Wall Street is buzzing about the possibility of Slack Technologies selling its shares to the public–maybe in early 2019. That would be one of the largest tech IPOs since Snap’s debut in 2017. It could also be a splashy one.
The San Francisco-based company recently landed $427 million in new funding that values Slack at more than $7 billion.
Slack Co-Founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield tells Fortune “We have no specific timeline for an IPO”. But he adds, “We’ve been on a path to public company readiness for several years now and we’re continuing on that path.”
Hitting “financial milestones” matter less to Butterfield than “relentless focus on customers” and delivering “what they’re actually looking for.”
Slack has revolutionized the way people use tech tools to chat and collaborate with co-workers in the workplace. The nine-year-old company now has more than 8 million active users. Butterfield predicts usage could be way bigger than that. “We think the market’s hundreds of millions of people,” he says, “and so we’re still pushing ahead.”
Watch the video above for more of my interview with Butterfield.