1. is
Killer App
for
the
Small Biz@luketuckerby

2. SULTAN VENTURES
Presented at Digital Market Summit | Luke Tucker | 4/26/16
#Slack for Small Businesses

3. SULTANVENTURES
I work with startups at Sultan Ventures and XLR8UH
@luketuckerluketucker.com
Hi! I’m Luke

4. SULTANVENTURES
Startups
Early Stage Ventures
Idea through Series A
Sector Agnostic
Biotech
Medical Devices
Drug Development
Health Care
Clean Tech
Digital / IT
Education
Business Plan Competitions
Judges
Mentors
Workshops
Lean Launchpad
Methodology
Financial Modeling
Misc. Biz Dev
Startup Weekend
Sponsor
Judges
Mentors
Funds
Sultan Ventures
Idea through Seed
investments
UPSIDE Fund
Seed stage venture fund for
UH innovation investments
up to $750,000
XLR8UH
A Proof of Concept
Commercialization center
for Pre-Seed Investments
up to $175,000
More than $17M raised in the last 5 years in Hawaii
@sultanventures #ReinventVC

5. Agenda
SULTANVENTURES
• Business Communication: What’s Broken
• What is Slack
• Why it’s so popular
• Understanding and Optimizing Workflows
• How to setup Slack for your business
• Best Practices to Remember
• Using Slack for External, Customer Facing dialogues
• Bonus: Why You should join Slack communities!

6. 19901980 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
The Way Businesses Communicate Has Evolved
?
SULTANVENTURES

7. 19901980 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
Slack is the next evolution of business
communication tools
SULTANVENTURES

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11. What is Slack and What Does it Do?
SULTANVENTURES

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At its heart, Slack is an instant messaging and
collaboration system on steroids

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Collaboration: more contextual, transparent, and efficient.
Search: Everything is searchable. You can integrate many
apps.
Mobile: Real-time, topic-specific, cross-platform business
data.
Three Main Things Slack Does REALLY Well

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17. Search Function FTW!

18. Mobile
Slack Has Apps for every device
DesktopTablet

19. Mark Sullivan,
CallRail
Instant, integrated communication is the future of teamwork.

20. Things I Love
Things I
DON’T Love
Puppies
My Wife
Dark Chocolate
Meetings Email
Searching for Documents

21. Slack gives me more time to spend on things I
care about, not chasing down emails.

22. https://slack.com/results

23. https://slack.com/results

24. https://slack.com/results

25. https://slack.com/results

26. https://slack.com/results

27. Benedict Evans
Andreessen Horowitz
“Slack is a person-to-person messaging platform that's more than
messaging - through third-party integrations, it acts as a common
aggregation layer for every other system in an enterprise. All the
messages, updates and notifications from the dozens of other systems in a
company can be inserted into the relevant team or project chat channels,
and then be scanned through or searched later on. Slack is effectively a
networked file manager, but instead of folders full of Photoshop, Word or
Excel files you have links to Google Docs, SAP or Salesforce, all
surrounded by the relevant context and team conversation.”

28. Workflow
It’s all about that….

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Optimizing your workflow saves time and money.

30. In order to optimize internal team communication and
knowledge transfer, set up contextually relevant
channels and have a “one-stop shop” for your team’s
communication.

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Basically, use

32. Here’s a few examples of how teams use Slack.

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34. Different startups / topics
get own channel
Majority of our core team
chat is here.
Generally, we are in slack ALL day.
Setup specific channels
for bots

35. Bot integrations help us stay on top of things
New Intern Task input
into Trello Board
Zapier IFTT recipe for
Sending Task
to #intern-tasks channel

38. Charles Duhigg
Author of Smarter Faster Better
Slack is good because it’s not an inbox. They don’t
feel like they go there and have to do something.
People use email for their to do list, which is bad.

40. SULTANVENTURES
How Hobnob uses slack
• Integrations, integrations, integrations
• Created their own custom bot to assist with repeat tasks
that empowers non-engineers to communicate with the
database and pull reports
• Utilize the call feature often to communicate with
remote team members
• Hobnob is on the paid plan

41. Mark Quezada
CoFounder and CTO, Hobnob
Slack is the defecto repository of all things related to
our business.

42. Joel Gascoigne
CEO, Buffer
Slack is our office.

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How to Setup Your Slack Group

44. Start Here

45. Check out these awesome Guides!

46. Email Me For One-on-One Consulting!
I’m Happy to Help!…
luke@sultanventures.com

47. SULTANVENTURES
• Have a “#humor” or “#watercooler” channel for silly / goofy stuff
• Use Slackbot for personal data repository - basically like Evernote
but specific to your biz (thanks Mark Quezada for this tip!)
• Put a descriptor term in front of key posts that’s a similar taxonomy
to create value in search queries
• Don’t forget about the “archive” function (no need to keep old /
unused channels in your stream)
• Cutting the noise: Leaving channels you don’t need to be in, Muting
channels, setting yourself to “away” when you need to focus
Some Best Practices

48. SULTANVENTURES
Slack for Building Community and Customer Service

50. - Invite to join when dropping in… builds community

51. Utilizes Slack for
Customer Support Help

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I personally have been able to use Slack communities to
build a brand, meet cool people, and get noticed by top
influencers!
Bonus! Use Slack for Personal Branding!
Zoe Noah Amir Sam

53. Find your community at:
http://www.slacklist.info/

54. Mahalo!
SULTANVENTURES
To download this presentation go to:
http://sultanventures.com/news/what-is-slack-and-why-it-is-so-important-for-your-business