Tiny Speck
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
Some sections are still being researched1 / 4
Sections to complete：05
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Tiny Speck was the game studio founded in 2009 by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Its project was Glitch, a whimsical browser-based multiplayer online game. When Glitch failed to find a sustainable audience, Butterfield shut the game down and pivoted the remaining team to the internal chat tool they had built for themselves — which became Slack. Tiny Speck was renamed Slack and launched the workplace product in 2013.
02 / Tiny Speck FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Glitch never found enough players. It launched to critical affection in September 2011 but was pulled back into beta two months later; a year of further work could not fix the core problem. The studio's own verdict was blunt: the game had not attracted an audience large enough to sustain itself, and it seemed unlikely it ever would. Free-to-play with in-game purchases only works at volume, and a small devoted community could not pay the bills — certainly not enough to justify the $17 million of venture capital behind the company.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Founded
Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield founds Tiny Speck in 2009 to build the multiplayer online game Glitch.
- Glitch launches
Glitch officially launches on September 27, 2011 to warm reviews, but is 'unlaunched' back to beta on November 30, 2011 while the team reworks the early game experience.
- Glitch shuts down
Tiny Speck announces Glitch's closure on November 15, 2012 — it had not attracted a large enough audience to sustain itself — and the game goes offline on December 9, 2012.
- Pivot to Slack
The smaller core team pivots to the internal messaging tool built during Glitch's development; Tiny Speck is renamed Slack and launches the team-communication product in August 2013.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN / AFTERMATH
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.