Slack’s British Co-Founder To Net Windfall From $16 Billion IPO
written by Bella Palmer
Cal Henderson, the Brit that is one of messaging app Slack’s co-founders
It’s also a significant climb from the $13 billion-
The $16 billion valuation is based on the price that shares in the company have been changing hands at through private transactions over the past couple of months and represents roughly 21 times projected revenues over 2021. It would put the value of Henderson’s holding at around $436 million and that of Stewart Butterfield, the Canadian who is the other co-founder and chief executive at over $1 billion.
The Slack messaging app is mainly used professionally rather than for personal communications and has become a popular alternative to email for teams to chat, collaborate and share documentation. The company was founded back in 2009 in Vancouver and became the fastest ever start-up to reach ‘unicorn’ status by achieving a $1 billion valuation within just 15 months. The company has since moved its headquarters to San Francisco, on the doorstep of Silicon Valley.
Slack’s IPO takes an alternative route to the norm. Rather than sell shares to institutional and retail investors at a fixed IPO price ahead of them trading live on the stock exchange, Slack will simply list its shares directly with no pre-sale. The approach is referred to as a ‘direct listing’.
The co-founders could have made their fortunes by selling out of Slack some time ago with
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