Slack Founder Stewart Butterfield on AI, Software, and the End of the Tech Boom

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

Tracy, you know, we've had a number of episodes about tech and some of the excesses of the VC boom, et cetera, maybe the softening labor market, but it's one of these topics that we can't talk about enough because it's so critical, I think, to the markets, to the economy, and so, I think, ambiguous about where the industry is going next.

Tracy Alloway (0:37)

No, absolutely. So, there's two big things that seem to be going on right now or two big questions, and the first one has to be, we've seen a lot of layoffs in the tech sector, and I guess the question is, is that reflective of the broader economy or is that something tech specific as a more interest rate-sensitive part of the economy? And then I guess the second thing is, tech was one of the big winners of the pandemic era, and how much of that is getting rolled back now, how much of, you mentioned excesses, how much of the excesses are being taken out of the system?

Joe Weisenthal (1:11)

Well, and then I would say the third thing, which is that, and it's really leaped to the public consciousness in the last several months, is people being very aware of AI and these questions about like, okay, we had this sort of like era of what we thought of as like a software company over the last decade. The software is a service company, it's VC funded, et cetera.

So in addition to the macro questions about hiring, in addition to the question about financing, there's this question like, well, what's gonna happen with like tech business models and how like upended will be and what that's gonna mean for existing talent and where the money is gonna flow from all that. And I think like, you know, everyone has posted threads on that, but I've never like found something that's like, oh, that's that compelling.

Tracy Alloway (1:51)

No, you're right. There's a lot to talk about.

Joe Weisenthal (1:53)

So I'm very excited because today we're going to be speaking with a guest that I would say has really been, I was gonna say like at the forefront of two sort of like major epochal tech trends, but I kind of actually think it's two and a half because so there was the Web 2.0, like sort of like social kind of like user generated internet.

And then there was the sort of like the SaaS boom, software as a service, et cetera. And then in the last few years with work from home, like tech that enabled work from home, which is almost like its own distinct kind of story in my view.

Tracy Alloway (2:25)

Yeah, someone who brings those mega trends together.

And maybe might be on the verge of another mega trend. We should ask.

Joe Weisenthal (2:32)

Well, the perfect person to see if there's another mega trend. So we have the perfect guest. We're gonna be speaking with one and only Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Flickr, the photo sharing site, the co-founder of Slack, the workplace messaging app that everyone used that eventually sold to Salesforce, recently stepped down as the CEO of Slack. So Stewart, thank you so much for coming on. So I gotta say, I meant to say, what's also interesting here is both Flickr and Slack, as far as I understood it, originally started because you wanted to create an online game company and both of them had to pivot into these like mega world-changing hits. So I guess my first question is, are you working on a new online game?

Stewart Butterfield (3:13)

I am not, I get asked that a lot and maybe. Yeah, it's like a good warmup, you know?

Joe Weisenthal (3:18)

Okay, but you're not right now.

Stewart Butterfield (3:19)

No, I'm not.

Tracy Alloway (3:21)

So I mean, maybe we should start with the pandemic boom because I mean, Slack really became the sort of poster child for the success of SaaS in 2020 and 2021 And you also had a kind of famous Twitter thread where you explained what it was like being on the front lines at that moment in time. But talk to us about how would you characterize that experience? Because looking back on it now, there is a lot of talk about maybe there was over-hiring, maybe there was excess in various ways, but how did you experience it?

Stewart Butterfield (3:54)

Yeah, that was a big moment, like the March of 2020 But I feel like it really started 2015 or something like that.