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I agree with all points. I'm curious if the makers of Slack actually thought these were the critical differentiators they needed to build to succeed from the beginning, or they built "just another chat app" when they started and eventually had an aha moment

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Slack the messaging app was actually the pivot off of an unsuccessful MMORPG. They were writing it for their own internal use. Motivations were somewhat different than you are envisioning.

And the founder's (Stewart Butterfield) earlier company, Flickr, was also a pivot off another unsuccessful game. Man just wants to make games but gets too successful building billion dollar companies.

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