While Zoom Zooms, Slack Digs Moats

Slack is “Come to our wedding!” It’s a real commitment, so it takes some real thought to say yes. Once you’re in, though, you’re in.

Slack, on the other hand, has Personal Utility (Direct) network effects inside of a company. People use PU(D) networks for essential communication with their personal or professional circles using their real identities.

In a matter of weeks, Zoom zoomed from 10 million users to 300 million users participants.

Slack made the opposite trade. They gave up some speed, but they’ve built in network effects and switching costs.

Arguably, Zoom’s virality has caused negative network effects, at least for me. The more people who join Zoom, the more Zoom happy hour invites I get, the worse my life becomes.

12.5M isn’t as impressive as 300M. But the beauty of Slack is that those 12.5M+ daily active users (DAUs) and 9,000+ new paid accounts are locked. They will keep paying for years.

Slack, on the other hand, doesn’t look quite as good on paper. It is not quite doubling year-over-year, it’s not profitable yet, and it’s growing more slowly than Zoom is.

Drinks and weddings… am I in the right place?

Zoom is “Let’s meet up for a drink!” It’s easy to set up, and equally easy to cancel.