Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield describes the initial monetization following Slack's official February 2014 launch.
Insight
Recurring fundamental doubts about a business or employee are almost certainly correct
“There's a saying, if you're thinking about firing someone, a lot
You should just fire them. Meaning that, like, that intuition, if that keeps coming up, it's almost certainly correct, and you wouldn't be thinking that all the time if there was a real shot at m…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Butterfield: Slack and Many Companies Will Retain Significant Remote Workforces
“One of the big topics is, do you expect to have a significant portion of your workforce remote when this resumes? And universal, yes. So I definitely expect that for us. I expect that for many companies.”
Opinion
Butterfield: Non-violent social MMO games are commercially horrible ideas
“It's a horrible idea commercially. Like, it's just, there's not enough people who are interested in it.”
What-if
Butterfield realized Glitch could never justify its $17.5M venture investment
“It was never going to become the kind of business that would justify 17 and a half million dollars of venture capital investment.”
Insight
Email fundamentally cuts new employees off from historical company knowledge
“In email, if you join a company that has been around for 30 years and has been using email since its inception, You get an empty inbox. You're completely cut off from the whole history of what's happened before you got there. And almost all of the email, like,…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Butterfield: Slack's first two remote weeks were its most productive ever.
“The first and second week after work from home order were probably the two most productive weeks in the history of the company.”