Slack launched in August 2013 into a market where HipChat had been operating since 2010. The two products were functionally nearly identical: real-time team messaging, file sharing, search, organized by groups. HipChat had integrations. So did Slack. The Zapier team investigated specifically whether integrations were Slack's decisive advantage, checked the data, and found that HipChat users were actually connecting integrations earlier and at higher rates than Slack users in the early days. Then HipChat plateaued. Slack kept growing. The products were the same. The meaning was not. HipChat meant "team chat." Everything about it; the name, the interface, the way it presented itself; placed it squarely in the chat category. In 2013, "chat at work" was not a neutral thing. The myth that chat was unprofessional was still active. HipChat walked into that myth and accepted the category it implied. Slack refused the category entirely. The name contains no reference to chat. The interface called groups "channels," not "chat rooms." The language everywhere was about communication and organization, not messaging. And the headline that launched them into the world called them the "email killer"; a product positioned not as chat but as the replacement for the thing everyone hated. Internal email chains; everyone in the thread, everyone obliged to reply, productivity destroyed; was the grudge. The startup founder who wanted to move fast and look sophisticated was the identity. A team that communicated cleanly and moved quickly was the fantasy. Slack's meaning entered the fantasy frame. HipChat's bounced off the myth. Eight thousand people signed up on Slack's first day. Within two years the Zapier usage data showed a curve that barely needed a caption. HipChat was eventually shut down by Atlassian in 2019.