David Sacks reveals Glue, the AI company he’s been teasing on his All In podcast

For those who use Slack at work, you’ve seemingly seen that the variety of channels you’re invited to proliferates incessantly. 

David Sacks, one quarter of the favored “All In” podcast and a famend serial entrepreneur whose previous firms embody Yammer –  an worker chat startup that offered to Microsoft for $1.2 billion in 2012 –  says he can remedy this downside. Towards that finish, he teamed up with Evan Owen, previously the VP of engineering at a collaboration app, Zinc, that ServiceMax acquired in 2019.

The 2 of them have created Glue, an worker chat app that they are saying will repair what they name “Slack channel fatigue.” Glue, which emerged from stealth on Tuesday, is designed round topic-based threads and makes use of GenAI.

Craft Ventures, the VC agency that Sacks based, incubated and funded the corporate via a number of seed rounds. Glue was born in 2021 when Sacks and Owen, then an entrepreneur-in-residence at Craft, determined they every had many concepts about enhancing office messaging, and the area was due for an replace.  

“Our view was that there’s nonetheless plenty of room for innovation,” mentioned Sacks, who’s Glue’s co-founder and chairman. “For those who speak to individuals about Slack, although it’s a very good product, they really feel like channels are actually noisy, and it’s quite a bit to maintain up with.”

On Slack, discussions occur in particular channels. This implies anybody who needs to speak with a bunch, even for a brief message, wants to hitch that channel. Nonetheless, since most individuals keep subscribed to channels they hardly ever use, it will possibly really feel like everybody within the firm is on each single channel, which might be overwhelming.

Glue arranges all communication into threads. A person or a workforce can begin a thread, and different groups and even Glue’s AI bot might be invited to hitch it. 

In some ways, Glue’s interface seems to be much like Slack’s, however the whole lot a person sees on their display screen is meant particularly for them. 

“You possibly can create a thread for a particular quick job,” mentioned Owen, Glue’s co-founder and CEO. “It’s an ephemeral dialog, and if you’re achieved with it, it will possibly go away.” 

An worker can archive the dialog, and if they’re talked about once more, the chat will pop up once more, he mentioned. 

Whereas organizing work messaging in threads as an alternative of channels might really feel like a throw-back resolution to lowering communication litter, Sacks mentioned he’s positive that that is one thing Slack and its fundamental various, Microsoft Groups, can’t simply replicate. 

“To be able to copy what we’ve achieved, they must fully re-architect the best way the entire product works,” he mentioned.

If this sounds vaguely acquainted, that may very well be as a result of Yammer (which has kind of morphed right into a product referred to as Microsoft Viva, though Microsoft Groups additionally permits staff to speak, along with to do workforce video calls), was a thread-based chat as effectively. Yammer seemed much like Fb.

However Glue gave Sacks and Owen an opportunity to recreate thread-based chats within the age of AI. So, like most startups now, Glue is incorporating AI into its product. 

“We made AI right into a digital worker in your workforce who can enter the chat at any time,” Sacks mentioned. 

Sacks believes that AI inside an organization’s inner communication platform might be very highly effective.

“Typically you’ll begin a chat together with your coworkers after which understand you want AI to leap in and reply a query. So, you need your AI chat to be in the identical place as your human chat,” he mentioned. “It doesn’t make sense to ship customers out some other place to speak with the AI after which have their type of human chats on another app.”

Whereas Glue AI’s function will evolve as underlying LLMs enhance, Sacks mentioned there are already some issues the bot can do with a sure degree of precision. Glue AI can recommend matter names for every thread, summarize conversations throughout a span of time, and work out sure details about staff primarily based on their chat historical past, equivalent to what’s their function throughout the firm. 

In fact, AI embedded into the company chat app isn’t distinctive to Glue. Slack additionally has an built-in AI, and naturally Microsoft has embedded its CoPilot AI into lots of its apps together with Microsoft Groups.

Craft Ventures has been utilizing Glue internally for a 12 months, and beginning Tuesday the product can be provided to different firms.

After a three-month trial interval, Glue will cost $7 per worker a month, which Sacks mentioned is barely lower than Slack’s pricing for a fundamental package deal.

Owen added that it’s a “killer deal” as a result of Slack expenses between $15 to $18 to incorporate SlackGPT, the AI chatbot that Slack’s proprietor Salesforce introduced a 12 months in the past.  

Glue shouldn’t be the primary startup Sacks incubated in Craft Ventures. In the previous few years, Craft began Callin, a social podcasting app that later offered to Rumble for lower than the corporate raised in funding, Axios reported. Final 12 months, the enterprise agency launched SaaSGrid, a startup that retains observe of SaaS metrics. 

Sacks hinted that Glue could also be prepared to lift its first exterior funding shortly after unveiling of the app.

“We wish to launch and present individuals how superior the product is,” Sacks mentioned. “When you’ve got an incredible product within the AI area, you may elevate a Sequence An immediate.”

As for what valuation Craft hopes the corporate will entice, he mentioned, “You by no means actually know the place the valuation goes to land till you’ve got a course of.”

He’s been teasing the approaching of his new AI firm on “All In,” which he co-hosts with fellow buyers Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Friedberg, “Besties have been clamoring to speculate [in this],” he mentioned, referring to his All In co-hosts.

On condition that he’s positioning Glue as an AI firm, and possibly his besties do desire a piece, it’s clear he’s hoping for a excessive valuation.