A trio of former Facebook engineers have launched a new startup from stealth to reimagine workplace communication.
Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is among a series of high-profile investors backing Slashwork as part of a round of more than £2.5 million.
Founded by Jackson Gabbard (CEO), David Miller (CTO) and Josh Watzman (CEngO), engineers who all helped build and scale some of Facebook’s key products, Slashwork is now beta-testing with a small group of design partners.
Julien Codorniou, who led Workplace before becoming an early-stage investor at 20VC, has overseen the incubation of the business and driven its investment and global go-to-market strategy to date.
Having spent years building communication systems for some of the world’s largest and fastest-growing organisations, the founding team and their investors saw first-hand how internal tools shape culture, alignment and performance.
With deep experience across many companies, teams, and tool stacks, Slashwork addresses a common problem: the tools people rely on to communicate at work no longer reflect how work actually gets done.
“We didn’t leave Facebook thinking we’d build another communication tool,” said Gabbard. “But we found teams are doing enormous amounts of busy work just to feel aligned – checking umpteen channels and threads, worrying about what they’d missed.
“That isn’t a people problem. It’s a software-defaults-define-your-culture problem.”
Slashwork was built to address that gap. Designed to enable not overwhelm, the platform is real-time when it matters, focussed on reducing noise, preserving shared understanding, and helping information last beyond fleeting conversations. Rather than forcing people to keep up with everything, Slashwork surfaces what matters to them, in context, over time.
Crucially, the team believes recent advances in AI make a fundamentally different model possible.
“AI shouldn’t mean faster noise or more automation layered onto broken tools,” said Gabbard. “Used properly, it can remove the cognitive load that gets in the way of good judgment – helping teams coordinate work, follow up, and act with clarity, without losing human ownership.”
Codorniou, general partner at 20VC, said: “Very few teams understand workplace communication at scale from the inside. This group has lived it; what worked, what broke, and why Slashwork reflects a hard-won point of view about how teams need to operate now, not how tools were designed a decade ago.”
The $3.5m round was led by London-based media and tech VC specialists 20VC, with participation from a group of senior technology operators and founders spanning Facebook, Slack, Intercom, Dropbox, Microsoft and beyond.
Angel investors include Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners (Sheryl Sandberg’s VC), Cal Henderson (Slack co-founder), AJ Tennant (Slack GTM lead, Glean, Facebook), Carolyn Everson (Permira, Disney, Facebook), David Fischer (Facebook), Des Traynor (Intercom co-founder), Will Shu, (Deliveroo), Soleio (Dropbox, Facebook, Figma), Philip Su (Facebook, Microsoft, OpenAI), Blaise DiPersia (Facebook), Olivia Calvert (Deel) and others.
Slashwork is planning a wider rollout later this year.