How a Failed Game Gave Birth to Slack

In the early 2010s, Silicon Valley was awash with gaming startups chasing the next big MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game). Among them was a small, quirky company called Tiny Speck, led by Stewart Butterfield. He was a founder already known for spinning gold from failure after transforming an abandoned game into Flickr a decade earlier.

Tiny Speck’s game, Glitch, was no ordinary play. It was whimsical, collaborative, and deeply imaginative. But it had one fatal flaw: no one really wanted to play it. Despite the artistry, community spirit, and engineering effort poured into it, Glitch never found its market. Glitch was a very innovative game, but this was also a major reason it faced problems attracting an audience. Most gamers were uncertain what they were looking at and a large majority lacked the patience to explore and find out where the fun was. As a whole, the game made a poor job of onboarding new players, which is a fatal flaw for a totally innovative and unfamiliar product.

Glitch Shutdown FAQ

Yet beneath the surface of failure, something remarkable had been quietly brewing. As the team built Glitch, they needed a better way to talk to each other. Email felt slow. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) was outdated. So they built their own communication system. It was an always-on, searchable, real-time chat tool that became the digital heartbeat of their remote team. It wasn’t a product. It was plumbing.

What happened next would become one of the most legendary pivots in tech history.

The Decision That Defined a Decade

In 2012, Butterfield and his team shut down Glitch. Most companies would have returned money to investors, issued layoffs, and closed shop. But Tiny Speck didn’t do that. Instead, they made a move that would later echo through boardrooms and startup lore for years to come. They productized their internal chat tool.

In 2013, they called it Slack.

It was not a grand, top-down vision. It wasn’t born from market research or a 100-slide pitch deck. It was born from necessity, humility, and a healthy dose of founder instinct. In my view, this is what separates generational entrepreneurs from the rest. They know when to walk away, and more importantly, what to walk toward.

Slack as a Cultural Force

Slack didn’t just reinvent workplace communication. It redefined what software felt like. It was fun. Casual. Inclusive. The tone was human. The design was playful. Even the loading messages were cheeky. It became the first enterprise tool that didn’t feel like one.

But underneath that charm was serious power. Searchable conversations, seamless integrations, and real-time collaboration. It struck a balance very few products ever achieve. It was beloved by end-users and indispensable to management.

As I reflect on this as a founder myself, I see Slack’s rise as more than just a product success. It was a cultural wedge. Email, the dominant force in enterprise communication for decades, was bloated and impersonal. Slack wasn’t faster email. It was an entirely new mode of work. It changed how decisions were made, how knowledge was stored, and how transparency flowed through teams.

A Pivot Not of Desperation, But of Vision

By the time Salesforce acquired Slack in 2021 for nearly $28 billion, the narrative had crystalized. A failed game studio had created the most successful workplace tool of the modern era.

But history should remember it differently. This wasn’t an accidental win. It was the result of courageous introspection, brutal prioritization, and an unrelenting commitment to solving a real problem. When Butterfield and his team saw the game wasn’t working, they didn’t panic. They listened. To their users. To each other. And to the small voice that often gets drowned out in the chaos of startup life. The one that says:

maybe the real gold isn’t in the mine you’re digging, but in the shovel you built along the way.

And that is how Slack earned its place in the annals of startup history. Not just as a product, but as a masterclass in strategic reinvention.