FT Start-Up Stories Building a successful team
Aug 7, 2017
Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack and former creator of Flickr, shares his entrepreneurial journey from a failed video game to the transformative tool Slack. He discusses the pivot from gaming to photo sharing and the rapid success of Flickr. Cal highlights the challenges faced while building Glitch and how internal tools evolved into Slack. He reflects on hiring strategies, the importance of passion in entrepreneurship, and lessons learned from failure, emphasizing that building what you enjoy leads to meaningful products.
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From Game Studio To Flickr
- Cal Henderson joined a small Vancouver studio to work on a web-based game and 'tricked' his way into the team.
- The team repurposed game tech to build Flickr, which unexpectedly became a major social photo site.
Failed Game Led To Slack
- After selling Flickr, Cal and the team tried again to build a game called Glitch but it never reached scale.
- They reused their internal communication tool from the game studio and turned it into Slack.
Build What You Want To Use
- Successful products often solve problems the builders personally face and enjoy using themselves.
- Cal credits both Flickr and Slack to building things the team wanted to use and found fun.