Article · About 10 min read

We Don't Sell Saddles Here memo from Slack

Stewart Butterfield · alexanderjarvis.com Free Intermediate

The full verbatim memo, dated 31 July 2013 and sent two weeks before the preview release. Read the primary text rather than the summaries, because the section headings are the argument.

  • This reproduces Butterfield's memo verbatim, sent to Slack staff on 31 July 2013, two weeks before the preview release.
  • The line the memo turns on: we have built something genuinely useful, but customers have no idea they want it.
  • What Slack sells is organizational transformation, not a chat product.
  • The best way to find product-market fit is to define your own market.
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The question it answers

  1. What did Slack's "We don't sell saddles here" memo actually change about how they sold?

Read with it

  1. The memo itself, published by Butterfield. Read the primary source rather than the hundred posts summarising it, because the... Medium Essay · Short read We Don't Sell Saddles Here Stewart Butterfield
  2. The founders describe coining inbound marketing as an old game versus new game framing, then choosing SMB over enterprise to... Crucible Moments Podcast · 40 min HubSpot: An Underdog Helps Invent Modern Marketing, and Then Takes on Goliath Sequoia Capital with Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
  3. Video · Reading of the memo The Founders' List: Slack's Internal Memo 'We Don't Sell Saddles Here' (Famous Memos) Stewart Butterfield
  4. Video · Podcast episode 76. How Slack is Generating $600MM With a Bottom-Up Approach w/ Kevin Egan at Slack Kevin Egan
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