What if Salesforce Acquired Slack?

Slack listed its shares publicly on the NYSE this week with a reference price of $26, which would put it at a value of around $15.7 billion.

Slack is one of the most valuable competitors in the collaboration market today. Since the global collaboration market is set to be worth about $53.83 billion by 2023, Slack has a lot of worth to offer any investor.

So what if someone swooped in and bought the company outright? What if that someone happened to be not another collaborative competitor like Microsoft Teams, or Cisco Webex – but a business dedicated to a different part of business operations, like Salesforce?

Exploring the Idea of a Salesforce/Slack Partnership

Salesforce has expanded its ecosystem significantly in recent years. The company started by delivering sales software, then gradually grew to become a broader platform, offering marketing, development support, vertical SaaS software, and more. Would it be that much of a shock to see the company step into the collaboration market too?

Salesforce already integrates with Slack to provide companies with more access to their customer relationship management information and statistics. After all, it helps for teams to have access to all of the data that they can get in a time where customer experience is critical. If Salesforce and Slack were to combine into one crucial tool for the enterprise, then think of the impact, it would have on bringing the back-end and front-end of communication together.

That’s one of the main things that the CPaaS market and API environment is trying to accomplish today. Combining the front-end customer relationship experience, with back-end collaboration. Salesforce and Slack together could provide the ultimate opportunity for that.

Has Salesforce Shown any Interest in Slack?

While Salesforce hasn’t exactly been running around shouting about its intentions to purchase a collaboration tool – no-one has been talking about the acquisition of Slack. However, that doesn’t mean that plans aren’t in motion. Of course, I’m just speculating here, but if someone was to buy Slack, it makes sense for me that it would be a company that’s outside of the direct collaboration space. Sure, Microsoft Teams or Cisco could buy the service to make their own offering even bigger.

However, if Salesforce stepped in, then we could have something totally new. Also, one crucial point? Slack changed its ticker to WORK recently and Salesforce just so happens to own the Work.com domain. Of course, this could be (and probably is) a coincidence, but it’s got me thinking. Slack has always managed to hold its own against giants like Google, Microsoft, and Cisco, just by doing something different.

Slack was the first company to introduce us to what team collaboration online could be. What if also became the first brand to show us what we can do when we combine collaboration, with customer relationship management?

Food for thought.

Share your insights with us in the comments below.