Snack

Slack recently mentioned Snack in their blog post about new wave of Slack apps for energizing the remote work culture. The article was shared on their blog and through their newsletter.

It appears that Snack is becoming more recognized as an alternative to Donut. User surveys say that they discovered Snack either by searching for alternatives for Donut or they were suggested to try Snack by Slack support.

Less than 4 weeks after the first public launch, 250+ Slack teams have installed Snack, totalling 120k+ Slack users.

I wish I could say I've devised some clever growth strategy, but it has been growing mostly through word or mouth. However, it definitely helps that:

• It has been (and continuous to be) featured by Slack for over a week now.
• It was one of the most upvoted and commented projects in the Global COVID-19 hackathon (out of 18,000 participants).
• It is being used by amazing (and huge) Slack groups like Globant (30k+ Slack users), University of California, Monstar Lab, Giphy, Pioneer, On Deck, and others.
• There seems to be an element of general-awareness vitality that drives the traffic.

I've been coding Snack the past couple of weeks. The product has shape-shifted a ton thanks to the feedback from the early adopters (which include 23 Slack organizations, as well as Giphy, Pioneer Hackathon and On Deck communities). We are now at the point that if onboarding goes smoothly (and at least 30 people join #snack-club), we have pretty high-engagement and positive feedback.

The next step is to figure out smooth onboarding process for everyone and grow to the first 100 Slack organizations.

My professional career has been a waltz between corporate consulting, freelancing, and startups. I've seen a fair share of different team dynamics and really nothing can match the friendships and relationships you develop when working in an office. If there is ever a reason I would go back to working for a large enterprise, it would be the opportunity to meet other talented people and make friends. Unfortunately, I really cannot say the same about working remotely. Regardless of how much the company invests into virtual activities, none of my remote work experiences have had the same lasting relationships.

I firmly believe that those relationships originate from serendipitous interactions with coworkers. People working in offices have by chance interactions with like minded peers that lead to relationships and innovation. Working from home deprives of those interactions and forces us to search for them or go back to the office.

The idea with Snack is to create a virtual workspace where those serendipitous interactions with coworkers take place and develop the same relationships that people in office have.