Glue: The New Slack Killer with David Sacks and Evan Owen | E1955

David Sacks and Evan Owen join Jason to show us newly launched Glue. (00:00:00)

• Glue combines AI with chat experience, allowing employees to have both AI and human chats in one place.
• As AI becomes more powerful, it will be able to provide help without being prompted, acting like a virtual teammate.
• The quality of AI answers needs to be good enough to avoid becoming a pest.
• Glue aims to be the hub between humans, apps, and AI.
• Squarespace: Turn your idea into a new website with a free trial. Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase.
• LinkedIn jobs: Post your first job for free. Terms and conditions apply.
• .te domains: Don't miss the jam session with JCal contest for a chance to join Jason on air to showcase your startup.
• David Sacks and Evan Owen are the co-founders of Glue, a new product aimed at replacing Slack.
• Glue aims to be a Slack killer by providing a more efficient and effective way for employees to communicate and collaborate.
• Glue integrates AI into the chat experience, allowing employees to have both AI and human chats in one place.
• As AI becomes more powerful, it will be able to provide help without being prompted, acting like a virtual teammate.

David Sacks answers, “Why build another product?”. (00:02:42)

• David Sacks, a venture capitalist and podcast co-host, explains his motivation for building another product despite the challenges of starting a new company.
• He compares his experience to Jason Calacanis's extensive podcasting, which he enjoys but also acknowledges the desire to explore new ideas and innovations.
• Sacks mentions his previous venture, Yammer, which started as a family social network but pivoted to a corporate social network, pioneering intra-company feed-based collaboration.
• He expresses his belief that there are still unexplored ideas and opportunities in the collaboration space, particularly with the rise of chat-based communication and the advent of AI.
• Sacks and Evan Owen, who was the head of engineering at Zinc (a messaging company acquired by ServiceMax), came together to work on a new project that they have been quietly developing.
• David Sacks and Evan Owen introduce Glue, their new product aimed at revolutionizing workplace communication.
• They describe Glue as a "Slack killer," emphasizing its potential to replace Slack as the dominant collaboration tool in the market.
• Glue offers several key features that differentiate it from Slack, including:
  • Threads: Glue introduces a new paradigm called "threads," which allows for more organized and focused discussions within teams.
  • AI-powered search: Glue utilizes AI to enhance search capabilities, making it easier for users to find relevant information and conversations.
  • Customization: Glue provides extensive customization options, enabling teams to tailor the tool to their specific needs and preferences.
  • Security and compliance: Glue prioritizes security and compliance, ensuring that sensitive data is protected and that the tool meets regulatory requirements.
• Sacks and Owen express their excitement about Glue's potential to transform workplace communication and collaboration, offering a more efficient, intuitive, and secure platform for teams.

Evan jumps into a demo of Glue. (00:04:38)

• Glue is a team chat app designed to address channel fatigue in platforms like Slack.
• It prioritizes threads as the primary unit of conversation, allowing users to add multiple recipients and groups to a thread.
• Threads can be shared between groups and archived when no longer relevant.
• Glue features a unified inbox for all threads, group chats, and direct messages, simplifying conversation management.
• The feed feature provides a comprehensive view of all organizational activities.
• Glue prioritizes messages based on recent updates, facilitating focus on active discussions.
• It offers "recent" and "unread" sorting options for customizable message views.
• Glue is regarded as an efficient communication tool, particularly suitable for startups.

Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain (00:09:37)

• Squarespace is constantly evolving and adding new features, including AI-powered website building with Squarespace Blueprint AI.
• Blueprint AI uses guided design to create custom websites based on your business needs.
• Squarespace Blueprint AI offers over a billion design combinations and streamlines the website-building process.
• The AI-powered tool helps entrepreneurs and businesses create unique online presences.

Popular data sources users are incorporating into Glue. (00:12:15)

• HubSpot Sales is the most popular data source users want to add to Glue.
• Google Drive is also commonly integrated.
• Project management tools, GitHub, and other developer tools are also popular integrations.
• Glue AI aims to provide connections and pull in information from various tools used by different teams within an organization.
• Glue AI has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with AI in the workplace.
• The vision is to integrate AI directly into the workspace as a teammate with access to all conversations and information within Glue.
• Glue AI can learn and benefit from all the information in one place, including external integrations and attachments.
• Glue AI can provide valuable insights and overviews of team members' work and projects.
• It can also identify experts within the organization based on their conversations and interactions.

Digging deeper on the AI of Glue and when it will be able to be proactive in its participation. (00:14:14)

• Glue is an AI-powered chat tool that integrates with enterprise chat apps to provide real-time assistance and information to employees.
• It analyzes chat history, identifies relevant expertise within the organization, and can proactively participate in conversations, offer suggestions, and provide helpful information without being prompted.
• Glue can be customized to suit different teams and roles, and it integrates with various business applications and systems to access relevant data and provide more valuable insights.
• The speaker, Claude, notes that different language models perform differently and that Glue automatically selects the best model based on the context of the question.

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• LinkedIn Jobs is a free tool that helps businesses find qualified professionals for their team.
• LinkedIn has over a billion members in more than 200 countries, making it the best place to get eyeballs on job postings.
• LinkedIn's AI and machine learning algorithms help businesses find candidates who are not actively searching for a job.
• 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites, so businesses that are not using LinkedIn are missing out on a large pool of potential candidates.
• 86% of small businesses that use LinkedIn Jobs get a qualified candidate within 24 hours.

Glue’s strategy on converting users from tools like slack in this competitive landscape. (00:21:07)

• Glue, a new AI-powered collaboration tool designed to replace Slack, offers a Slack import feature to seamlessly migrate chat history and channel memberships.
• Importing Slack data provides historical context for decision-making and corporate development, as discussions and deal memos are stored in Slack.
• Glue's onboarding process, inspired by Superhuman, involves a waitlist and personalized onboarding calls to ensure a smooth user experience and prevent churn.
• The onboarding process aims to ensure users are a good fit for the product, have the necessary data, co-workers, and connected apps, and understand how to use Glue effectively.

Glue’s approach to pricing. (00:27:18)

• Glue's pricing model is $7 per user per month after a free trial period.
• The free trial period is currently three months but will be reduced to one month in the future.
• Glue's pricing is slightly underpriced compared to Slack.
• There will be a separate plan for Enterprises that want to scale Glue usage.
• Glue includes some AI usage with every seat, and the costs are coming down quickly enough to make this feasible.
• Users can also plug in their own API key from OpenAI or Anthropic to lift usage limits.
• Glue wants to make everything work out of the box for the base price, while Slack GPT requires an Enterprise Slack plan and can be hundreds of dollars per user per month.
• Glue will allow users to use any LLM model they want by providing an API key, with some basic amount of free usage included in the basic plan.

Dot Tech Domains - Don’t miss our “Jam with JCal” contest. (00:30:16)

• Apply for a chance to have a mentorship session with Jason Calacanis and get your startup featured on This Week in Startups.
• Must have less than $2 million in funding and an awesome .tech domain name.
• Apply at jamwithjcal.tech.

Training models and the heated subject of privacy and security. (00:31:45)

• Glue AI does not use company data to train its models.
• Model training is done by OpenAI and Anthropic.
• Glue AI optimizes queries to provide high-quality answers without the need for company data.
• Potential future use of AI models could involve studying roles in organizations for automation purposes.
• Glue AI leverages advancements in foundation models without competing with them.
• Glue AI can provide insights such as expertise, work priorities, and employee sentiment within a company.
• Even with access to ChatGPT 40, these results cannot be obtained directly from ChatGPT due to the lack of context.

How building a company now, fourteen years after Yammer, has been different for Sacks. (00:34:12)

• The number of resources, pace, and product velocity have all increased significantly in the last 14 years.
• Glue currently has a small R&D team of eight people, but they plan to scale up hiring across the board as they go to market.
• The team has been working on Glue for a long time to ensure that the launch version meets the high expectations of consumers in the collaboration space.
• Glue has been in development for a while to ensure it meets the high expectations of consumers in the collaboration space.
• The team did not want to release an MVP that was embarrassing, as the bar is high for collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
• Consumers expect mature and polished software, so Glue has been refined and tinkered with to get it exactly right.

Diving into the topic of building products with remote vs in-person teams. (00:36:47)

• In-person teams provide infectious energy, focused communication, and quick problem-solving, while remote teams offer flexibility and access to global talent but lack spontaneous interactions.
• A hybrid model combining both in-person and remote work can be effective, but a fully atomized model with everyone working from different locations can be challenging to manage.
• Central offices can foster collaboration and information sharing for teams like product, sales, and service.
• Remote work suits roles requiring specialized skills or employees in low-cost areas, but trade-offs and effective management strategies must be considered.
• The apprenticeship model is more effective for entry-level employees needing mentorship and hands-on experience, while remote work suits senior-level employees with experience and discipline.
• Clustering employees in hubs or offices promotes collaboration, energy, and culture, which are crucial for a company's success.
• Offering remote work as a benefit attracts experienced talent but should not be seen as a direct benefit to the company.
• Companies must consider the varying needs of entry-level and experienced employees when determining remote work policies.