Welcome to the Market, Stride. May the Best Chat App Win.

Along with other developers, we are thrilled that Atlassian has decided to start over with Stride. Engineering teams will now be able to use the app to actually chat and call. The catch is, we’re not planning on leaving Slack anytime soon. And as for the rest of the professional world that’s already connected and happy on Slack — we’re wondering what it would take to motivate a move to Stride.

We ran our own internal survey and asked employees to submit their favorite chat tools. Out of ten options presented, the final results were crystal clear.

Is Stride Innovative Enough (Or At All)?

Stride presents an attractive package. It’s learned from Slack, placing everything in one place, with video conferencing alongside traditional chat capabilities. It even promises screen-sharing with up to 20 teammates (an achievement that requires so much bandwidth, even Zoom and GoToMeeting don’t claim to offer it).

And Stride is more affordable than Slack — $3 per user, per month — same as HipChat.

But owning the competition requires a lot more than offering the same thing as someone else and selling it for less. Sure, that product will retain an audience of default users (like engineers who choose to use Stride, not because it’s better, but because it integrates with their other tools). But disruption requires divergence. Disruptive products have to be different, and not just for the sake of being different. Their very reason for existence must be to address core needs felt by end users.

Beyond that, truly innovative products provide value that users didn’t even know they wanted. These products do far more than just fix the things that people complain about. They create new sources of value.

What is special about your favorite chat tool?

Slack is a disruptive product because its creators focused on addressing the nuanced problems of inter-office communication. They were clear and intentional about developing a product that not only eliminates friction for users, but altogether enriches their workplace communication. By focusing on the core experience that people have when chatting, calling, and conversing with each other at work, they were able to present users with a truly alternative experience that thoroughly addressed their keenest pain points, and then some.

If Stride is anything like HipChat, its predecessor, then it will fail to own the competition. HipChat was created not to disrupt the chat app market, but as an afterthought for an extremely niche audience of engineers–a means to an end for a very specific use-case.

>> Learn how we give you the flexibility to change your mind with agile project management.

Will Stride Surprise Us?

Some signs seem to indicate that Stride is no more than a good-looking makeover of HipChat. There doesn’t appear to be much evidence that Stride was designed for the purpose of creating new value or addressing any unique challenges in the market. It doesn’t seem to facilitate frictionless transactions any better than Slack currently does. Even its interface could be described as an imitation of both Hangouts and Slack. This causes one to wonder: did Atlassian put much thought into enriching the chat app experience and creating a unique source of value with this product?

The 20-teammate screen-share promise is quite possibly Stride’s only opportunity to truly compete with Slack — but only if they can pull it off.

We hope they do! Now that would be a prime example of obliterating the competition.

*Survey included 16 participants. Options presented included: Slack, Google Hangouts, iMessage/Facetime, Microsoft Teams, Stride, Hipchat, Skype, Flowdock, Campfire and AIM.