Slack CEO Weighs In On The End Of (Some) Email

Is the era of email coming to an end? Maybe — and maybe in several years.

Slack CEO and Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield was quoted by CNBC as stating in an interview that email — at least in some ways — will soon see the end of its era of dominance, in terms of its use by businesses worldwide.

As has been reported, the workplace messaging service was slated to come to market Thursday (June 20) through a direct listing, priced as of this writing at $26 a share. That $26 share price is known as a “reference price” that is tied to trades done privately through the last several months. A direct listing differs from an initial public offering (IPO) in that the company does not raise money through the sale of newly-created shares and direct listings also generally avoid underwriting fees.

And in the interview, the executive said that email as sent inside of companies will see a change over the next several years, moving toward an eventual end, in fact — although the scenario outside of the business world will likely be a different story.

“Inside our companies, I think that’s happening faster and faster. Over the next few years, certainly over the next five-to-seven years, we’ll see a faster change,” he said, according to the report. But he added, “The broader world of email will stick around.”

As it stands, the company’s paying customer base totals more than 600,000 firms, with more than 10 million active daily users, per filings from the company.

The Slack CEO said that the email phase-out will happen in five to seven years, and he added that Slack will be a prime beneficiary. “Everyone will choose this,” he said of Slack, which as the news outlet noted lets companies set up private and public communications channels — making inter-office email less dominant than it once was.