maybe March to
Speaker 1: all it was. It was the day, you know, the
Speaker 1: kind of the morning after the Tom Hanks NBA Trump
Speaker 1: travel band kind that kind of moment that really that
Speaker 1: perfect storm where everybody realized, oh boy, this is happening. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, and the numbers were so small then I
Speaker 1: feel like we were so naive, but it did shift
Speaker 1: the psychology pretty dramatically, and we're still we're still concerned
Speaker 1: long run about the macro impact here and what that's
Speaker 1: going to mean in it. So some are easy to tell.
Speaker 1: The travel and hospitality obviously is very severely impacted. But
Speaker 1: if you know, if so many people being out of
Speaker 1: work for two weeks might not be that big of
Speaker 1: a challenge, um, being out of work for two months
Speaker 1: or longer can be a really significant challenge. And now
Speaker 1: we're talking about tens of millions of people. So we
Speaker 1: don't want to you know, certainly seems a little coolish
Speaker 1: to be excited about the business prospects in the overall environment.
Speaker 1: We also want to temper the enthusiasm there um, just
Speaker 1: because of the uncertaintyment what we're going to see in
Speaker 1: the in the back of the year. Well that that
Speaker 1: certainly echoes what we heard from Netflix to Carol. You know,
Speaker 1: Jason and I talked with Meg Whitman m on the
Speaker 1: Lonch of Quimby, and you know, she said to us,
Speaker 1: here she is, she's worked at her worked at the
Speaker 1: office for like forty plus years, and and she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm working at home and I'm getting stuff done. And
Speaker 1: she you know, made her maybe rethink about this whole
Speaker 1: idea of working from home. Has the notion of a
Speaker 1: workplace changed forever in your view? I think so it's
Speaker 1: a little too reallysed to tell again, um, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how it's changed. You know, there's definitely it's
Speaker 1: a conversation that we're having because we had something around
Speaker 1: five percent of our employees worked from the home before
Speaker 1: they started. But that's a very different setup. You know.
Speaker 1: That means people had a home office set up, they
Speaker 1: had a good interact connection, they had childcare. When they
Speaker 1: felt like taking a break, they could you know, walk
Speaker 1: down to their local cafe and sit outside on the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and enjoy a coffee or something. This is very different.
Speaker 1: You can't get it haircut and childcare challenges being locked
Speaker 1: up and all the anxiety. So it's a little bit
Speaker 1: hard to know what happens when we're on the other
Speaker 1: side of those things. But it is um, you know,
Speaker 1: for our customer success team, they work with customers after
Speaker 1: that the sails them to kind of ensure the implementation
Speaker 1: is mooved, work on change management. They're more effective than before.
Speaker 1: I mean the first office customers are really paying attention
Speaker 1: because this is you know, obviously important, um, but also
Speaker 1: because you cut out you know, sixteen hours of travel
Speaker 1: on either side of the engagement. But I think about
Speaker 1: I put a couple of TVs. I'm actually on Family
Speaker 1: Show immediately after this, so stay tuned if you're in
Speaker 1: arranging of the TV. But um, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of those. If I'm in our New York office, it's
Speaker 1: forty five minutes left uptown and then moving around and
Speaker 1: it's like hours and hours of overhead. Now it's just
Speaker 1: like boom, um, you can knock them up and I
Speaker 1: get great, uh great meetings with executives at other companies
Speaker 1: on short notice. So there's there's some real advantages here
Speaker 1: and that I think we'll we that flock of the company.
Speaker 1: But I think the people broadly will be off the
Speaker 1: ponistic about what you retain here UM and what we
Speaker 1: want to bring back about the old culture. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: absolutely well, and I only got about a minute left
Speaker 1: here is Stewart, and we know you've got to get
Speaker 1: onto your next engagement, which is of course, as you
Speaker 1: said with our our colleague Emily Chang, so tune into
Speaker 1: Blueberg technology as as you mentioned. But I do wonder,
Speaker 1: as you've sort of stress tested the product through all this,
Speaker 1: what have you learned that you may implement sooner than
Speaker 1: maybe you anticipated into in terms of new products or features,
Speaker 1: or what have you learned about maybe customers behavior. Only
Speaker 1: got about a minute. Yeah, um, So we've been seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of demands for everything and that deeper integration
Speaker 1: is on the top of the side and something that
Speaker 1: we've been very engaged in the very successful in so far.
Speaker 1: You know one thing that I'm personally thinking about UM
Speaker 1: quite a bit. It's like easier UM and simpler forms
Speaker 1: of video communications and not video call just per se um,
Speaker 1: but more asynchronous video. And you're seen a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting startups doing stuff in those spaces. Were excited about
Speaker 1: what we see there and making it easier for people
Speaker 1: to kind of record your clips. Um key, I want
Speaker 1: to be conscious of time, but I'll leave it there.
Speaker 1: And that was Stewart Butterfield, the chairman and CEO of Slack,
Speaker 1: and really interesting to catch up with him. Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: it's been a place we keep going back to, Carol
Speaker 1: to understand how they are assessing all of this and
Speaker 1: how technology may help us. And interestingly, at a time
Speaker 1: or coming off of the time, I should say, where
Speaker 1: people were a little skeptical about tech, now we're all
Speaker 1: embracing it. Right. We've been talking a lot about how
Speaker 1: innovation often comes out of crisis, and we're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of those tech companies, you know, formerly competitors, now
Speaker 1: coordinating and working together, collaborating to help figure out solutions
Speaker 1: for this crisis. All Right, you've been listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week Extra. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Buiness
Speaker 1: Week Radio Live Monday through Friday at two pm Wall
Speaker 1: Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Jason Kelly and I'm
Speaker 1: Carol Masser. This is Bloomberg