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Stewart Butterfield: A Third of Slack Teams Are Social. We Still Won't Chase It.

By Stewart Butterfield · Leadership · 1 min read

A third of the Slack teams that get created are for social usage. A lot of people had the idea that we should pursue that — make Slack for groups, or even pivot to being a consumer company, a private version of Twitter. We've been pretty steadfast in not doing that. You can only do so many things well.

Key Points

A third of Slack teams are social, but Butterfield refused to chase consumer — you can only do so many things well
The wild, erratic chasing of the next idea when you have traction is really dangerous
Butterfield calls himself 'chief no-er' — and has built a whole team equally committed to no

The wild and erratic chasing of the next idea when you have something with a little bit of traction can be really dangerous.

Stick With What's Working

Butterfield: There's definitely something to be said — when things are above some threshold of good — to sticking with the same idea. Not so much because that idea is the best one, but because the wild and erratic chasing of the next idea when you have something that has a little bit of traction can be really dangerous.

Not because the idea is the best one. But because chasing the next shiny thing when you have traction is dangerous.

A Third of Slack Is Social. We Won't Chase It.

Butterfield: Slack is a good example. We conceived of Slack as a tool for business. We developed it that way. We priced it that way. It was successful. But there's also this huge amount of social usage — maybe a third of the Slack teams that get created are for some kind of social usage.

A lot of people had the idea that we should pursue that. Make Slack for groups. Or even pivot to being a consumer company — kind of a private version of Twitter. We've been pretty steadfast in not doing that. Because you can only do so many things well. There's a lot of shiny objects like that that are very distracting.

A third of Slack teams are social. People wanted us to pivot to consumer. We said no. You can only do so many things well.

Chief No-er

Butterfield: I'm chief no-er. But there's definitely a whole bunch of people who are equally committed to no.

I'm chief no-er. But there's a whole bunch of people equally committed to no.