Stewart Butterfield
Stewart Butterfield | |
---|---|
Born | Dharma Jeremy Butterfield March 21, 1973 Lund, British Columbia, Canada |
Alma mater | University of Victoria (1996) Clare College, Cambridge (1998) |
Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur and businessman |
Known for | Co-founder of Flickr Founder of Slack |
Title | Former CEO of Slack |
Spouse | |
Children | 1 daughter |
Daniel Stewart Butterfield (born Dharma Jeremy Butterfield;[1] March 21, 1973[2]) is a Canadian billionaire businessman, best known for co-founding the photo-sharing website Flickr and the team-messaging application Slack.
Early life and education
In 1973, Butterfield was born in Lund, British Columbia, to Norma and David Butterfield.[3] For the first five years of his life he grew up in a log cabin without running water or electricity. His family lived on a commune in remote Canada after his father fled the US to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War.[4][5] His family moved to Victoria when Butterfield was five years old.[5] As a child, Butterfield taught himself how to code, and changed his name to Stewart when he was 12.[6]
Butterfield was educated at St. Michaels University School in Victoria, British Columbia and made money in university designing websites.[5] He received a B.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Victoria in 1996 and went on to earn a Master of Philosophy from Clare College, Cambridge in 1998.[7]
Career
In 2000, Butterfield worked with Jason Classon to build a startup called Gradfinder.com.[5][8] Following Gradfinder.com's acquisition, he worked as a freelance web designer. Butterfield also created a contest called the 5K competition, centered on people with the ability to design websites under 5 kilobytes.[5]
Ludicorp and Flickr
In the summer of 2002, he co-founded Ludicorp with Caterina Fake and Jason Classon in Vancouver.[7] Ludicorp initially developed a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Game Neverending. After the game failed to launch, the company started a photo-sharing website called Flickr. In March 2005, Ludicorp was acquired by Yahoo!, where Butterfield continued as the General Manager of Flickr until he left Yahoo! on July 12, 2008.[9][1]
Tiny Speck
In 2009, Butterfield co-founded a new company called Tiny Speck.
Slack
In August 2013, Butterfield announced the release of
That same year, Butterfield secured an office for Slack employees in San Francisco, and was expected to commence recruitment during the second half of the year.[18]
As of December 2015, Slack had raised US$340 million in venture capital and had more than 2 million daily active users, of which 570,000 were paying customers.[20]
Slack was named Inc. Magazine’s 2015 company of the year.[21]
In June 2019, the company announced its initial public offering with an opening price of $38.50 and a market capitalization of US$21.4 billion.[22][23]
In December 2020, Salesforce confirmed plans to buy Slack Technologies for US$27.7 billion.[24]
In December 2022, Butterfield announced his departure as CEO of Slack and left Salesforce early in January 2023.[25]
Awards and honors
In 2005, Butterfield was named one of Businessweek's "Top 50" Leaders
In November 2008, Butterfield received the "Legacy Distinguished Alumni Award" from the University of Victoria.[32]
In 2015, Stewart was named the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovator for 2015,[33] awarded TechCrunch’s Founder of the Year Crunchie,[34] and included in Vanity Fair’s New Establishment,[35] Advertising Age’s Creative 50,[36] and Details’ Digital Mavericks lists.[37]
In May 2017, he was featured in Masters of Scale, a podcast series by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin, along with other successful businesspeople such as Mark Zuckerberg, John Elkann, and Brian Chesky. In it, he discussed the scaling strategy adopted by Slack.[38]
Personal life
Butterfield was married to
References
- ^ a b Honan, Mat (August 7, 2014). "The Most Fascinating Profile You'll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup". Wired. Archived from the original on 6 December 2016. Retrieved September 3, 2016.
- ^ Neil Kandalgaonkar [@NeilKNet] (March 21, 2016). "@stewart Happy birthday. Please keep being yourself as long as you like!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Kosoff, Maya (2 September 2015). "14 Surprising Facts About Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield". inc.com. Retrieved 19 February 2016.
- ^ "The $5bn tech boss who grew up without electricity". Daniel Thomas. BBC News. 25 June 2018. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
- ^ a b c d e Kosoff, Maya (September 1, 2015). "The amazing life of Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of one of the fastest-growing business apps ever". Business Insider. Retrieved April 18, 2017.
- ^ Schrodt, Paul (February 7, 2019). "The Man Behind Silicon Valley's Next Big IPO Grew Up on a Commune Without Running Water or Electricity". Money.com. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
- ^ a b Kosoff, Maya (2015-09-02). "14 Surprising Facts About Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield". Inc.com. Retrieved 2020-01-23.
- ISBN 978-1430210788.
- ^ Arrington, Michael (June 17, 2008). "Flickr Co-founders Join Mass Exodus From Yahoo". TechCrunch.
- AllThingsD. Retrieved September 17, 2010.
- ^ "Stewart Butterfield: The big pivot". WaitWhat. Retrieved 2018-03-20.
- Fast Company. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
- ^ "Vancouver's Tiny Speck puts massively multiplayer game Glitch online". Vancouver Sun. September 27, 2011. Archived from the original on September 29, 2011. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
- ^ Gera, Emily (January 24, 2013). "Glitch developer shares assets under Creative Commons license following closure of game". Polygon. Retrieved March 4, 2013.
- ^ "'Two Years Past' or 'Welcome Home'". The Eleven Project. Retrieved 11 January 2015.
- ^ Tam, Donna (August 14, 2013). "Flickr founder plans to kill company e-mails with Slack". CNET. Retrieved November 26, 2013.
- ^ Thomas, Owen (August 14, 2013). "Die, Email, Die! A Flickr Cofounder Aims To Cut Us All Some Slack". ReadWrite. Retrieved November 26, 2013.
- ^ a b Mat Honan (7 July 2014). "The Most Fascinating Profile You'll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup". Wired. Condé Nast. Retrieved August 10, 2014.
- ^ "Slack vs. Email: The Case for RTC for Enterprise IT". IT Pro. 2019-03-31. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
- ^ Gage, Deborah (December 15, 2015). "Slack Raises $80 Million Fund to Support Platform Strategy". Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ Bercovici, Jeff (November 23, 2015). "Slack Is Our Company of the Year. Here's Why Everybody's Talking About It". Inc. Magazine. Inc.com. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ "What's Next for Slack Now That It's Public". Fortune. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-01-30.
- ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-12-02.
- ^ Primack, Dan; Fried, Ina (December 5, 2022). "Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is leaving Salesforce". Axios.
- ^ "2005 Top Leaders: Entrepreneurs". Businessweek. 2005. Archived from the original on December 17, 2005.
- Technology Review. 2005. Retrieved August 15, 2011.
- ^ "TR35 2005". Technology Review. 2005.
- ^ "2006 Time 100". Time. 2006. Archived from the original on May 2, 2006.
- ^ "Flickr on the cover of Newsweek". Niall Kennedy. March 27, 2006.
- ^ Levy, Steven (April 2, 2006). "The New Wisdom of the Web". Newsweek.
- ^ "Flickr co-founder makes it big with an arts degree". Times Colonist. November 26, 2008. Archived from the original on May 20, 2009. Retrieved February 13, 2009. Alt URL
- ^ Stevenson, Seth (November 5, 2015). "Stewart Butterfield, Email Killer". Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ Kumparak, Greg (February 5, 2015). "Slack's Co-Founders Take Home The Crunchie For Founder Of The Year". TechCrunch. TechCrunch. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ Bilton, Nick (September 30, 2015). "New Establishment List 2015". Vanity Fair. Vanity Fair. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ Peterson, Tim (December 21, 2015). "Creativity 50 2015: Stewart Butterfield". Advertising Age. Advertising Age. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ Angio, Joe (April 7, 2015). "Digital Mavericks 2015". Details Magazine. Details Magazine. Retrieved January 27, 2016.
- ^ "Master of Scale - Stewart Butterfield".
- CNN Money. Archived from the originalon 16 July 2012.
- ^ Leonard, Devin (28 Jul 2010). "What You Want: Flickr Creator Spins Addictive New Web Service". Wired. Archived from the original on 11 April 2014. Retrieved 31 Jul 2010.
- ^ Thomas, Owen (12 Jul 2007). "Silicon Valley's baby boom". Gawker. Archived from the original on 21 July 2012.
- ^ Perino, Marissa. "Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is newly engaged to a woman who runs a $1.4 billion startup. Inside the relationship of Silicon Valley's newest 'it' power couple". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 23 March 2021.
Further reading
- "Slack's Stewart Butterfield, in His Own Words" (April 2015), Inc magazine
- Stewart Butterfield quotes on Theoriq Archived 2021-11-15 at the Wayback Machine (February 2017)
- Ryssdal, Kai; Hollenhorst, Maria (22 July 2019). "What Is Slack?". Marketplace. American Public Media. Retrieved 10 August 2019. Interview with Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield.
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