Evaluating only Slab’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Competition as the #1 likely cause. That’s exactly how it died.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
Jason Chen and Vincent Lau founded Slab in San Francisco as a clean, search-first wiki for engineering teams.
FUNDING
Raised $10M Series A from Craft Ventures; grew to 5,000+ teams with strong NPS among mid-market customers.
PIVOT
Notion surpassed 20M users and added team wiki features, directly compressing Slab's growth from 40% to 8% YoY.
LAYOFF
Laid off 30% of staff in March 2024; entered controlled wind-down after plateauing at $6M ARR.
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
Slab, founded by Jason Chen and Vincent Lau in 2016, raised $10M Series A from Craft Ventures in 2019 to build a knowledge management and wiki platform for remote teams. The company competed directly with Confluence and Notion, growing to 10,000+ teams. However, Notion's explosive growth post-2020 and the launch of Confluence Cloud at lower price points squeezed Slab's addressable market. By 2023, Slab had plateaued at $6M ARR. In early 2024, the company laid off 30% of staff and entered a controlled wind-down.