Slack's founder cried as his game died. What was left sold for about $27.7 billion.
In 2012 Stewart Butterfield's company in Vancouver had 45 people building an online game called Glitch. Investors had put in $17.5 million. By his own count, about 97% of the people who signed up left within five minutes.
His board and investors wanted him to keep going. One Monday in November he called a staff meeting nobody had announced. On the Masters of Scale podcast he recalls that he started to cry before he got through the first sentence. "It's over," an engineer remembers him saying.
Butterfield says they found every employee a new job, and the company still had about $5.5 million. The investors did not want it back. Within about three weeks the team decided that the chat tool it had built for its own work could be a product. At the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, Butterfield recalls, the pitch got a lot of "Pfft, good luck."
Slack opened to the public in August 2013. In December 2020 Salesforce agreed to buy it in a deal valued at about $27.7 billion.
The tool started as a workaround: a bot that saved messages for whoever was offline.
One-minute true story. AI-generated illustration with narration by an AI voice.
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What the captions say
- Salesforce bought the chat app Slack for about $27.7 billion. But do you know why its founder, Stewart Butterfield, cried in 2012?
- In 2012, before Slack existed, his company in Vancouver was building an online game called Glitch. 45 people worked on it.
- Investors had put in $17.5 million. But by his count, about 97% of people who signed up left within five minutes.
- One night, after many experiments, Butterfield lost faith. He said, "I don't think the 16th was going to work if the first 15 didn't."
- His board and investors wanted him to keep going. Instead, one Monday in November 2012, he called a meeting of the whole company.
- He says he started to cry before the first sentence was out. One engineer remembers his first words: "It's over."
- That engineer had just moved to Vancouver and bought a house. Now Butterfield was telling him there was no job.
- The company went on to find everyone a new job. It still had about $5.5 million.
- The investors did not want it back, hoping something might come of it. Within about three weeks, the team decided to turn its own chat tool into a product.
- Butterfield's deck said, "I think we should make Slack." His investors at Andreessen Horowitz, he recalls, gave him a lot of "Pfft, good luck."
- In August 2013, 8,000 customers signed up on Slack's first public day.
- Butterfield also hired that engineer back, to work on Slack.
