4 ms·
What's interesting is that Slack (the company) was founded in 2009 and yet the initial release of Slack was in 2013. That's 4 years of development, that seems l
by dom96 7y ago
What's interesting is that Slack (the company) was founded in 2009 and yet the initial release of Slack was in 2013. That's 4 years of development, that seems like quite a long time.
- nkozyra 7y agoWell it says it was initially an internal tool for a different startup.
- throwaway619 7y agoSlack: They first built a game, it didn't do well, so they pivoted to focus on the message system they built for the game. Flickr: They first built a game, it didn't do well, so they pivoted to focus on the image hosting they built for the game. Games are hard.
- faitswulff 7y agoAren't there other companies that started out as games companies? I mean, it seems obvious, but Discord started out from the wreckage of a videogame company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord_(software) I was sure there were more examples, though. Games are hard.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoGames require all of the latest technology and require maximum compatibility across all platforms.
- throwaway619 7y agoYeah, absolutely. Butterfield was both Slack and Flickr.
- praneshp 7y agoNext time Stewart Butterfield co-founds a games company, it'll be one to watch out for.
- atombender 7y agoSlack started out as an internal chat tool by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield's Tiny Speck, which was trying to launch the game Glitch. When Glitch failed, they spun out Slack as a new company (or they renamed the company, not sure). This is almost the exact thing that happened with Butterfield's first venture, Flickr, which was built on a web platform they wrote for a multiplayer online game called Game Neverending (which is why Flickr URLs have/had "gne" in their URLs).
- el_benhameen 7y agoPoor fellow. Maybe third time's the charm and he'll finally see some success.
- skinnymuch 7y agoPoor fellow indeed.