Canadian entrepreneur and businessman
Stewart Butterfield |
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 Stewart Butterfield in 2017 |
| Born | Dharma Jeremy Butterfield
(1973-03-21) March 21, 1973 (age 50)
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| Alma mater | University of Victoria (1996)
Clare College, Cambridge (1998) |
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| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur and businessman |
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| Known for | Co-founder of Flickr
Founder of Slack |
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| Title | Former CEO of Slack |
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| Spouse |
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| Children | 1 daughter |
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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.[10] Tiny Speck launched its first project, the massively multiplayer game Glitch, on September 27, 2011.[11] Glitch was later closed due to its failure to attract a sufficiently large audience. The game world closed down on December 9, 2012, but the website remained online.[12][13] In January 2013, the company announced that it would make the most of the game's art available under a Creative Commons license.[14] On December 9, 2014, a fan project to relaunch Glitch under the name Eleven began alpha testing.[15][better source needed]
Slack
In August 2013, Butterfield announced the release of Slack, an instant-message-based team communication tool, built by Tiny Speck while working on Glitch.[16][17] After its public release in February 2014, the tool grew at a weekly rate of 5 to 10 percent, with more than 120,000 daily users registered in the first week of August. In early 2014, the data for Slack's first six-month usage period showed that nearly 16,000 users were registered without any advertising.[18][19][better source needed]
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 paid 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[26] in the entrepreneur category. In the same year, he was also named in the TR35, a list collated by MIT in its MIT Technology Review publication, as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 years.[27][28] In 2006, he was named in the "Time 100", Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world,[29] and also appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine.[30][31]
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 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 Caterina Fake, his Flickr co-founder, from 2001[39] to 2007.[40] They have one daughter together, who was born in 2007.[41] In May 2019 he became engaged to Jennifer Rubio, co-founder of Away Luggage.[42]
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