Slack vs Signal vs Wire: How to Spot the Right Investment

For years messenger apps have been on investors’ shopping lists. While we’re still pretty much in the same investment climate today, it must be said that the software collaboration market is changing.

Of course, in addition to being main tools for digital communication, they also serve as multi-channels for marketing purposes, and sales. Their continued expansion is the reason why investment firms are adding messengers to increase the value of their portfolios.

The Growth of the Collaboration Software Market

While Microsoft Teams and Zoom are still fighting a turf war with more conventional tools for email, group scheduling and general communication, fresher solutions are paving the way.

Other cloud-based solutions for smart messaging, team collaboration, knowledge sharing, and file sharing are arriving and effectively turning the market on its head with all-new approaches. Some years ago, these new efforts on the messenger market were most notably coming from Dropbox, Slack and other solutions for communication.

For the past few years, the global market revenues from collaboration software are seeing a steady increase (from around $7bn in 2015 to almost $16bn in 2020). In fact, market revenue growth for collaboration software is predicted to continue, all the way to 17.9 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. While services and collaboration software such as MS Teams and Slack are dominating, there are other players out there competing for the messenger throne.

The Rise of Wire

Wire is an intuitive and easy-to-use messenger app, which allows you to securely communicate with others via text, photos, videos and voice messages. File sharing and video calls are also available.

One advantage it also has over apps like Slack, is that it’s open source. Slack remains closed source. However, Wire recently explained that everything that passes through the app is end-to-end encrypted. In other words, the company cannot decrypt personal conversations, and is therefore unable to expose them in any way to, say, a potential hacker.

It’s pretty much clear that the Switzerland-based company, Wire, is now a serious competitor for software solutions such as Slack. While Slack certainly has a strong head start, and is a larger company, Wire now boasts an impressive track record and has a slightly smaller, yet committed, user base (somewhere around 500–600k) that continues to grow.

Let’s kick by looking at the workforce from an employer education perspective. For starters, we can examine hiring practices of Wire, and compare those with a larger company like Slack. This way we can uncover a little bit more about university preferences of both companies when it comes to recruitment.

It’s a small, yet fast-growing company. But let’s take a slightly different view. Profits and features are one thing. Now it’s time to have a peek at the people behind the company — Osterus helps in that regard. Specifically for Wire, we can use the ‘Employment view’ in Osterus to dive into various aspects of workforce employment, such as “Previous Employment Retention in Job Titles.”

Signal

Signal is another player that’s active on the messenger market, featuring SMS, voice, video, documents and picture messages. It’s a slick app that has its own loyal community and image already established among both iOS and Android users.

Apart from being open source, the company also proudly shares that the platform is advocated by Edward Snowden. What’s more, similarly to Wire, Signal also has encryption protocols that make it the most secure messaging app on the market.

Of course, compared to other companies, Signal has its own quality and that quality goes beyond numbers, and security protocols. Let’s have a quick gander at the company workforce by utilizing the Osterus not only can we unveil intricate human capital intel, but also compare with companies on the market:

Slack Sweating, But Certainly Not Slacking

Software and collaboration applications like Slack are now looking at some resilient new competition, both from Wire and Signal. Of course, Slack is still one of the most popular communication tools utilized by companies across the globe. Utilizing Osterus we have analyzed the company’s substantial workforce; out of Slack’s main workforce, quite a solid percent were previously employed at Salesforce.

No surprises there, seeing as Salesforce completed the acquisition of Slack for $27.7 billion back in 2021. However, we can approach things from a different perspective and look more closely at different positions within the company. Specifically, a majority of employees working in software development were previously working at Google, which perhaps says something about hiring principles of Slack.

Which Companies are Investing and Why?

Well, it’s obvious. When it comes to investment in messengers, they are usually being eyed by some of the biggest players on the IT scene, including giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Atlassian, and others.

Products that dominate the market continue to generate from millions to billions in dollar revenues. Major investors are pouring more and more capital into the current tech market, and messengers are predicted to remain on their radar for the next several years.

Wait, What’s Up with WhatsApp?

Quite a considerable portion of the messenger market was conquered by WhatsApp, which is presently ranked as the most used messenger phone app in the world. Yes, and the incredibly popular app is still one of the top dogs. It’s popular in the United States, although across the pond it also has a huge audience in the EU. It’s interesting to note that 87% of people in Germany are actively using it.

So, why did we leave this one out, so to speak? Well, only in terms of comparison. After all, it has well over 100 billion messages sent daily- that’s nearly half of Internet users. Also, when it comes to monthly active users, the app now ranks just below two of the world’s hottest social networks; Facebook and YouTube. That means that in the monthly category, it’s more popular than Instagram and Tik Tok. To cut a long story short, it might not be fair pitting it against Slack, Signal or Wire in terms of user base or popularity.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean you still cannot find out more about the people behind the company? How many folks work there? What are their career paths like? How to go the distance and spot valuable Human Capital metrics?

How to Examine Messenger Companies Even Closer

Each company differs according to the workforce that powers it. But how does one approach the process of analyzing and crunching through heaps of human capital data? One of the first steps is to try Osterus, and join a wide variety of businesses that rely on AI-powered Human Capital software provided by Osterus.

You’ll be able to follow the growth of a company, as well as employment retention and more. On top of that, you’ll be able to understand the rationale behind the decision making of major companies when it comes to hiring choices.

Feel like giving Osterus a shot?

Reach out to us, as we’ll set up a demo for you.