The California-based workplace-messaging company’s revenues rose 82 per cent to US$400 million last year, but about 40 per cent of fiscal 2019 revenue came from just 575 customers. Slack also warned investors it’s a target for nation-state hacking. (Bloomberg, Vice, Wall Street Journal)

Talking point: The relatively rare direct listing means Slack investors can sell shares without the dilution of new stock being issued. That could be good news for the company’s co-founders, Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson, who hold an atypically small amount of stock in their own company: 8.6 per cent and 3.4 per cent, respectively. Slack may not have felt pressure to dilute via a typical listing because of its significant cash on hand—it had US$841 million in cash and investments at the end of the last fiscal year. The big question now is what the company’s valuation will be. An August 2018 funding round priced the company at US$7.1 billion, but private deals in the past two months had a share price as high as US$26, which would value the company at US$16 billion.