Credit: Emily Drewry for ForbesStewart Butterfield says that when he first pitched Slack to investors, he saw a $100 million messaging market opportunity. Now with 5 million users and a $3.8 billion valuation, the CEO has a much grander vision for Slack: to be an office worker's "always-on chief of staff." "There's a lot of automation that can happen that isn't a replacement of humans but of mind-numbing behavior," Butterfield told bureau chief Miguel Helft. In his remarks, Butterfield reiterated a view of his service in which Slack handles internal communications and email continues to dominate outside ones. Slack-as-assistant also shouldn't threaten a host of specialized services that help office users in functions such as human resources and software development.

Source: Forbes April 25, 2017 00:55 UTC