April Underwood
Head of Platform at Slack
Discussion
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
Hello! I'm April Underwood, head of Platform at Slack. My passion for technology started at a young age when I realized I could catalog and sort my baseball cards in Microsoft Works. I love working with engineers and designers to build and launch great products that people want to use. Last night, we announced some exciting news at Slack - the launch of an $80M Developer Fund and the Slack App Directory. Ask me anything!
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Dhruv kumar
@dhruvakumar · Founder,icliniq.com
Hi @aunder - Its nice to hear about The launch of an $80M developer fund. Can you tell more about the kind of apps you look to fund?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@dhruvakumar We're going to be looking at both apps that are designed to be “Slack-first”, and enterprise tools that are making Slack integration a core part of their offering. We will be supporting developers who want to join us in our our mission, which is to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive. While our App Directory is a big step toward helping developers reach an audience of 2M daily active users and growing, the Slack Fund is yet another way we can help developers take the leap to tackle problems for teams at work.
Dhruv kumar
@dhruvakumar · Founder,icliniq.com
@aunder @dhruvakumar Awesome. We have always embraced the "messaging app as a platform" approach. It is based on the premise that the top used app on a phone will always be a messaging app. :) In fact, we got banned for looking at whatsapp as a platform. But we got back on telegram and that was hunted here on PH by @erictwillis. Also let me spill the beans. We have made the first ever slackbot to get answers from real doctors. You will hear about it soon. :)
Dhruv kumar
@dhruvakumar · Founder,icliniq.com
@aunder @dhruvakumar - Hahaha. https://www.icliniq.com/apps/slack or www.slackdoctor.com is the link. Kindly give your feedback if possible. I have read about your healthcare investments cue.me and hale.co. Your feedback will help us to do improvements before we launch it officially tomorrow. :)
Abhishek Chakraborty
@coffeeandjunk · UX Designer
Hey April, can you describe your typical day in Slack office?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@coffeeandjunk it sounds cliché, but no two days are the same. I lead teams of product managers, business development, and developer relations, so I alternate between internal meetings to set our priorities and resolve decisions about product design and execution and external meetings with developers and strategic partners. I try to set aside a few hours per day in the office to be unscheduled, because we're growing fast here and I need time for the unexpected!
Jason Shah
@jasonyogeshshah · CEO @ Do (Do.com)
Hi April!
Extremely excited for the /launch! Clearly Slack is a unique platform, but how do you envision the Slack App Store evolving differently than other business platforms like Salesforce AppExchange, Google Apps Marketplace, (Microsoft) Office Store, and the App Store?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@jasonyogeshshah we're excited, too!
One of the key differentiators I see for our platform is that we're focused on teams at work, and helping make people's working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. While that sounds pretty broad, it's actually quite focused in that we're focused on work use cases.
Meanwhile, communication is such a foundational aspect of any person's work - who can get anything done without communicating with their team? If we can build a great communication layer for teams, then there are limitless work applications which can be built on top of Slack.
One way I think of our goal is to reduce context switching between applications people use for work. So if you're in a design tool, you should get the benefit of being a Slack user by being able to share your designs into a Slack channel without having to copy+paste a URL and switch to Slack. Conversely, people should get the benefit of being Creative Cloud, or Lyft, or Github users while they're in Slack. If we can make the experience of using both Slack and other applications for work even just a little bit better, then I think we'll be helping users. So we view our relationship with developers in a very big-picture way focused on our core mission and I think that makes our approach unique.
Kingsong Chen
@kingsongchen · Founder at Lace, Marketplace for GovTech
Hi April, what are some interesting things that helped Slack achieve such fast growth?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@kingsongchen Word of mouth has really been our strongest growth driver. Our users see less e-mail, fewer meetings and are more productive - which makes them happy and they tell their friends and colleagues. Our Wall of Love on Twitter (http://twitter.com/slacklovetweets has been one of the most interesting phenomena -- not many enterprise software companies get marriage proposals 😉
Arpit Gupta
@arpitgupta · Product Manager
@aunder What are some of the events/conferences that you really like to attend and recommend others to join as well?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@arpitgupta I recently attended and spoke at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen conference and was inspired by the other speakers - from athletes to entrepreneurs to operators - and everyone I met. As a Texan, I'll always have a soft spot for SXSW but I always lose my voice by the second day!
Teresa Hammerl
@colazionearoma · Socialmediapreneur
Hi April! What's your favorite emoji on Slack?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@colazionearoma I love this question! My most used one is probably 🙏, which I use alternatively to mean "please", "thank you", and "one can only hope!"
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@satpanesar · Founder @ Chatbot Studios
@aunder @colazionearoma I always interpreted that emoji as a prayer ...
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@satpanesar @colazionearoma it seems all emojis are in the 👀 of the beholder.
Cobby Amoah
@cobbyamoah · CEO, Obaa
@aunder How do you coordinate engineers and UI Designers? Do your UI/x people come up with designs and have engineers develop it or vice versa?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@cobbyamoah I would say it's a collaborative process and it depends on the individuals involved. Ideally, product, engineering, and design put their heads together around a user problem and each group has a voice in the final product.
Mike Melanin
@mike_melanin · Co-founder @ Statsbot.co
Could you provide any information how to apply to Slack Fund?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@mikemockup Absolutely! Reach out to us at slackfund@slack.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
Louis Svugr
@louis_sugar · I make and market stuff.
Hi April, thanks for doing this. What does it feel like to work at Slack? What's the atmosphere like? and most importantly, how do you keep up productivity in your team?
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April Underwood
@aunder · Investor, #Angels
@louis_sugar our core values here include both craftsmanship and playfulness, and that comes through in both our office space and how we work with one another. Oftentimes, it's remarkably quiet here at Slack as we're all working hard to do the best work of our careers and doing so most often inside Slack! Most of all, we are all very passionate about the problems we're trying to solve, and eager to build a company that's uniquely suited to solve them - that means building the right team of diverse perspectives and being thoughtful about how we do our work.