Discussion
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Cecilia Stallsmith
@cecistalls · Platform @ SlackHQ
And Hi! I'm Ceci Stallsmith, I lead the Slack Platform & Partner marketing team. Platforms are my passion, ask me anything - from deets on our recent launches to platform strategy as a whole and why platform matters so much to Slack.
And I'm Buster Benson, I lead the Slack platform product team.
Ask us about building for Slack’s platform and the recent message menus launch - or really anything about making your workday more productive!
Andy Cook
@andygcook · Cofounder - Tettra.co
Thanks for doing an AMA here Buster and Ceci. Also congratulations on yesterdays launch of Message Menus. Very exciting addition for us startups building on Slack and please send my thanks to the entire team :)
Quick question about the Platform for you:
I noticed in the announcement yesterday that 16 apps debuted message menus on launch day, so I'm assuming there's some sort of beta program for the Slack Platform because they had already all integrated the endpoints before the change was officially announced.
Is there a place for other companies to apply for early access to Slack Platform changes? Would love to make sure we always have the latest and greatest built into Tettra.co for our customers. Thanks!
@andygcook We spend a lot of time talking with developers and always need to validate what we're building with them before we even start implementing a new idea. But it's more of a program for API feedback than a scalable beta program at this time. We're still pretty small and scrappy as a team, but to people interested in launching with us, keep an eye on what's on our public roadmap and reach out to us with ideas for how you'd be able to support them. We also want to do a lot more marketing between launches, so if you build something great with menus, let us know so we can highlight it!
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
Ceci and Buster! This might sound like a cheeky question but I'm actually very serious:
Although early, we've seen products like Big Screen bring distributed teams together and inevitably I believe VR/AR will be a part of how we communicate remotely.
How will VR or AR change Slack?
@rrhoover This is a fun debate amongst a few of us here. Speaking for myself, I agree with you and think that something like Minecraft VR + Slack will be a cheap alternative to expensive city living and office space. VR+AR will allow infinite whiteboards, group conversations, and displays for a fraction of the price. But resolution needs to drastically improve.
Ryan Hoover
@rrhoover · Founder, Product Hunt
@buster I agree, and you're touching on an even broader topic: the future of living.
When VR becomes nearly indistinguishable from real life, we can effectively teleport. Our physical workspaces often determine where we live. But if I can work just as effectively with a team remotely in VR and this becomes the new norm, we may see an exodus of people moving out of big cities like SF to cheaper, pleasant areas of the world.
Ayrton De Craene
@ayrton · Code @ Product Hunt
What is the number one piece of advice you ever received?
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Cecilia Stallsmith
@cecistalls · Platform @ SlackHQ
@ayrton I’m a big fan of the Enneagram of personality. I’m a seven, so some of the top advice I’ve received recently has been to put space between my impulse and action. It’s very simple, but I love to be fast and move with excitement. Giving myself a little bit of space between impulse and action makes the quality of my actions or responses significantly better.
Practically, I’ve found practicing meditating even for 5-10 minutes before or during the work day extremely helpful for slowing down and being conscious of my “7.”
What are the wildest custom emoji on the Slack team's Slack?
@jakecrump My morning routine is to get my 8-month old breakfast, and walk my 6-year old to school. I then grab a giant coffee and have my own walk / BART ride to work where I think about what important things I need to make time for, and then block out time for those things (and move things around if necessary).
Holden Page ∆
@holdenthepage · EIC, WorkAfar.com
Hey ya'll. A couple weeks ago, one of my friends said they enjoyed Slack bots because it reduced the need for entering yet another password. Which got me thinking: Do you possibly see the Slack platform as enabling a future where logins are unnecessary?
I also think this train of thought is interesting given the "magic link" that users are encouraged to use, and as far as I am aware, there are not many other enterprise or consumer apps that actively promote a password-free alternative.
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Cecilia Stallsmith
@cecistalls · Platform @ SlackHQ
@holdenthepage 🌟 great question. Our mission at Slack is to make people's working lives simpler, more pleasant and more productive. One of the ways our platform makes this true is by simplifying your workflows between conversations (in Slack) and the products you use to get the job done. This means reducing logins, lookups, context switching and overall trying to reduce the fragmentation we feel during the work day bopping around various tools.
We definitely are thinking about how we can smooth out the process of using your products (with Slack) with fewer barriers, while maintaining and even improving security. We have nothing to share right now, but we're thinking about this as a team.
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
How do you make Slack defensible?
@andrewett The platform is a big part of this. Messaging and communication is the heart of what we do, and that means connecting humans to other humans, but also humans to software/apps that they use. Our defensible opportunity is that we are a neutral party without our own productivity stack to favor or defend. We want to work with all the software, both big partners as well as up-and-coming new businesses. Our mutual customers can then choose what works best for the way they work.
Alex Willen
@willenation
Hi Ceci! Big fan of your work - what advice do you have for partners building Slack integrations to really stand out in your directory?
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Cecilia Stallsmith
@cecistalls · Platform @ SlackHQ
@willenation Hi Alex Willen, nice to meet you.
Our App Directory has been live for about a year, and we're still getting our heads around how apps get discovered - so I don't have a perfect answer. But we do have a couple of simple ways to better market your app to our customers:
1. A guide on how to launch and/or market your Slack app: https://medium.com/slack-develop...
2. The end of that blog post talks about how you can join "partner briefings" to speak with the Slack Partnership and DevRel teams. I'd suggest joining these if you want to learn more and get connected!
3. We've put out a call for content on our platform blog. We'd love to tell more stories about how teams built their apps, so if you have a great story, send it our way: https://medium.com/slack-develop...
Chris Cichon
@cichonship · Marketing at Baydin (Boomerang)
Hey Ceci 👋🏼 thanks for doing this. How do you think about what (partners, integrations, features, etc) to prioritize when your platform is new/just getting started? Did you have any helpful frameworks for evaluating opportunities?
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Cecilia Stallsmith
@cecistalls · Platform @ SlackHQ
@cichonship Hi Chris, thanks joining and asking a great question. I want to make sure I'm answering correctly - I think your question is about building your own platform (perhaps at Boomerang, which is in your profile.)
The most important thing to consider and test when you are thinking about building a platform is to seed the opportunity to see if it resonates. We built our first 80 integrations ourselves. Our customers loved them, and we found that in our first year and a half "integrations" were always in the top 3 reasons for strong NPS (net promoter scores). This was the proof we needed to go all-in on platform.
In sum: We knew customers would adopt apps, we had a lot of developer demand (in fact, developers were essentially hacking our platform to build apps that we didn't have yet), and we saw the potential for how our platform could shape the future of work. The rest is history and a whole lot of work that we need to do in order to get all the way there.
This is one of my favorite topics and I'm always happy to chat more about it. In particular, platforms that require customer adoption are fascinating, and if you are thinking about how to consider and build a strategy I'm happy to talk more.
Chris Cichon
@cichonship · Marketing at Baydin (Boomerang)
@cecistalls Thanks Ceci, I appreciate it. I'll ping you to chat more about it. Please say hi to Daniel for me too