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Watching new and rapidly changing markets can teach you many things. The work communication market led by companies such as Slack, Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Facebook is something I have been following for a long time.

Last year, before Slack went public, I did an analytical review of the data disclosed in Slack’s S-1 filing. At the end of that review, I shared my opinion that Slack experienced problems in the enterprise segment: the competition from Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Facebook for this market segment threatened Slack’s long-term growth prospects and its $20+ billion valuation.

A lot of things have happened in the eight months that have passed since I published that essay. A lot of new data has surfaced, with one of the biggest market intrigues fading away and a new one appearing. The leading characters once again reminded us of a number of fundamental rules the market plays by. And this is exactly what I am going to talk about in this essay.

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Learn data-driven product management in Simulator by GoPractice.

After my recent essay “Slack vs Teams vs Workplace: The intriguing dynamics of the work messenger market,” I didn’t plan to revisit the competition between Slack and Microsoft Teams just yet. Despite the rapid development of the work communication market, it is still a B2B market that is changing relatively slowly.

However, something extraordinary has happened: We are in the midst of one of the greatest “experiments” of our time, and a great part of the world has switched to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak has greatly sped up the development of remote work tools. This situation has propelled us several years ahead in time, much faster than it was destined to happen, allowing us to look into the future of the market today.

Another reason to take a closer look at Slack vs Teams is that recently, a lot of new data has surfaced about Slack. Even before the coronavirus outbreak, several large companies decided to adopt Slack as the communication tool for all their employees, including IBM with its 350,000-strong workforce and Uber, which has more than 38,000 employees. The number of paid Slack customers has grown by more than 7,000 over the past one and a half months, surpassing the growth in the entire previous quarter. This week, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield shared the sequence of the recent events in a series of posts on Twitter, all of them conveying a clear message: Slack is growing very fast.

All of the above made me doubt the assumptions I’ve made in my past essays, in which I didn’t put too much faith in Slack’s chances of winning the race against Microsoft Teams. In light of the new data, I decided to take another look at the market and figure out what was going on.

And here’s what I realized: Slack is a great business, but it still stands no chance against Microsoft Teams in dominating the messenger market. The recent weeks have further confirmed this assumption.

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Learn data-driven product management in Simulator by GoPractice.

GoPractice spoke with Dmitry Vasin, the Product Owner of the Revolut Trading from 2018 to 2020. Revolut is a leader in digital banking. At the beginning of 2021, it was the largest digital bank in Europe with over 15 million users and ~$5.5 billion valuation. During this period, Dmitry helped develop and launch the product.

Dmitry told us about the specifics of creating and developing a product in a strictly regulated market:

• Why it is important to involve people with solid industry knowledge in product development
• Why and how to combine a conservative approach with the desire to innovate
• How regulation affects the work of a product manager.

In the conversation, Dmitry discussed the mistakes his team made at different levels—technical, legal, product—and the lessons he drew to avoid such mistakes in the future.

For the convenience of the reader, we present the material in Q&A format. We also divided the conversation into two chapters and a brief conclusion.

The first chapter gives a general idea of ​​the trading product from Revolut: what is its value, how it was launched, what it achieved in the market. The second chapter discusses the details of working in a strictly regulated market. In the summary, Dmitry provides some recommendations and reflects on what he would have done differently if he were to start from scratch.

Test your product management and data skills with this free Growth Skills Assessment Test.

Learn data-driven product management in Simulator by GoPractice.

GoPractice is launching a new format: snapshots of noteworthy product and business podcast episodes.

In the first issue, we have prepared a retelling of the Breakout Growth Podcast episode, in which Sean Ellis and former PayPal marketing director Matt Lerner interview Nilan Peiris, VP of Growth at the fintech company Wise. In the beginning of July 2021 it had a valuation close to $11 billion and opted for a direct listing.

For the convenience of our readers, we have opted to provide a summary of the key points of the conversation instead of a full or partial transcript of the interview. You can listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform – Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox.

Test your product management and data skills with this free Growth Skills Assessment Test.

Learn data-driven product management in Simulator by GoPractice.