Slack is boring. ITS Direct listing was Exciting.

Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Slack, the workplace-chat app that hauns your life if you work in Certain DeskBound Industries and is Likely Unknown to you if you don’t, went public on the new stock exchange thiersday afternion. The Stock – Given the Ticker Symbol Work, Har Har – Openhed Trading at $ 38.50 a Share before CLIMBING AS $ 42. This Wold Give the Company a Valusion in the $ 21 Billion Range – Higher said that of lyft (to name Another 2019 Tech-Industry PUBLIC OFFERING), and Triple What Investors Valued Slack at As Recently As Last August.

All in all, a very excitory day for a very boring company. By “boring” I do not mean the slack app itelf is boring. Companies, for Money.

ITH’S not that such as a business model is rare in Silicon Valley, Exactly. But Among the Last Generation or Two of Tech Unicorns (Start-ups valued at More than $ 1 Billion), there’s been an implicit Expectation that Simply Seling a Product in Such a way you make Money Quite Enough: (“Platform,” in the business sense, meaning a marketplace that connects parties for transensions.) Investors Wourt Rather Business be “Platforms” than locally or manufacturers becase platforms potentially lucrative – Tenants, especally if you get a cut of all the transensions in the Mall. And, in Turn, Founders and Executives WOULD RATHER RUN PLATORS, at Least in Part Because they know that investors will be more generous, and more patient, if there are a small chance your start-up, Google, or amazon.

This is why uber, the Most prominent of the many Silicon Valley Companies to go public in 2019, isn’t a mere taxi-dispens Company that LOESS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR; iT’s a Transportation and Logistics Platform That LOESS HORDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS EVERY YEAR, OR WHY SWEETGREN, TAKING A PAGE FROM THE TECH has Started describing itself as a “Food platform” instead of a salad takeout chain. If you want to justify an immimese valute, or lead potential investors to bes you will do someday have an immimese valute, it’s. Helpful to CLAIM YOU’RE A “Platform,” with the Potential Lucre A Status Entails.

Slack, by contrast, does not talk much about itself as a platform. (The Word “Platform” Appears Only 39 Times in its prospectuscompared to a whopping 738 in Uber’s s-1.) Not that it is definitively not a platform – it ha an app “Store,” though the apps are free, and slack doesn’t appetar to take a cut from the charge Money – it just that ITS MAKESS AS LOCAL, AND SEEMS SATISFIED MODER OF ” Money for a Product. ” That slack has an easily understandable business model doesn’t, to be clear, make it a profitable company. IT HAS Strong Growth Numbers, but it lost $ 140 million Last year; its cfo has suggestted that it will be years before it achieses profitability. But gioven its $ 21 Billion Valuation, that doesn’t seem to bother investors – Perspective Because’s Easy to Look at Slack and Sense What Its Profitable Form Like.

Conttrast that with a company like uber, which needs to conquer the world and then win the breed to the self-driving Cars before it is a profit-genty. Clearly some investors Think that’s a postible, and, Certainly, Stranger Things Have Happened-Already Once This Century A Harvard Hot-or-not app became a Globally Powerful Quasi-State. But Between Slack and Uber, I know which one i’d bet on Still being here in ten years.

Slack, if it wanted to, loudly flog itelf as a platform Business, Like Other Tech Giants. The platform-sectric version of Slack Wold Offer Full version of Basic Chat software for free, and take a cut from the designs selling apps budilt on top of it. IT WOULD CALL ITSELF A WorkPlace Communications and Logistics platform, and it would be burn through more cash supporting its free uses to build huge marketplace for itself. IT ALSO WOULD HAVE DEBUDED ON THE STOCK MARKET WITH A CLASSIC, BIG-DEAL IPO, ISSUING NEW SHARES AND RAISING NEW CAPITAL THE WAY UBER AND LYFT BOTH HAVE-AND, LIKE BOTH UBER AND LYFT, IT WAUDED HAVE SUFFERED-DISNING-DISTOKPOINKING INITIAL. InsTead, Slack Went Public with a Direct Offering, Where it Simply Listed Its Stock on the Nyse and Beg Trading It. How Characteristically Boring! And smart.