Monday Memo

A Byte of Knowledge

Remember when you were a kid and your parents said "don't touch that"?

What was the FIRST thing you wanted to do?

Touch it.

Because when something is labeled as "restricted"... "members only"... or "not for everyone"...

It instantly becomes 10X more attractive.

Look at what happened with ChatGPT.

When it first launched, you needed a special invite.

And what happened?

Everyone and their mother was desperate to get their hands on it.

Same exact product... just harder to access.

The lesson?

Sell something that "they don't want you to know about."

A "loophole" that "might get shut down any minute."

A system that's "too powerful for the average person."

This is NOT about being dishonest.

It's about understanding how people realistically make buying decisions.

Use it - but only if it makes sense to leverage for your offer.

🚀 Discover the 27 ‘Plug-and-Play’ AI Prompts Every Marketer Needs 

Something to Ponder

We Asked – AI Answered

Our Question: 

"Give me a mind-blowing example of a business successfully pivoting there business model to a completely different one."

AI's Answer:

In 2009, Stewart Butterfield—who previously co-founded Flickr—started Tiny Speck, a company developing an online multiplayer game called Glitch. The game failed commercially and shut down in 2012.

But something unexpected emerged: the internal tool Tiny Speck built to communicate and collaborate was far more valuable than the game itself. That tool became Slack.

The 3 Key Factors That Made This Extreme Pivot Possible

1. Recognizing and Monetizing an Accidental Product-Market Fit

Many failed startups have interesting internal tools, but few recognize when one of those tools is the real opportunity. Here’s how Slack’s team did it:

• They identified an unmet need:
  • Email was failing for team collaboration. Companies like Atlassian and Microsoft had tools, but none focused purely on real-time team messaging with a seamless UX.
  • Internal communication at Tiny Speck was frictionless. Employees could instantly share updates and files—without drowning in email threads.
• They validated demand before building Slack as a standalone product:
  • Instead of jumping blindly, Butterfield and his team interviewed dozens of businesses about their internal communication struggles.
  • They ran a private beta with 45 teams before officially launching.

Consumer Psychology Insight:

This follows the "Jobs-to-Be-Done" framework (Clayton Christensen, Harvard). People don’t buy products; they “hire” them to solve problems. Slack wasn’t competing with other messaging tools—it was replacing the pain of fragmented communication.

2. Flawless Execution of a Bottom-Up, Product-Led Growth Strategy

Unlike most enterprise SaaS products that require long sales cycles, Slack leveraged viral adoption within teams to expand into companies.

• Slack’s Viral Loop:
  • Employees within a company would try Slack.
  • They’d invite colleagues, who invited others.
  • Eventually, IT departments had to formally adopt Slack because it was already ingrained in the workflow.
• Deliberate UX Differentiation:
  • Simple, frictionless onboarding → No IT approval needed.
  • Emoji & playful UI → Different from “boring” corporate tools.
  • Powerful integrations → Slack became the central hub for work apps (Google Drive, Asana, Trello).

Business Strategy Insight:

Slack mastered bottom-up adoption, a model later replicated by Notion, Zoom, and Figma. Instead of selling to executives first, they empowered end users, who organically drove company-wide adoption.

3. Perfect Timing: Riding the Remote Work & SaaS Wave

Slack launched in 2013—right when remote work and cloud-based software were about to explode.

• Shift to SaaS & cloud collaboration:
  • Dropbox, Google Docs, and Trello were changing how teams worked.
  • Enterprises were ditching on-premise software (Microsoft Exchange) in favor of flexible, cloud-based tools.
• Slack as an anti-email movement:
  • Companies were already frustrated with email overload (McKinsey reported that workers spent 28% of their day reading/responding to emails).
  • Slack positioned itself as the "email killer," making team conversations more fluid and searchable.

Market Insight:

Slack’s rise coincided with the decline of email-based work communication and the rise of remote work—accelerating adoption in tech companies, then across industries.

Thanks for reading the Monday Memo.

Until next time!

The AI Marketers

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