How is Zulip as a company different from Slack?
* 100% of the software we write is FOSS.
* We intentionally haven't taken VC funding despite plenty of opportunity to do so, to ensure we can remain an independent, values-focused company.
* Most features are built by our open source community, not fulltime employees.
* Zulip was a distributed company pre-pandemic (while we did have a SF coworking space walking distance from my home, I as the founder only went in about once every week or two, and essentially all collaboration was over Zulip or GitHub).
They acquired the original Zulip startup in 2014. Then they open-sourced the code, and Zulip since 2016 is backed by a new company which is the one tabbott is describing above.