Zulip as a company is extremely different a massively-VC-funded-and-then-go-public company like 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).