Slack Launches $80 Million Fund to Invest in Third-Party Developers

Slack has launched a fund to boost startups building apps for its platform.

The $80 million Slack Fund was co-launched with several venture capital firms, including Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.

Investments will be targeted at third-party apps which bolster the functionality of Slack.

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield says investments will be mde at the seed-stage level, and says a return on investment isn’t the top priority.

Slack, which has a directory with 150 third-party apps already, has so far invested in Howdy, a startup that builds Slack bots and Awesome, which summarizes a user’s activity within Slack.

Valued at $3 billion, Slack has more than 1.25 million active users.