Pushing boundaries, embracing the unknown, and taking risks are all part of daily life at Writer. Co-founder and CEO May Habib describes the enterprise generative AI platform as “an easy way for folks who don’t know how to code to build really powerful agents using AI.” More than just a large language model (LLM), Writer integrates essential tools — guardrails for safety, retrieval for enhanced knowledge, and orchestration for seamless execution — within a single, cohesive package. Recently valued at $1.9 billion, Writer empowers businesses to harness AI with confidence, ensuring efficiency, accuracy, and control at every step.
Habib’s role evolves every few months, which means the only constant is change — and Slack. “We were built on Slack,” said Habib. “During each phase of growth, it’s been essential to tap into Slack for whatever Writer needs. Our next challenge is scale: We’re expected to double our team again this year.”
Embodying Writer’s values of connect, challenge, and own, teams across the company use Slack to foster meaningful internal and external relationships, embrace diverse perspectives and high standards, and champion their work with bold, long-term thinking. “With Slack, everything we need to get our jobs done is at our fingertips,” said Head of Sales Partnerships Jillian Freidus. “The AI market moves fast, and to stay ahead, we need to outpace it. Slack provides a seamless collaborative work operating system that enables us to do just that.”
“Slack is a true catalyst for the innovation and pace of change at Writer.”
Where communication, collaboration, and coordination happens
For Writer’s distributed workforce, Slack seamlessly connects employees across time zones and departments, unifying people, processes, culture, apps, and agents. “Slack is our command center: It’s where we find meeting details, documentation, and all the context we need in one place,” said Chief Strategy Officer Kevin Chung. “It’s where I start and end my day, and where we run our business.”
Every project and plan is documented in a Slack channel, while prospects and customers go into Salesforce channels — a channel that brings CRM data from Salesforce records right into Slack. Chung, who plays a major role in customer prospecting, highlights how multiple departments collaborate in these channels to identify opportunities, strategize, and refine decks. “Slack is our work operating system,” he said. “It keeps us organized so everybody knows exactly what’s going on at any point in time.”
Slack is indispensable to Writer’s daily operations, moving work forward at every turn. Sales demo collateral — once scattered across tools — is now organized in Slack lists, saving reps up to 45 minutes per demo. Recently, when a rep missed a demo, another rep seamlessly stepped in with just 60 minutes to prepare. “In a fast-moving sales org like Writer, every second counts,” said Justin Driesse, Manager, Technical and Product Enablement. “I can’t imagine managing it all without Slack.”
“Slack is the hub for all the work that needs to happen, and all the intel that needs to be processed and executed on.”
Strengthening partnerships and delivering the best possible customer experience
In the dynamic realm of AI, working together with partners is critical to Writer’s growth. “One of the key features for Writer that’s allowed us to scale is Slack Connect,” said Habib. Slack Connect extends channel-based collaboration to external stakeholders, allowing everyone to learn and adapt together.
“With Slack Connect, working with partners is no longer ‘us’ and ‘them’ — we’re truly one team,” said Chung. “We want everyone to work where we work,” he said, emphasizing how Slack Connect enables 80% of their external partners to collaborate directly within their workspace. “It’s very powerful for me as a CEO to have that direct connectivity: I’m always one Slack message away from all our major partners,” said Habib.
When she’s en route to meet a customer, Habib will open the Slack app for a quick intel reminder. “I instantly see feature requests, QBR insights, POC results, and Salesforce notes — all in real time. Slack makes our company operationally rigorous like never before,” she said. They’ve also built workflows to help executives stay agile. “With 15–20 executives taking 10–15 external meetings daily, preparation is key,” said Habib. “Slack workflows ensure we’re always ready for media, keynotes, and customer meetings.”
When it comes to the AI tools Writer’s customers rely on, reliability is everything. Addressing bugs is a top priority, but this process can quickly become fragmented and slow. That’s where Slack comes in. “Everything we do centers in Slack,” said Brock Imel, Director of Customer Language Engineering. “I can create Jira tickets, view bug reports, and approve reimbursements — all directly within a Slack thread, without having to search for anything.” The team proactively tracks and addresses bugs, allowing for faster fixes and smoother service.
“The benefit of having everything centralized in Slack is that we’re often able to detect issues before our customers even report them.”
Powering speed, agility, and innovation for a visionary workforce
In the fiercely competitive world of AI, speed to market is essential. With Slack, Writer can take risks, pivot as needed, and stay aligned on priorities. “Slack is the most powerful enablement tool on the planet,” said Driesse. “It adds to the velocity that we’re able to maintain here at Writer.”
A huge factor in Writer’s success stems from its culture, which is about more than just collaboration — it’s about fostering transparency, speed, and in-the-moment communication, all while keeping the team connected. “Slack’s flexibility and range of modes of collaboration enables us to act even faster than the rate of innovation in generative AI — and that is a game-changer for Writer,” said Freidus.
With all projects, teams, and plans organized within Slack, Writer’s teams can access full context to quickly stay informed and aligned. “In the AI field, speed is everything,” says Habib. “Slack allows us to get to market faster.” Everyone relies on clips and huddles for quick, impromptu updates, and integrates essential apps like Google Calendar, Ramp, Google Drive, and Lattice directly into Slack, making it their one-stop shop for productivity and collaboration.
“Huddles stand out because you can see who’s in them, adding transparency and spontaneity,” said Habib. This extends to partners and customers, too. “Huddles make a huge difference in terms of being flexible and responsive,” said Freidus. “We can hop on to address any challenge and innovate so much faster.”
Habib sees Slack as the “front page” at Writer, where everyone has access to valuable information as it unfolds. “If I can find an answer in two seconds instead of disrupting someone for 15 minutes, it lets us spend time on real work — not the work of work,” she said. To bring the whole company along with how she makes decisions, she sends out 20-30 clips a day. “Clips allow for an instant, one-to-many flow of insights. No meetings, no scheduling — just powerful real-time knowledge sharing across the company.” For those who prefer reading over watching or listening, every clip comes with an automatic transcript.
“To keep up with the speed of innovation, we need tools that enable quick action. Slack is key to our ability to collaborate — internally, with partners, and with customers — ensuring we stay ahead of the curve.”
Building the future of AI, right from inside Slack
For Writer, building their own Slack integration wasn’t just a choice — it was a strategic move to seamlessly integrate their generative AI capabilities into the tools their customers rely on. “Building Writer for Slack in Slack was a natural decision because it aligns with what our customers need: a single tool to work in without constant context-switching,” said Chung. “Customers want the best tools in one place, which is exactly what the Writer app for Slack delivers: It brings AI seamlessly into their daily operations.”
This seamless integration lays the foundation for even more advanced AI capabilities within the platform, further enhancing its value for users. “For us, agentic AI means AI reasoning autonomously across teams, systems, and tools,” said Habib. Slack drives this vision, gathering user input and communicating AI’s actions from a central hub. “The beauty of generative and agentic AI is that they’re built and invoked through natural language. And where do we spend most of our natural language time at work? In Slack. It only makes sense that AI agents will be invoked there.”
True success, however, comes from partnerships — not just buying the next new tool. “Instead of thinking ‘build versus buy,’ we encourage customers to think ‘DIY versus partner,’” said Habib. “Partnerships drive the best outcomes, which is why our work with Slack and Salesforce is so important.”
