Stewart Butterfield facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Stewart Butterfield
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Butterfield in 2017
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| Born |
Dharma Jeremy Butterfield
March 21, 1973 Lund, British Columbia, Canada
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| Alma mater | University of Victoria Clare College, Cambridge |
| Occupation | Businessman |
| Known for | Co-founder of Flickr Founder and former CEO of Slack |
| Spouse(s) |
Caterina Fake
(m. 2001; div. 2007)Jen Rubio
(m. 2020) |
| Children | 3 |
Stewart Butterfield (born Dharma Jeremy Butterfield on March 21, 1973) is a Canadian businessman. He is famous for helping to create two big online tools. These are Flickr, a website for sharing photos, and Slack, a popular app for team communication.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Stewart Butterfield was born in 1973 in a place called Lund, British Columbia, Canada. For his first five years, he lived in a log cabin. This cabin did not have running water or electricity. His family lived on a commune, which is a community where people live and work together. His father had moved from the U.S. to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War.
When Stewart was five, his family moved to Victoria. As a child, he taught himself how to code, which means writing computer programs. He changed his name to Stewart when he was 12 years old.
Learning and University
Stewart went to St. Michaels University School in Victoria, British Columbia. While at university, he earned money by designing websites. In 1996, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from the University of Victoria. Later, in 1998, he earned a Master of Philosophy degree from Clare College, Cambridge in England. His master's paper was about important scientific thinkers from the 1800s.
Career Journey
In 2000, Stewart Butterfield worked with Jason Classon to start a company called Gradfinder.com. After this company was bought by another, he worked as a freelance web designer. He also created a fun contest called the 5K competition. This challenge was for people who could design websites that were very small, under 5 kilobytes.
Creating Flickr
In the summer of 2002, Stewart co-founded a company called Ludicorp in Vancouver. He started it with Caterina Fake and Jason Classon. Ludicorp first tried to make a big online game called Game Neverending.
When the game didn't quite work out, the company changed its focus. They then created Flickr, which became a very popular website for sharing photos. In March 2005, a large internet company called Yahoo! bought Ludicorp. Stewart continued to work at Yahoo! as the General Manager for Flickr until he left in July 2008.
Tiny Speck and Glitch
In 2009, Stewart Butterfield started a new company called Tiny Speck. Their first big project was a massively multiplayer game called Glitch. This game launched on September 27, 2011.
However, Glitch did not attract enough players and was later closed down. The game world stopped running on December 9, 2012. In January 2013, Tiny Speck announced that they would share most of the game's artwork. They made it available for others to use under a Creative Commons license.
The Rise of Slack
While working on Glitch, Tiny Speck also developed a new tool. In August 2013, Stewart Butterfield announced the release of Slack. This is an instant-message-based tool that helps teams communicate easily.
After its public release in February 2014, Slack grew very quickly. In the first week of August 2014, more than 120,000 people were using it every day. Data from Slack's first six months showed that nearly 16,000 users signed up without any advertising.
By December 2015, Slack had raised a lot of money from investors. It had more than 2 million daily active users, and 570,000 of them were paying customers. Inc. Magazine named Slack their "Company of the Year" in 2015.
In June 2019, Slack became a public company, meaning its shares could be bought and sold on the stock market. Its value was estimated at over US$21 billion. In December 2020, another big company called Salesforce announced plans to buy Slack Technologies for US$27.7 billion. Stewart Butterfield announced he was leaving his role as CEO of Slack in December 2022. He officially left Salesforce in January 2023.
Awards and Recognition
Stewart Butterfield has received many awards for his work:
- In 2005, Businessweek magazine named him one of the "Top 50" Leaders in business.
- Also in 2005, he was on the TR35 list by MIT. This list names the top 35 innovators in the world under 35 years old.
- In 2006, Time magazine included him in their "Time 100" list of the 100 most influential people. He also appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine.
- In November 2008, the University of Victoria gave him the "Legacy Distinguished Alumni Award."
- In 2015, he was named the Wall Street Journal's Technology Innovator. He also won TechCrunch’s Founder of the Year Crunchie award. He was included in several other important lists, like Vanity Fair’s New Establishment.
- In May 2017, he was featured in Masters of Scale, a podcast by Reid Hoffman, who co-founded Linkedin. In the podcast, Stewart talked about how Slack grew so quickly.
Personal Life
Stewart Butterfield was married to Caterina Fake, who was also a co-founder of Flickr. They were married from 2001 to 2007 and have one child together, born in 2007. In May 2019, he became engaged to Jennifer Rubio, who co-founded Away Luggage. They married in 2020.
See also
In Spanish: Stewart Butterfield para niños
