The Nobel Economist: Great Tech Entrepreneurs: Steward Butterfield

Great Tech Entrepreneurs:

Steward Butterfield

Steward Butterfield[1] (born 1973) is a Canadian entrepreneur and businessman, co-Founder of the photo sharing website Flick[2] and team messaging application Slack[3]. At age 5, his family moved to Victoria. A few years later, the Butterfields got a computer, which Steward fell in love with. He learned how to code, and at college made money designing websites. He is a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, specializing in the philosophy of biology, cognitive science, and philosophy of the mind.

In 2002, he co-founded Ludicorp in Vancouver with his wife Caterina Fake and Jason Classon. Ludicorp initially developed a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Game Neverending. The game did not launch, but the company then started a photo-sharing website called Flickr. Filckr is a Social Media Network, that is designed for Sharing, Organizing, and Enjoying Photos. Flickr is the best way to share pictures, organize your photos adding tags, locations and descriptions. However, it is not the only one. In March 2005 Ludicorp was acquired by Yahoo!, where Butterfield continued as the General Manager of Flickr until he left Yahoo! on July 12, 2008. By incorporating Flickr, Yahoo! ensured itself a part of the photo sharing business.

After leaving Yahoo!, he founded a startup called Tiny Speck, which built a game called glitch. The game didn't take off, but Butterfield managed to create a communication tool he and his team had built to chat. He called this product: Slack. It grew so fast that he managed to get USD 340 million into a young company valued in 2.8 billion USD valuation. Today, Slack has 1.25 million daily active users, + 230 employees and 35 million USD in annual recurring revenue. Slack is changing the way we work[4] by software that helps groups of co-workers exchange instant messages and swap electronic files. It is the fastest-growing business application of all time.

Times have definitely changed. Who would bet on a philosopher to lead a tech company to the Top? What did philosophers do in the past, except for starving to death? In the article "That useless liberal arts degree has become Tech's Hottest Ticket"[5], we learn that software companies are discovering that liberal arts thinking makes strongest players. The creativity of the philosophers cannot be programmed. Let us TRUST Steward Butterfield's WORD: "I learned how to write really clearly. I learned how to follow an argument all the way DOWN, which is invaluable in running meeting. And when I studied the history of science, I learned about the ways that everyone believes something is true - like the old notion of some kind of ether in the air propagating gravitational forces - until they realized that it wasn't true.

Revolution 4.0 brings back the Age of Enlightment[6], an intellectual movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. This era included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and came to advance ideals such as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state. Today, thanks to the Age of Information[7], data is close at hand. Before, Knowledge was difficult to access. But now it is at the tip of your fingers. Read a lot, watch videos, buy some books (physical version will always exist, regardless of digital versions), increase your level of culture and education in your free time. Learn as much as you can, but most important, get to KNOW THYSELF to unleash the full power of your CREATIVITY. And thy shall be... ENLIGHTENED!!!

Cristian Bøhnsdalen

CMO/CFO & Co-Founder @ITRevolusjonen