Copying that Secret Sauce: Slack’s Success and How You Can Get In

There’s a lot of opportunity for jealousy in the tech world. Great products can flounder under lackluster media attention. Great ideas can suffer at the hands of inexperienced engineers. And rounds of funding that you would sell a kidney for will go to companies that you don’t understand, or think deserving.

But every now and again, a super product arises that everyone can get behind. It’s like a supremely friendly, fun person at a party. You want to cheer them, you want to get them a beer; the whole party is kind of… better with them there. If that party is the tech community, that cool dude is Slack. Their come-up was a gracious one, and their product is brilliant. It solves a complex problem with a simple solution. Their success is both incredible and predictable. The idea itself wasn’t a new one, but the elements of its trajectory were so well planned, polished, and launched, they paved the road to multiple successes. Their techniques and strategies have been admirable. So admirable, that apps are clamouring to rub up against and get a little of that magic dust.

When you build an integration with a popular app, you naturally are hoping that it will improve your adoption. But subtly, you also hope that by emulating their style, you understand what makes them so sticky, so good. A smooth integration doesn’t just make your product shine, it imitates the qualities of the product you are trying to work with. That is what makes an integration great, and it also gives your team an interesting challenge. Can they identify the technical and marketing feel of a brand, and blend those effectively? In the process of building, do they learn things about flow and UI?

Our team just finished putting together the first iteration of a Slack bot. We’re really proud of it, and we had a ton of fun putting the project together. It was fun to dig into what makes Slack so fun to use, and see if we could emulate their sassy tone and style.

Part of our research was finding integrations that we felt did a great job. We checked all around the Internet to find the best and smoothest Slack integrations. Here are a few that really stood out for us:

Meekan

Meekan is a Slack bot that schedules perfect meetings with your team in seconds. It matches everyone’s calendars, and quickly finds common free times. We use it at Trippeo and it’s just amazing.

Speak

Speak is a fast audio, video and screen sharing slack bot for your team. It enables true “tap on the shoulder” communication. It’s as simple as clicking on a team mate’s face to talk.

Asana

We’re biased because we use and love this integration. The Asana integration alerts you when any change is made to any task you are assigned to, or following.

Notify

Notify is a Slack bot that pings you whenever your company or brand is mentioned online. You can pick from dozens of sources, like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Medium etc… it’s super handy and gets the whole team talking.

Intercom

Another one on our personal favorites list, Intercom lets us get in direct touch with our clients. But because we’re a small team trying to do a big job, we run the risk of missing a comment or a question. This integration has really helped the way that we work with our clients, because the messages appear in the place we hang out the most consistently: our Slack channels.

Imitation has always been said to be the sincerest form of flattery. I’m of the mind that imitating can teach you a lot about the stickiness and value of a product. When you imitate a winning formula, you experience some of the patterns and roadblocks that the original team would have encountered. When you get into the flow of what questions they asked themselves and how they solved problems, you’re more able to replicate that “secret sauce,” and maybe even write your own recipe.