Imagine spending years building a multiplayer game, only to watch it fail. Most founders would call it quits. But Stewart Butterfield and his team at Tiny Speck did something different. They turned their biggest setback into one of the most transformative workplace tools of all time—Slack. <h3 class="ql-align-justify">The Game That Paved the Way</h3><h3 class="ql-align-justify"> </h3>In 2009, Butterfield, co-founder of Flickr, launched a multiplayer online game called Glitch. It was a unique, imaginative world where players collaborated instead of competing. But despite its creativity, Glitch struggled to scale and was ultimately shut down in 2012.While the game failed, something unexpected emerged—a powerful internal communication tool that kept Tiny Speck’s remote team connected. Instead of seeing this as just another piece of software, Butterfield saw an opportunity. <h3 class="ql-align-justify">The Accidental Invention That Changed Work Forever</h3><h3 class="ql-align-justify"> </h3>The team had built a real-time messaging system to replace messy email chains, allowing for easy collaboration, searchable archives, and quick decision-making. After Glitch shut down, they realized that this internal tool could solve a major problem for businesses worldwide.And so, in 2013, Slack was born—short for Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge. <h3 class="ql-align-justify">From Gaming Glitch to Global Phenomenon</h3> 2014: 16,000 daily active users 2016: 4 million users2019: Slack goes public with a $20 billion valuation2021: Acquired by Salesforce for $27.7 billion What began as a failed video game became a global revolution in workplace communication. Slack proved that sometimes, the biggest successes are hidden within failures—all you need is the vision to see them.

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How a Failed Video Game Changed the Way the World Works

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How a Failed Video Game Changed the Way the World Works

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