Four Microsoft Stories You Didn't Know About
Microsoft has passed through many phases since it was founded from a small startup in the 1970s to the most valuable company in the world in the 1990s and then stagnation under Steve Balmer’s leadership, to today. With Satya Nadella as CEO, the company has experienced a turn around which allowed it to reclaim the title for the most valuable company for some time in 2019!
In 2016, Slack was a growing platform with 2.3 million daily active users and 675,000 paying users. At the time, Slack had already received more than 8 acquisition offers.
Executive VP at Microsoft, Qi Lu, lead an effort to buy slack to eliminate any threat it could have on Microsoft’s aspirations to lead the enterprise collaboration services space. Lu considered acquiring Slack for as much as $8 billion, over 3X its valuation during its latest funding round at the time!
Microsoft and other industry giants were having a hard time competing with Slack. Its simple onboarding process combined with its integration with so many apps made it the platform of choice for many companies. It even allowed users to order from Uber and Lyft directly from its app!
