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Vishu Bheda
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Medial • 2m
Ben Horowitz tells the story of Slack’s pivot from a failed gaming app into a $28 billion company In 2009, Stewart Butterfield was all in on his new online game, Glitch. Investors backed him with $15 million. But two fatal problems killed the game: 1. It was built on Flash—right before Apple banned Flash from the iPhone. 2. Players finished the game in two days—terrible for retention. With just $6 million left and no way to raise more, Stewart faced three choices: Keep building and hope for a miracle. Shut everything down and return the money. Launch a simple tool his team had built to communicate better. His investor, Ben, was stunned: “You built a tool just to talk to each other?” Stewart believed in it. Ben let him go for it. That tool? Slack. It became the fastest-growing enterprise software ever. In 2021, Salesforce bought it for $27.7 billion. The Hidden Truth? Breakthroughs come from doing hard things. Stewart spent years optimizing Glitch, pushing his team to work faster. In the process, he discovered something no one else had: team communication was broken. That insight changed everything. Your next billion-dollar idea? It’s hiding in your hardest problem right now. Follow Vishu Bheda for more valuable startup insights from the world's best founders!
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