Slack, the $3.8 billion work communication app maker, has hired its first sales chief as it continues to grow its massive user base.
On Wednesday, the company announced that it's hired Robert Frati as its first VP of Sales to lead its entire sales team.
Frati is a former Salesforce executive who's spent over a decade in the enterprise software selling space. In his most recent role, Frati was in charge of Salesforce's commercial sales and SMB market.
Slack's latest hiring shows the popular work messaging app is growing into a more mature company.
Despite Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield's earlier claims that his company's viral growth may prevent the need for a traditional sales team "forever," Slack has been expanding its enterprise sales team in recent months. Frati's hiring only reaffirms Slack's changed attitude towards sales, although it suggests the company's still at the stage of targeting smaller companies than big enterprises, given his SMB background.
"As in the beginning, organic growth remains an important driver, but Slack is exploring new channels such as paid marketing and an enterprise sales team," Slack's representative told us.
Slack has also updated its user numbers. It says it now has 3 million daily active users, up 10% from April, and 2 million concurrent users, meaning two-thirds of its active user base is on Slack at the exact same time. Slack passed 1 million concurrent users just six months ago.
It also disclosed that it now has 930,000 paid members — 130,000 more than what it had just two months ago.
Slack, launched in early 2014, has been one of the fastest growing enterprise apps ever. It raised a total of $540 million, and was valued at $3.8 billion in its latest round of funding.
