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Daniel Stewart Butterfield (born Dharma Jeremy Butterfield; March 21, 1973) is a Canadian billionaire businessman, best known for co-founding the photo-sharing website
Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...
and the team-messaging application Slack.


Early life and education

In 1973, Butterfield was born in
Lund, British Columbia Lund is a small craft harbour and unincorporated village on Tla'amin land in qathet Regional District, British Columbia, Canada. It is along the northern part of the Salish Sea on the mainland BC coast. The main landmark in the village is the Lun ...
, to Norma and David Butterfield. 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 The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
. His family moved to Victoria when Butterfield was five years old. As a child, Butterfield taught himself how to code, and changed his name to Stewart when he was 12. Butterfield was educated at
St. Michaels University School St. Michaels University School (abbreviated SMUS) is an independent day and boarding school in the municipality of Saanich, the largest and most populous municipality in the Capital Regional District and on Vancouver Island. Previous headmasters i ...
in
Victoria, British Columbia Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 91,867, and the Greater Victoria area has a population of 397,237. Th ...
and made money in university designing websites. He received a B.A. degree in philosophy from the
University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary instit ...
in 1996 and went on to earn a
Master of Philosophy The Master of Philosophy (MPhil; Latin ' or ') is a postgraduate degree. In the United States, an MPhil typically includes a taught portion and a significant research portion, during which a thesis project is conducted under supervision. An MPhil m ...
from
Clare College, Cambridge Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. The college was founded in 1326 as University Hall, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. It was refounded ...
in 1998.


Career

In 2000, Butterfield worked with Jason Classon to build a startup called Gradfinder.com. 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.


Ludicorp and Flickr

In the summer of 2002, he co-founded
Ludicorp Ludicorp was a company, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, that created Flickr and Game Neverending. It was founded in 2002 by Stewart Butterfield, Caterina Fake and Jason Classon and was bought by Yahoo! on March 20, 2005. Ludicorp' ...
with
Caterina Fake Caterina Fake is an American entrepreneur and businesswoman. She co-founded the websites Flickr in 2004 and Hunch in 2007. Fake has been a trustee for nonprofit organizations and was the chairwoman of Etsy. For her role in creating Flickr, Fak ...
and Jason Classon in
Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
. Ludicorp initially developed a
massively multiplayer online role-playing game A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...
called ''Game Neverending''. After the game failed to launch, the company started a photo-sharing website called
Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...
. In March 2005, Ludicorp was acquired by
Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
, where Butterfield continued as the General Manager of Flickr until he left Yahoo! on July 12, 2008.


Tiny Speck

In 2009, Butterfield co-founded a new company called Tiny Speck. Tiny Speck launched its first project, the massively multiplayer game
Glitch A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among ...
, on September 27, 2011. 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. In January 2013, the company announced that it would make the most of the game's art available under a
Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
license. On December 9, 2014, a fan project to relaunch Glitch under the name Eleven began
alpha testing Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...
.


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 A glitch is a short-lived fault in a system, such as a transient fault that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among ...
. 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. 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. 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. Slack was named Inc. Magazine’s 2015 company of the year. In June 2019, the company announced its
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
with an opening price of $38.50 and a market capitalization of US$21.4 billion. In December 2020,
Salesforce Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...
confirmed plans to buy Slack for US$27.7 billion. In December 2022, Butterfield announced his departure as CEO of Slack and leaving Salesforce early in January 2023.


Awards and honors

In 2005, Butterfield was named one of ''Businessweeks "Top 50" Leaders in the entrepreneur category. In the same year, he was also named in the
TR35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...
, a list collated by
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
in its ''
MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...
'' publication, as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 years. In 2006, he was named in the "Time 100", ''Time'' magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and also appeared on the cover of ''Newsweek'' magazine. In November 2008, Butterfield received the "Legacy Distinguished Alumni Award" from the
University of Victoria The University of Victoria (UVic or Victoria) is a public research university located in the municipalities of Oak Bay and Saanich, British Columbia, Canada. The university traces its roots to Victoria College, the first post-secondary instit ...
. In 2015, Stewart was named the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovator for 2015, awarded TechCrunch’s Founder of the Year Crunchie, and included in Vanity Fair’s New Establishment, Advertising Age’s Creative 50, and Details’ Digital Mavericks lists. In May 2017, he featured in ''Masters of Scale'', a podcast series by
Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...
, co-founder of
Linkedin LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...
, along with other successful businesspeople such as
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...
,
John Elkann John Philip Jacob Elkann (born 1 April 1976) is an Italian industrialist. In 1997, he became the chosen heir of his grandfather Gianni Agnelli, following the death of Gianni's nephew Giovanni Alberto Agnelli and since 2004 has been leading the A ...
, and
Brian Chesky Brian Joseph Chesky (born August 29, 1981) is an American businessman and industrial designer. He is the co-founder and CEO of the peer-to-peer lodging service Airbnb. Chesky was named one of ''Time'' "100 Most Influential People of 2015". Ear ...
. In it, he discussed the scaling strategy adopted by Slack.


Personal life

Butterfield was married to
Caterina Fake Caterina Fake is an American entrepreneur and businesswoman. She co-founded the websites Flickr in 2004 and Hunch in 2007. Fake has been a trustee for nonprofit organizations and was the chairwoman of Etsy. For her role in creating Flickr, Fak ...
, his Flickr co-founder, from 2001 to 2007. They have one daughter together, who was born in 2007. In May 2019 he became engaged to Jennifer Rubio, co-founder of Away Luggage.


References


Further reading


"Slack's Stewart Butterfield, in His Own Words"
(April 2015), ''
Inc magazine ''Inc.'' is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. The magazine publishes six issues per year, along with surrounding online and social media content. The magazine also produces several live and virtual events y ...
''
Stewart Butterfield quotes on Theoriq
(February 2017) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Butterfield, Stewart 1973 births Alumni of Clare College, Cambridge Businesspeople from British Columbia Canadian computer businesspeople Canadian people of American descent Living people People from the qathet Regional District University of Victoria alumni Canadian billionaires