Slack
Slack founder CEO Stewart Butterfield
- Slack, the workplace messaging app, is about to go public in a multi-billion IPO.
- Some of the company's early investors have stakes worth billions, and many employees have shares worth millions.
- Here are the people and investors who stand to make the most.
Slack has released its SEC paperwork to become a public company giving us our first glimpse at its financials and top investors.
As is typical these days, Slack is using a two-tier structure where it will sell Class A shares to the public, with each of those shares offering one vote per share; and it will have Class B shares that come with 10 votes per share.
But Slack's power structure has a twist. Normally the super-voting shares are held by founders as a way to keep tight fisted control after their company goes public. In Slack's case, all of its major shareholders will get the Class B shares that provide 10-votes-per share stock, its current paperwork shows. This includes the company's founders, as well as the major investors, board members at the companies executives (12 executives in all, the paperwork says).
All of those Class B stockholders will do well if the IPO goes well.
We don't know exactly how much money these shareholders stand to make because Slack has not yet priced its Class A shares. We also don't know if the Class B shares will be valued higher/differently. But, we do know that some employees have been allowed to sell their stock on the private, secondary market ahead of the IPO at $28 a share, valuing the company at $17 billion, CNBC reports.
So, just for fun, we used the $28/share price to calculate the value of the stakes owned by its major shareholders. (We'll update these numbers after Slack officially announces the price of its shares.)
With all those caveats, here are the people and investors getting rich from Slack's huge IPO: