Slack CEO: from log cabin to Flickr to the end of email
SAN FRANCISCO – Here's something incongruous. The man behind one of the biggest revolutions in communications grew up in a remote log cabin with no running water or electricity.
In fact, Stewart Butterfield's British Columbia upbringing at the hands of hippie parents was so isolated that as a toddler he thought the word for "child" was Noah, the name of his one friend who lived a mile away.
Now, as CEO of fast-growing work-messaging platform Slack, Butterfield, 42, wants to free us from the choking tyranny of email so we can have a little more peace and quiet to think. At least that's the dream.
"Our website says, 'Be less busy,' and while it's a good pitch I'm not sure if we deliver on that yet," says Butterfield, who is at once candid, intelligently longwinded and wry. "My guess is people who use Slack are reverting to the same level of busy-ness, but they're accomplishing more."
Slack's appeal is rooted in the ability to dip into a company's archived, project-based messaging stream as opposed to feeling obliged to respond to every Inbox missive. Butterfield's team is working on improving the experience through features such as summaries of info that's arrived while you're away, "and generally designing the site for politeness and courtesy," he says.
Slack has enjoyed double-digit user growth since the company's founding in August of 2013. Today, Slack has 750,000 active daily users and 200,000 subscribers paying $8 to $15 a month.
That success has allowed Butterfield – along with co-founders Eric Costello, Cal Henderson and Serguei Mourachov – to raise $300 million from venture firms such as Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. Slack's resulting $2.8 billion valuation has caused some analysts to cite the Internet start-up as proof of a tech bubble.
Butterfield just shrugs.
"We have real dollars in the bank, so in a sense the best thing that could happen to us is a giant crash," he says. "I don't wish that to happen at all, but if it did suddenly we wouldn't have to pay $75 a square foot for our office, salaries for engineers wouldn't start at $130,000 a year, ad rates would go down and there'd be less competition. That's a far better scenario for us."
SOLUTION TO EMAIL WILL REAP RICHES
Slack is playing in a popular space where options range from Snapchat to IBM's Verse. But that abundance often leads to redundancy.
"Whoever solves this problem for good will do really well, because right now we're at the height of inefficiency, often with people reading emails and responding with text messages," says Holger Mueller, principal analyst with Constellation Research.
For Mueller, the real coup is solving for mobile, given that half of email-opens now are on smartphones or tablets.
"Butterfield is a proven serial entrepreneur, so he's got a good shot at this," he says, referring to the Slack CEO's sale of photo-sharing site Flickr to Yahoo in 2005 for $25 million. "But my personal feeling is the solution will come from the consumer space, not enterprise."
Andrew Braccia of Accel Partners begs to differ. He met Butterfield when the two worked at Yahoo.
"What makes Stewart really unique is his desire to combine artistry and science, that is, knowing what great design is while having a keen sense of how to make it possible," says Braccia of Butterfield, who holds a graduate degree in the philosophy of biology and cognitive science.
"Besides having a great feel for where society is going, he's also just incredibly relentless," Braccia said.
Butterfield may seem like the epitome of dot-com success, but he's quick to point out that he's seen his share of failure.
"My father, who was in real estate, lost everything in 1982 when interest rates went to 18%. I started a (massive online) game that didn't really work out, and after Flickr I didn't have much success initially with (another gaming play) Tiny Speck. I also invested in Lehman Brothers," he says, smiling. "My point is, it's about finding things you believe in a sticking with them."
FACEBOOK 'TRAINING' HELPED SLACK'S PATH
Butterfield is convinced a huge overhaul in the way humans communicate via tech is inevitable. While Slack wouldn't have been conceivable "just a few years ago, today, after millions have been trained to text and instant message thanks to Facebook and others, the transition is already happening."
Butterfield pauses. "It sounds simple, but it's as profound a shift as the telegraph or radio or television or jet travel," he says. "People are ready."
Unless the world redevelops a taste for email, Slack is likely to net Butterfield a considerable personal fortune. Asked what he will do with his time and money, the philosophy major doesn't hesitate.
"There are three issues that intrigue me," he says, immediately diving into the weeds on campaign finance reform, tax policy and universal basic income, which proposes that everyone in the U.S. get $1,000 a month regardless of income.
For a guy raised in a cabin on the edge of civilization, Butterfield seems bent on spending his life focused on the masses, whether that's moving beyond irritating email or tackling poverty.
"We're in an amazing position here in the tech world, with many of us doing very well while things are getting worse for a lot of people," he says. "So it's great to just be able to try and help."
USA TODAY's Change Agents series highlights innovators and entrepreneurs looking to change business and culture with their vision. E-mail Marco della Cava at mdellacava@usatoday.com . Follow him on Twitter: @marcodellacava