Slack, the US-based enterprise communication platform developer backed by corporates Comcast, Alphabet and SoftBank, has chosen the New York Stock Exchange for a direct listing, Bloomberg reported yesterday.
The company intends to list on NYSE in June or July 2019, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Founded in Canada in 2009 as game developer Tiny Speck, Slack has built a workplace messaging and collaboration software platform with 85,000 paying subscribers and more than 10 million daily active users.
A direct listing involves a company or its shareholders directly selling shares through an exchange without using underwriters or issuing new shares. Music streaming platform Spotify became the first big tech company to list using the method, on NYSE, in April 2018.
Slack has received a total of $1.27bn in venture funding, most recently securing $427m from Dragoneer, General Atlantic, Baillie Gifford, Sands Capital, funds advised by Wellington Management, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price, and unnamed existing investors in an August 2018 series H round that valued it at $7.1bn.
The SoftBank-managed Vision Fund led Slack’s $250m series G round in 2017, investing alongside Accel at a $5.1bn valuation.
GV and Comcast Ventures, subsidiaries of internet and technology conglomerate Alphabet and mass media group Comcast, joined existing investors including Accel, Index Ventures and Social Capital to provide $200m for Slack the year before, valuing it at $3.8bn post-money.
The company had previously received $160m from GV, Index Ventures, Accel, Social Capital, Horizons Ventures, DST Global, Spark Capital Growth, IVP, Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) in 2015 at a $2.8bn valuation.
GV had already co-led Slack’s $120m series D round in 2014 with KPCB, investing alongside existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and Social Capital, valuing it at $1.12bn.
