(2025-06-27) Slack Declares War

Evan Armstrong: Slack.com Declares War. Sometimes though, when there are billions, maybe trillions on the line, there is no choice but to attack directly. The modus operandi is win at all costs.

*time is now in B2B software. Violence is nigh and Slack just struck first.

“Slack, an instant-messaging service popular with businesses, recently blocked other software firms from searching or storing Slack messages even if their customers permit them to do so, according to a public disclosure from Slack’s owner, Salesforce.com.*

it means that Slack owner Salesforce is trying to own all of your data

As with everything else these days, this is about AI.

All of your applications will be doing this soon, whether it’s your favorite social media site or Microsoft Word

Every company’s ideal customer is a rich ding-dong who gives you more money forever. These people are in tragically short supply. So, companies are forced to find other ways to make you pay more money for longer periods

In good, competitive markets, companies do so by providing more value than what they charge. In software, that only sorta happens. Companies get customers to stick around by making it really, really, really painful to swap to another provider. This move is called, in industry parlance, becoming a “system of record.”

AI changes this

how information is stored at a company. To keep it simple, there are four sources of data in a company:...

They all kinda bleed into each other. However, splitting them up is useful because only the first two were easily accessible before LLMs.

Because LLMs are remarkably good at understanding the written word and spreadsheets, productivity apps are suddenly searchable.

Combine all of that and a connected chatbot could answer any question that you have about the company you work for.

Slack still holds the most important data about its customers. Why are they panicking?
The answer is simple: AI can generate, not just query.

These chatbots have a fourfold competitive threat

They can generate new applications, productivity documents, and databases.

Until now, chatbots have been able to see (and potentially copy) any data contained within a system of record. It can access your customer data and also export it if it wants to.

Models can potentially automate workflows that workers previously performed in specific SaaS apps. Instead of logging into Salesforce to change a customer’s address, you’ll just tell your chatbot to do it.

It’s still a very real fear that all B2B SaaS are grappling with. From Slack’s point of view, it is better to nip this in the bud and shut down all data access before enterprise chatbots become the only category that matters

It's why I imagine companies will greatly limit the APIs and MCPs that LLMs use to connect to their platforms

The next five years will be a furious storm of acquisitions, investments, and consolidation up and down the stack, where companies will be rapidly trying to corner key sources of data and workflows before an AI provider gets to it first. Your application environment will be totally different.