We have been building toward this for a long time.”[Read about how Slack’s chief executive, Mr. Butterfield, had to learn to dial back his mouthiness.] Slack grew out of TinySpeck, a gaming start-up co-founded by Mr. Butterfield in 2010 that did not catch on. TinySpeck’s internal chat tool, which uses an early internet protocol called Relay Chat to let colleagues exchange messages and collaborate, showed promise. Mr. Butterfield reoriented the company around the chat product, publicly releasing Slack in 2014. But Mr. Butterfield rejected any deal and Slack is now used by more than 600,000 organizations with 95,000 paying customers.

Source: New York Times June 20, 2019 16:21 UTC