In 2017, big competitors were gearing up and Slack was no longer the new kid on block. (19) 💰 No More Cakes: Slack Acquires HipChat (2017-2019) While the team tried to innovate by implementing group calls for 10 people and a VoiceMyBot integration for Alexa, it was too little, too late. The company stagnated and started falling behind competitors like Hangouts and Teams. The company even brought Gary Cole on board to revive the insufferable Bill Lumbergh from the 1999 classic Office Space, all in the 90s vibes. 👨‍💼 Office Space: Throughout 2015, HipChat continued building its image of a “cool” enterprise tool. By that time, HipChat had clocked 8 billion messages and ramped up its unorthodox marketing efforts. In early November, HipChat launched Connect API that opened the door for third-party developers and integrations with services like Facebook or Twitter.
Nobody could’ve suspected the role Slack would eventually play in the history of HipChat. At some point, the two companies even exchanged business courtesies by sending each other… birthday cakes. The quick growth of Slack didn’t escape HipChat’s attention. 🎂 Sweet Competition: While HipChat was one of the first business collaboration tools on the market, it had some ambitious competition. Atlassian also announced their plans to grow the HipChat team and bring over 500 new hires within a year. On January 27, 2015, HipChat continued its business expansion with HipChat Server, a self-hosted offshoot of the service for enterprise clients. By May 2014, the HipChat team doubled in size and shattered another unthinkable record of 2 billion messages. In September 2013, HipChat crossed the magical barrier of 1 billion messages sent, which was nothing to sneeze at back in the day.
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