With the use of workplace productivity software steadily on the rise, ClickUp announced last week (April 26) that it has acquired Slapdash, a small but mighty SaaS firm with five employees working remotely from San Francisco, Toronto and London.
Financial terms surrounding the deal were not disclosed.
Slapdash, which specializes in unified searches that allow its users to connect more than 40 different applications, was co-founded by Ivan Kanevski in 2019, the same year ClickUp moved its headquarters from the Silicon Valley to San Diego.
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In March 2021, Slapdash announced that it raised $3.7 million in seed funding from investors including S28 Capital, Quiet Capital, Quarry Ventures, UP2398 and Twenty Two Ventures. Angels participatiung in that round also included  co-founders at Patreon, Docker and Zynga.
ClickUp founder and CEO Zeb Evans said that Slapdash has a unique command center that gives users control over their workspace like never before. The company says its services help users “work at the speed of thought.”
Searching Multiple Platforms
Slapdash’s format allows users to search across multiple platforms all at once from one central location. Once installed, a command line widget can be pulled up through a keyboard shortcut. Users are able to search through dozens of apps through the command line and also create folders of files and actions inside either a desktop app or through a keyboard shortcut.
“The superior speed of the underlying tech returns search results instantly with sophisticated relevancy, so users always have the most pertinent company knowledge available at their fingertips,” Evans said.
Kanevski explained further how Slapdash users have been able to connect the applications they already use “do new things” under its umbrella.
“Right now people now use things like Google Drive, Dropbox,” Kanevski said. “You can connect them to Slapdash and we will give you one way to search across all these applications, which today is impossible. In some sense we kind of complement what ClickUp is doing. ClickUp is building these amazing experiences to solve problems, so now ClickUp can have a broader scope, bring in other applications into one unified world.”
ClickUp was founded by Evans in 2017 and now has more than 800 employees. Last October ClickUp closed a Series C round that raised $400 million and allowed the company to reach a $4 billion valuation.
Earlier this year, ClickUp ran its first-ever Super Bowl commercial. Kanevski said his team at Slapdash is excited about moving to a larger playing field, too.
“It’s great to go from a tiny team to a formidable company,” Kanevski said. “It gives us new leverage and we’re excited what we can unlock with the other.
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“A lot of great things are built by small teams. I’m very proud of what we’ve built as a small team,” he added. “We invented new things, we invented new technology, we invented a new way to interface with this technology.”
Similar Missions
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Shailesh Kumar, senior vice president of engineering and head of technology at ClickUp, said early on in discussions last year, it was easy to see that the two companies matched up well.
“One of the core beliefs that we have is today’s (software) ecosystem is very fragmented, so bringing all the applications to one platform will help you save time and that is the power of ClickUp,” Kumar said.
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“As we embarked on this journey, we met Ivan and the Slapdash team and they have a very similar mission about helping people save time,” Kumar added. “They have a unique technology, a unique product and amazing people. And our mission was very aligned, their technology was very complementary. The product was very complementary to our product and the mission was completely aligned, and that’s how we went about the situation.”
“What Slapdash does is something that is very powerful to us, the global search across different application is something that is very unique in the market and the industry,” Kumar said. “It’s an amazing product.”
Adding Slapdash helps position ClickUp for a future as a publicly traded company. Kumar said that Evans has stated that ClickUp’s goal is to go public “at the right time.”
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In the meantime, Kumar said ClickUp is working to phase in Slapdash into its model, and hopes to have everything integrated this year.
Slapdash employees will be able to help ClickUp in other areas with their expertise and skill set, said Kumar, who called the company “a great culture fit.”
Like the 60 percent of ClickUp personnel that do not work at ClickUp offices, the five Slapdash employees will also continue to work remotely.
“Everybody is super enthused about this,” Kanevski said.
ClickUp
FOUNDED: 2017
CEO: Zeb Evans
HEADQUARTERS: 10th Avenue in East Village
BUSINESS: SaaS management platform custom tailored to individual projects and teams
VALUATION: $4 billion
USER BASE: 800,000 teams worldwide
EMPLOYEES: 800+
WEBSITE:Â www.clickup.com
NOTABLE: 40 percent of ClickUp’s client base is from outside the United States
