This is Best Time To Raise Money, Ever

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BrokerDealer.com blog update is courtesy of curating various stories with special credit to NYT reporter Farhad Manjoo, profiling Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of start-up Slack, an enterprise messaging company.  Manjoo’s article “Is Slack Really Worth $2.8 Billion? A Conversation With Stewart Butterfield” is extracted below.

Stewart Butterfield, chief executive of Slack, in the company's office in San Francisco.

Stewart Butterfield, chief executive of Slack, in the company’s office in San Francisco. Jason Henry for The New York Times

When I recently wrote about Slack, a corporate messaging app that has aspirations to replace email, investors valued the company at $1 billion. That was a month ago. Today, the start-up announced that it has raised $160 million from a half dozen investors, and that it is now worth $2.8 billion.

Slack, which is just a year old, has more than 750,000 daily active users, 200,000 of whom are paying customers. By many estimates, it is the fastest-growing business application of all time.

Still, Slack’s escalating valuation in such a short time seems destined to spark questions about the rising possibility of a tech bubble. I asked Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s co-founder and chief executive, about the company, its growth and the bubble in a wide-ranging conversation this morning.

Q. I’m surprised that you’re raising money, because last time we talked you said that you had enough money.
A. Do you have enough money?
Q.No. But it’s not free money, right?
A. It’s pretty straightforward. I’ve been in this industry for 20 years. This is the best time to raise money ever. It might be the best time for any kind of business in any industry to raise money for all of history, like since the time of the ancient Egyptians. It’s certainly the best time for late-stage start-ups to raise money from venture capitalists since this dynamic has been around.