Slack has built a solid name as one of the big players in communication software for businesses. Due to its incredible success, a number of startups are now focusing in the same area, striving to be better than the well known giant, or taking this idea to a new target market.
It’s an area that has already drawn interest from global technology giants Facebook, Amazon.com and Microsoft, along with other smaller startups. For example, the young San Francisco-based startup, Islands, raises $1.85 million to become Slack for college students.
While this might not directly affect Slack due to their interest in an alternative target market, two billionaire brothers, Bhavin and Divyank Turakhia, might be an approaching threat for the software company. Flock, a cloud-based team collaboration service, has attracted 25,000 enterprise users and customers including Tim Hortons, Whirlpool and Princeton University.
One year ago, Bhavin and his younger brother Divyank probably wouldn’t have popped up on anyone’s radar. However, after they sold their advertising technology company Media.net, with customers including Yahoo, CNN and the New York Times, to a Chinese consortium for $900 million, they were, understandably considered an entrepreneurial pair to watch. The all-cash deal catapulted the duo from mere millionaires into the ranks of the super-rich.
Although as a young bright mind, Bhavin became a millionaire by the age of 20. Now he is investing $45 million of his own money into building a solution to take on Slack and other office messaging platforms. “I want to make Flock bigger and better than anything I’ve built before,” said Bhavin.
Like the Turakhias’ previous startups, Flock doesn’t have a single dollar of debt or venture capital. That is vastly different compared with four-year-old Slack, which is backed by SoftBank and Accel Partners and was last month said to be raising $250m at a valuation of more than $5bn. Slack might have the head start and some strong backing, but these two innovative entrepreneurs might have the skills, creativity and the finances to prove a formidable foe.
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