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Stories of building Slack — the company, the product, and the business — by two people who were around for the entire journey.

Latest Posts

Feb
24
The Master Plan

The Master Plan

Backstage, Stewart vibrated with his typical charismatic energy. An assistant checked his lapel mic. Everyone in the company, now numbering
4 min read
Jan
30
Values

Values

We did many things fairly well at Slack. One thing we never did well, however, was figuring out how much
8 min read
Dec
20
The death of Glitch, the birth of Slack

The death of Glitch, the birth of Slack

[This post is about the day that Glitch failed, and how that failure created the opportunity to make Slack. We&
12 min read
Oct
31

Ghost in the invoice machine

Working with bigger companies meant figuring out how to plug ourselves into lots of standard big-company processes. One of the
1 min read
Oct
18
Big Blue

Big Blue

How IBM helped us find our big-company footing The daily, slow-motion avalanche The message servers were down. Again.  The #alerts
15 min read
May
24
Year 1

Year 1

We launched Slack to the world on February 12th, 2014. Thirteen months after starting work, nine months after releasing our
8 min read
Apr
23
You asked: We don't sell saddles here

You asked: We don't sell saddles here

From John O'Nolan (CEO of Ghost): How did Stewart's infamous "we don't sell
3 min read
Apr
04
Preparing for launch

Preparing for launch

It was the fall of 2013. Barack Obama was President. Game of Thrones had finished its third season. The red
9 min read
Mar
29

You asked: Slack is kinda like IRC, no?

When it came time to build Slack, we wanted to capture the best parts of IRC in the context of running a business, add all of those ancillary services as native features, and vastly expand the group of people with whom our product could be friends.
3 min read
Mar
04

You asked: How did you communicate when Slack was down?

From the mailbag: I'd love to know how you collaborated/communicated internally when your own Slack client was
1 min read