Workplace chat and collaboration technology company Slack is going public on Thursday, with implications for a wide variety of companies in the Seattle region and beyond. Microsoft is Slack’s primary competitor with its Teams service, and Slack is a big Amazon Web Services customer. And many companies that sell technologies to businesses will be watching Slack’s stock market debut closely to assess their own potential in the public markets.

So how does Slack work behind the scenes? On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re featuring a conversation with a co-founder of Slack, Cal Henderson, the company’s chief technology officer, recorded during the recent GeekWire Cloud Summit.