> If Hipchat was not bought by Atlassian, it will be a serious contender for Slack?
We can debate counterfactuals all day, but the potential was absolutely there. Consider:
Hipchat was purchased by Atlassian before Slack even launched. (Slack launched August 2013; Hipchat purchased March 2012.) And back in 2012 Hipchat was almost exactly what it is today: A functional chat app with searchable logs, native clients for many platforms, a somewhat clunky UI, and some persistent issues with syncing and reliability. Further, when Slack launched, it wasn't nearly as good as it is now: They've made significant improvements over the years. Back in 2013 the Hipchat/Slack race was still pretty close, and that's after Hipchat had spent the last year doing nothing.
Slack launched into an opening that Hipchat created by stagnating. It's not that Hipchat could have potentially competed with Slack; it's that Hipchat could have easily crushed Slack. Slack exists now because they built the stuff that Hipchat didn't.
