Julia Chatterley of First Move spoke with Butterfield on Thursday.
Butterfield: Yesterday’s announcement made it easier for people to send direct messages outside of shared channels. There was a lot of confusion. There was an unforced error on the part of the operation of the communication system, which was confused with the possibility of sending the messages themselves. It’s a double choice for both parties and people have complete control over who can send them messages. So it’s actually a pretty big step with regards to texting, WhatsApp, email, and so on.
Butterfield: Absolutely. To be clear, you can’t completely get rid of email and we don’t intend to do it because it serves many purposes, but that’s the downfall of internal communication. But there are many, probably thousands of organizations that do not use email for internal communication. But of course, they still have to use it to get online shopping receipts and reset passwords and receive calendar invitations and stuff.
Emails are still incredibly vulnerable if they are hacked. Is this another argument for a system like Slack as an alternative?
Butterfield: Well, we’re a pretty big target. We have an amazing security team and many active programs that, you know, work to prevent it. We work with governments in 20 different countries and large financial services companies and clients and we are often chosen on the basis of growing security. Email has the virtue of being a system that everyone can use, but it is a much harder system to control. There are problems with fishing and spam, and I think email is useful and will probably continue to be used for tens of thousands of years at this time. In this open and decentralized way, but where you have control and have the ability to communicate, this is the internal case, it is much better to choose a tool like Slack.
The large percentage of companies that are part of the largest indexes in the world use your services and pay for them. How far can these percentages go? What is the ambition?
Butterfield: I think we can get to 100%. I mean, I’m not sure we’re in the US. Maybe 70% of the Fortune 100, but not just 156,000 companies around the world use it, and obviously there are, you know, 500 in this index and 100 in this index, and 156,000 are a much larger number. This includes all types of business. It includes people who operate small retail stores of plumbers, repairmen, but also the largest issuer of credit cards in the US and the largest contract. And you’re right in pointing out international growth, because we’ve had revenue growth this year. Fantastic result, but if you look at France, for example, it is 49%. If we look at Japan, it was 76% and, given the growth in customers, it was the main indicator of revenue in the future, much higher figures. Australia: 93%, UK was 94% and Germany, 94%.