The messaging giant that was born from a failed video game
In short: Before it became a $28 billion powerhouse, Slack was just a side project. Developed by the creators of the online game Glitch, the tool was never meant for the public. It was simply a way for a small team to survive while their primary product struggled to find its footing.
The origins of Slack are rooted in the rise and fall of Glitch, a stylized multiplayer online game developed by Stewart Butterfield’s company, Tiny Speck. While the game received a positive reception, it proved to be both expensive and unwieldy to maintain. In 2011, the team briefly 'unlaunched' the game to improve features, but it was eventually shut down permanently in December 2012. However, the developers had spent years using a custom internal communication tool to coordinate their work, and they realized this tool was more valuable than the game itself.
The transition from game development to software success was not seamless. After the game's demise, the team was left with approximately $5 million from investors. They began developing the tool into a public-facing app in 2012, but the initial rollout was difficult. The app even failed its first large-scale test when deployed to a 120-person startup. It required an additional eight months of development before it was ready for the market. Once it finally arrived, the demand was overwhelming; during its official release in February 2014, the company secured $1 million in subscriptions in just three days.
The name Slack stands for 'Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge'. By utilising a channel-based structure, the platform transformed how teams communicate, enabling structured and searchable dialogue. This success led to a massive valuation, hitting the 'unicorn' status of over $1 billion by 2015. In July 2021, the company was acquired by Salesforce for nearly $28 billion, a move Butterfield described as part of a historic shift toward a digital-first, remote-work world following the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Slack | Application, History, & Facts | Britannica
- Also: Slack Technologies
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