3 founders spent a year building a Slackbot that makes sales jobs easier, and they raised $2.6 million from a who's who list of investors

Chat bots have become hotly debated in tech: they’re the future, they’re dumb, they’re convenient, they’re annoying, and so on.

Everyone has an opinion, including prominently Facebook and Microsoft, who have declared them a big part of the future, in one way or another. The idea behind chat bots is simple: instead of maneuvering complicated menus and interfaces, you text message a “bot” like you would a customer service rep, and that bot gets stuff done for you.

Many early consumer bots for platforms like Facebook Messenger have proved a bit of a disappointment. But one place that bots have already been a success is in hot work-chat program Slack, where they mainly serve to let people easily recall bits of information without opening a new program.