The game failed, the company faced a difficult decision, and years of work seemed to lead nowhere. But an internal communication tool became the foundation of Slack, a platform that transformed how businesses collaborate.
The video game failed. The company nearly lost its purpose. But the software built to keep its team talking became worth billions. Stewart Butterfield never set out to build Slack; he was trying to create an online game called Glitch. When the game shut down in 2012, an unexpected discovery changed everything: the team’s internal messaging tool was solving a far bigger problem than the game ever had. That overlooked tool became Slack, the workplace communication platform later acquired by Salesforce.
Sometimes, a startup’s biggest breakthrough isn’t the idea it launches with; it’s the solution it discovers along the way.
When the Original Plan Failed
In 2009, technology entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield co-founded Tiny Speck with a team that included former colleagues from Flickr. Their ambition was to build an imaginative online multiplayer game called Glitch.
Butterfield was no stranger to technology entrepreneurship. He had previously co-founded Flickr, the photo-sharing platform that Yahoo acquired in 2005. With Tiny Speck, he wanted to create another innovative digital experience.
The team invested significant time and resources into Glitch, developing its unusual virtual world and building a community around the game. However, despite the effort, the product struggled to attract enough users to sustain the business.
In 2012, the company decided to shut Glitch down.
For many founders, closing a product after years of work can feel like the end of the entrepreneurial journey. For Butterfield, however, the experience revealed an unexpected opportunity.
The Tool Built Behind the Scenes
While developing Glitch, Tiny Speck’s employees were spread across different cities. They needed a reliable way to exchange messages, share files, search previous conversations and coordinate work.
Existing communication tools did not meet all their needs, so the team built an internal messaging system of its own.
The tool gradually became central to how employees worked. Conversations were organised, information could be searched, and team members could stay connected without relying entirely on email.
When Glitch was discontinued, the founders realised that the communication software they had developed might have value beyond their own company.
They had spent years building a game that struggled to find a sustainable audience, but along the way, they had created a tool that solved a real problem for businesses.
Turning an Internal Tool Into a Product
Instead of abandoning the company altogether, Butterfield and his team redirected their efforts towards workplace communication software.
The new product was designed to bring conversations, files and information into one searchable workspace. Rather than treating messaging as an isolated activity, it aimed to help teams organise their work around shared channels and ongoing discussions.
The company launched Slack publicly in 2013. Its approach offered businesses an alternative to fragmented email conversations and disconnected collaboration tools.
The idea was particularly relevant to technology companies and distributed teams that needed to exchange information quickly. As users adopted Slack, its usefulness expanded from simple messaging to broader workplace collaboration.
The official Slack website showcases the platform’s communication and collaboration tools, while its About page explains its mission to make work simpler, more productive and better connected.
Growth Through a Different Kind of Software
Slack’s appeal came from combining a straightforward user experience with tools that helped teams work together. Users could create channels for projects, search earlier conversations and connect other applications to their workspace.
This made the platform useful for more than informal chat. Teams could organise discussions around customers, departments, projects and business operations.
The company also benefited from the fact that employees could experience the product directly at work and encourage other teams to adopt it.
Over time, Slack expanded its capabilities and became an important workplace communication platform. Its development showed that business software could be both powerful and approachable.
The Salesforce Acquisition
Slack reached another major milestone when Salesforce completed its acquisition of the company in July 2021.
The acquisition brought Slack into Salesforce’s broader business software ecosystem, with the goal of connecting conversations, customer information and workplace applications.
The transaction represented a significant outcome for Butterfield and the team that had originally built the software to support a struggling video-game startup.
Details of the completed acquisition are available in the official Salesforce announcement.
Lessons for Aspiring Tech Founders
Butterfield’s journey offers three important lessons.
First, a failed product does not mean every capability developed during its creation has failed. Second, internal tools can reveal opportunities when they solve recurring problems exceptionally well. Third, founders must be willing to change direction when evidence suggests their original plan is not working.
Slack was not the product Tiny Speck originally set out to build. It emerged from a tool the team created to make its own work easier.
The biggest lesson from Stewart Butterfield’s journey is that founders must know when to let go of an idea and when to recognise the value hidden inside it. Glitch’s failure could have ended the team’s entrepreneurial journey, but the internal tool they built revealed a problem worth solving on a much larger scale. Slack emerged because Butterfield and his team were willing to question their original direction, learn from their experience and rebuild around a stronger opportunity.
For aspiring tech founders, the message is clear: don’t become so attached to your original vision that you overlook a better one. Sometimes, your most valuable product isn’t what you set out to create—it’s what you discover while trying to build it.