Stewart Butterfield

Stewart Butterfield
Stewart Butterfield
Born	March 21, 1973 (age 53); Lund, British Columbia, Canada
Occupation	Entrepreneur
Known for	Co-creator of Flickr and Slack

Daniel Stewart Butterfield (originally named Dharma Jeremy Butterfield; born March 21, 1973) is a Canadian entrepreneur and billionaire, widely recognized for co-creating the photo-sharing service Flickr and the collaborative messaging platform Slack.

Early life and education

Butterfield was born in Lund, British Columbia to parents Norma and David Butterfield. During his early childhood, his family lived on an isolated commune lacking electricity and running water, as his father had evaded the U.S. draft during the Vietnam War. At age five, the family moved to Victoria. Demonstrating early technical aptitude, Butterfield taught himself programming and officially changed his name to Stewart when he was twelve years old.

He attended St. Michaels University School in Victoria and supplemented his income by designing websites while attending university. Butterfield earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from the University of Victoria in 1996, followed by a Master of Philosophy from Clare College, Cambridge in 1998, where he wrote his thesis on scientific thinkers from the nineteenth century.

Career

In 2000, Butterfield partnered with Jason Classon to launch Gradfinder.com. Following its acquisition, he pursued freelance web design projects and organized the 5K competition, a contest challenging participants to create websites under five kilobytes in size.

Ludicorp and Flickr

Butterfield co-founded Ludicorp in 2002 alongside Caterina Fake and Jason Classon in Vancouver. The company initially developed the MMO game Game Neverending, which ultimately did not reach market. Subsequently, Ludicorp shifted focus to develop Flickr, a photo-sharing platform. Yahoo! acquired Ludicorp in March 2005, after which Butterfield took on the role of General Manager for Flickr until leaving in July 2008.

Tiny Speck

In 2009, Butterfield co-established Tiny Speck, which released the MMO game Glitch in September 2011. Despite its creative approach, Glitch struggled to build a substantial user base and was discontinued in December 2012. In January 2013, Tiny Speck made the game's artwork available under a Creative Commons license. A community-driven initiative named Eleven began alpha testing in December 2014 with the aim of reviving the game.

Slack

In August 2013, Butterfield introduced Slack, a team communication tool based on instant messaging that Tiny Speck had developed during Glitch’s production. Following its public debut in February 2014, Slack experienced rapid growth, reaching over 120,000 daily users by August and accumulating nearly 16,000 registered users within six months without any advertising efforts.

By early 2014, Butterfield had established a San Francisco office and initiated team expansion efforts. As of December 2015, Slack had secured US$340 million in venture capital funding and reported more than two million daily active users, including 570,000 paying customers. Inc. Magazine honored Slack as its company of the year for 2015.

Slack went public in June 2019 with an IPO share price of $38.50 and a market valuation of US$21.4 billion. In December 2020, Salesforce announced its intention to acquire Slack Technologies for US$27.7 billion.

Butterfield resigned as Slack CEO in December 2022 and departed from Salesforce in January 2023.

Awards and honors

In 2005, Butterfield was recognized by Businessweek as one of the "Top 50" leaders in the entrepreneurship category and was also featured on MIT's MIT Technology Review TR35 list, highlighting the most innovative individuals under 35. The following year, he was included in Time magazine's global "Time 100" list of the most influential figures and appeared on the cover of Newsweek.

Butterfield was honored with the "Legacy Distinguished Alumni Award" from the University of Victoria in November 2008.

During 2015, he earned accolades such as the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovator title, TechCrunch’s Founder of the Year Crunchie award, and spots in Vanity Fair’s New Establishment, Advertising Age’s Creative 50, and Details’ Digital Mavericks lists.

In May 2017, Butterfield shared insights on Slack’s growth approach on Masters of Scale, a podcast hosted by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, alongside other leading industry figures.

Personal life

Butterfield was married to Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, from 2001 until 2007; they have one child born in 2007. In May 2019, he became engaged to Jennifer Rubio, who co-founded Away Luggage. In April 2024, his adolescent child was reported missing but was located safely after several days; authorities arrested a man on abduction charges.