It sounds like you may have found your niche with existing Slack customers and if that works for you that’s great.
I don’t agree that this is a “strength”, because it limits the growth potential of the product while coupling critical functions to the whims of a 3rd party vendor. I absolutely do see how it’s beneficial for you in this early stage because it allows you to deliver a straight-forward experience for this particular user base (Slack customers) without building your own UIs. But that position of strength is fundamentally limited to that specific group. Move beyond it, and not only would using the product now require the adoption of a non-standard chat tool, but the core function of your product is completely orthogonal to chat making the Slack requirement also appear really odd. That group won’t have muscle memory for Slack or know all of its key features. That group will not benefit from any of the familiarity your current customers find compelling.
And back when I was a Slack customer (I actually like Slack and prefer it to the alternatives) I’d still be raising concerns because of the tight coupling with Slack features.
Not trying to just criticize your decisions here, but trying to elaborate on an outsider’s perspective as someone who has been in the position to bring this kind of product on board at large companies, and as someone who has dealt with the pitfalls of building products that have 3rd party integrations.
Best of luck to you on all of this and it’s good to hear there’s an alternative on the roadmap.
I don’t agree that this is a “strength”, because it limits the growth potential of the product while coupling critical functions to the whims of a 3rd party vendor. I absolutely do see how it’s beneficial for you in this early stage because it allows you to deliver a straight-forward experience for this particular user base (Slack customers) without building your own UIs. But that position of strength is fundamentally limited to that specific group. Move beyond it, and not only would using the product now require the adoption of a non-standard chat tool, but the core function of your product is completely orthogonal to chat making the Slack requirement also appear really odd. That group won’t have muscle memory for Slack or know all of its key features. That group will not benefit from any of the familiarity your current customers find compelling.
And back when I was a Slack customer (I actually like Slack and prefer it to the alternatives) I’d still be raising concerns because of the tight coupling with Slack features.
Not trying to just criticize your decisions here, but trying to elaborate on an outsider’s perspective as someone who has been in the position to bring this kind of product on board at large companies, and as someone who has dealt with the pitfalls of building products that have 3rd party integrations.
Best of luck to you on all of this and it’s good to hear there’s an alternative on the roadmap.