Tiny Speck, later Slack, 2012
How did a failed game become Slack?
The short answer
Stewart Butterfield's company built an online game called Glitch that didn't work as a business. The team kept the chat tool they had built for themselves and turned it into Slack, which had about 60,000 daily users a few months after launch.
The situation
Your online game isn't growing and you've decided to close it. There's some investor money left. Your team built a small chat tool to work together, and everyone loves it.
The options on the table
- Give the money back to investors
- Try one more game
- Turn the internal chat tool into the productWhat they did
- Sell the game's technology
What happened
Stewart Butterfield's team turned that chat tool into Slack. A few months after launch it had about 60,000 daily users and 15,000 paid seats.
Sources: TechCrunch
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