How did a game that was once on the verge of death turn into a $27 billion app?

Author | Sanjay Priyadarshi

Translated by | Crescent Moon

Exhibiting | CSDN（ID：CSDNnews）

Among the well-known enterprise communication tools, Slack is one of them. From integrated chat groups and file integration to email, SMS, Trello and other tools in one, Slack is like a "dark horse", standing out from the enterprise office field.

Who knows, the $27 billion company turned out to be a near-failed game project. I believe that everyone can not imagine.

This article will share the story of Flickr and Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield to learn how Slack became a disruptor.

Growing up as a child

Stewart Butterfield was born in 1973 in Lund, British Columbia, Canada.

Stewart's mother, Norma, understood him very well. At the age of 16, Stewart was driving his father's car out, but unfortunately experienced a car accident. But the mother's reaction to the incident was unexpected by everyone.

Not only was she not angry, she told him that having a car accident wasn't a bad thing because he could learn an important lesson from it: the importance of safe driving. This reaction was also completely beyond Stewart's expectations.

"My mom was very supportive, so when I was 16, even if I had a car accident, my dad's whole car was scrapped... But my mom's reaction was, and it wasn't a bad thing, because you realized the importance of safe driving. ”

Stewart's father, David, is a real estate developer.

In the real estate sector, each project will set up a new company, as if starting a business over and over again.

Every two or three years they go through a fundraising cycle, and they also need to build a vision and plan. And over the next decade, they need to drive the project through this vision and plan.

His father's business had a big impact on Stewart. He saw six different businesses before and after.

Later, he began to see the world with a business mindset, and his view of the people around him changed completely.

A small decision in his youth changed his life

Stewart loves computers. For him, all the screens are extremely attractive.

You can control anything that appears on the screen, and the idea is really magical.

Around 1980, he bought an Apple II. In addition, there is a computer in the classroom of the school.

Stewart once bought a magazine called Byte. The journal often features programs on the back cover. Stewart wrote these programs on his own Apple II.

He likes to modify the code and see how it turns out. In this way, at the age of 7, he learned to program.

"However, after I went to high school, I gradually lost interest in computers. Later, when I was in college, I was exposed to Unix on my school computer and discovered the Internet. It was 1992, and it opened my eyes... I can hardly believe there really is such a thing as the internet. ”

Stewart's career has focused on exploring how computer technology can be used to facilitate human interaction.

At the time, Stewart was very interested in two technologies:

• Execute code to generate what humans can and can't imagine.
• Combine all technologies to facilitate human interaction.

Stewart says:

"It's very interesting to think about stacking up a lot of important things. Start by running a piece of code that generates anything that humans can and can't imagine; then combine the technologies together. ”

Chose to study philosophy for a strange reason

Initially, Stewart wanted to pursue a study in cognitive science, but unfortunately his school did not have a cognitive science program.

Cognitive science is a combination of computer science, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy. He wanted to delve into the curriculum of these four subjects.

He did not choose to pursue a degree in psychology. If he chooses to complete a psychology degree, he will have to take all the courses because it is a requirement and there are some additional courses.

But philosophy doesn't have too many requirements, and the courses are all relaxed. That's why he chose to pursue a degree in philosophy. Stewart found the fundamentals of philosophy interesting because there are so many unanswered questions.

From philosophy to web development

In 1992, Stewart was admitted to college. After entering the university, he found that the Internet was rapidly rising, and the number of users was growing exponentially.

At that time, Mosaic was invented, but it was not widely implemented. At the time, the Internet was just the domain of email, IRC, and a Unix program called Talk.

A year after entering college, the internet officially took off and quickly became one of the most popular media outlets.

"The internet quickly became a popular medium and began to replace the likes of Gopher and Wais, and I witnessed it all with my own eyes."

At that time, HTML was so simple that anyone could teach themselves.

In 1993, only five people in my hometown mastered HTML technology, and Stewart was one of them.

For the next 94 to 96 years, he would use his summer vacation and free time on weekdays to make websites for others, because there were too few people who mastered the technology.

In 1998, Stewart was preparing to apply for a Ph.D. in philosophy when a friend of his got a Ph.D. and landed a job at a university in Kentucky.

"Around '98, I got my master's degree and applied for a PhD... A friend of mine just got his PhD... The university he went to was very good, and the thesis was great, and his first job was at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, which at the time seemed like a pretty good job. ”

But his friends don't like living in Kentucky, and the salary is low. His job is a contract that needs to be renewed every nine months.

After seeing his friend's situation, Stewart began to doubt his life decisions.

At the time he had two options. Either find a similar job like a friend, or switch careers to the Internet, knowing that it was an era of rapid internet rise. In addition, some of his friends switched to the Internet very early, and they all moved to San Francisco and received two or three times the salary package of the philosophy major.

He felt that the Internet work of that era was very exciting, dynamic, and revolutionary.

Throughout his career, he has also received advice from many professors who believe that academia is less than ideal.

Life in academia is terrible, so don't come easily. If you're interested in academia, subscribe to some journals.

"Throughout my career, I've listened to the advice of several professors who are basically saying that life in academia is terrible and it's easy not to come. If you're interested in academia, subscribe to some journals and attend some conferences. ”

So Stewart decided to listen to the professors' advice.

As a web designer, he did something out of the ordinary

After a few years as a web designer, Stewart founded his first video game company.

His first video game was called Neverending.

It was 2002, and his team made a prototype and began testing the game.

2002 was anachronistic year for game developers of any kind, as the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and financial markets entered a dark period.

The Nasdaq index fell nearly 80% from its high.

At that time, no one invested in the Internet, and no one invested in online games. So, they failed to get the investment.

Eventually, due to lack of funds, they failed to complete the game.

Build Flickr

At the time, no one wanted to invest in games.

So they decided to use the technology used to develop the game to build the product, which later became Flickr.

Neverending isn't a successful product from a business standpoint, but Flickr is commercially viable.

How to face failure

The whole team spent months with Flickr and the game at the same time.

Eventually, they decided to shut down the game, stewart's mood fell to a freezing point, and many players of the game were disappointed.

"A lot of players were disappointed, but they loved the game. Flickr is also interesting, and some people start trying Flickr, so it's not too bad. ”

A lot of people love Flickr and start trying it out.

Users can use Flickr to upload and store photos for free. As for profit points, some users used to buy professional accounts, so that they could upload more than 200 photos, and also provide some analytical information.

Later, in 2005, Yahoo acquired Flickr for $20 million.

In 2012, Stewart founded a game company called Tiny Speck and released a game called Glitch.

Why is he confident of starting another game company

The years from 2002 to 2009 were an incredible time in the history of the Internet. Suddenly, everyone has access to the internet.

The total number of Internet users is growing exponentially. Thousands of Internet companies were born. People are starting to get in touch with different types of services offered by different companies.

Later, even mobile phones can also access the Internet. Many people have enjoyed high-speed internet.

At the same time, the world of open source software that supports Internet development has exploded.

"In 2002, not many people really used the Internet. But by 2009, we had a very strong and mature Apache foundation, a lot of great Internet technology, a huge increase in computer speeds, and a dramatic increase in the number of online users. ”

The game Glitch also failed to achieve commercial success

The team that made Glitch was much more experienced than the previous team that made the game Neverending.

The game won a lot of users at the time.

They are very keen to secure enough funding to support subsequent development. However, they only raised $17.5 million in venture capital.

Without getting the ideal funding, Stewart decided to shut down the game.

At that time, the total number of employees in the company was 45.

This isn't the first time Stewart has faced this dilemma, having encountered a similar situation before while developing Neverending games.

The hardest decision was to give up again

This time, Stewart decided to close the company because this time things were very different from the last time.

1. This time, the company has a larger workforce of professionals, including animators, musicians, writers, illustrators and level designers.
2. They are all professionals and their skills cannot be transferred to new areas. All of these professionals are facing unemployment, and a total of 35 have been dismissed.
3. The games they update and release fail to build a strong community.

The situation was tense.

"In three and a half years, we released various versions of Glitch, but we failed to build a very strong, very active community."

The lives of all employees will change suddenly

Faced with this situation, Stewart felt very sad and embarrassed.

He told a story two months ago that he persuaded a team member teammate to move to a new city with his wife and two-year-old daughter, away from all his relatives and friends. The employee listened to him and moved to a small town and bought a house, but stewart told him the company had gone out of business.

Stewart said it was very difficult to make those decisions, but he had to. And the decisions he made had a huge impact on every team member.

Good news for all dismissed employees

Since Stewart ended the game development in time, there was still some money left in the company's bank account: $5.5 million in total. They used the money to shut down the company with dignity.

They also made a website and put all the employees' resumes on it. In addition, they do everything they can to help everyone find a job, such as writing letters of recommendation, doing career counseling, and so on.

Later, most professionals found better jobs.

Creation of Slack

While Stewart shut down the game Glitch, the co-founders reflected on some key points in the game's release.

During the development of Glitch, multiple teams were involved in the entire project.

One team is responsible for the creation of music, one team is responsible for the production of animation, one team is responsible for the art, and one team is responsible for programming.

This programming team created an internal chat system to help people communicate through online channels.

This chat system is more efficient than email. And the user base of the chat system is larger than that of the game.

After analysis, one of the co-founders said that there is no instant messaging tool like this on the market today.

As a result, a new situation has emerged for the development of the company.

Slack's internal mechanisms

Originally, the game Glitch used a tool called Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

Most of the messaging systems we use today employ a concept called "store-and-forward."

For example, A sends a message to B, but the message cannot be delivered to B because B's device has no connection available.

This message is retained until B's device establishes a connection and is sent to B. However, IRC does not have a store-and-forward feature.

This means that if the system uses IRC, A sends a message to B, but B is not connected to the Internet, then B will never receive the message.

So Stewart's team built a system to log messages.

After saving messages to the database, they wanted to be able to search for them again, so they added search functionality.

Over time, they keep adding new features. Eventually, they integrated this chat system with a file server, allowing them to post messages via IRC whenever someone uploaded a file.

"Slowly, we developed a system that became the basis for all the ways the company communicates, until we later discovered that everyone couldn't live without it."

The features they added continued to enhance the system, eventually evolving into a search-enabled communication channel known as Slack.

Slack is acquired

In 2021, Salesforce acquired Slack for $27.7 billion.

Although the last game development project failed, this failed project brought Stewart and the co-founders a huge success.

Original link: https://javascript.plainenglish.io/a-programmer-turned-a-failed-game-with-almost-zero-traction-into-a-27-000-000-000-app-55e054715b47

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