Podcast appearances and mentions of Cal Henderson

Ein Startup gründen wird oft schön geredet und es ranken sich viele Mythen um die verschiedenen Herausforderungen, die Gründer und Gründerinnen oft haben, wenn sie Startups zum Erfolg bringen wollen. In dieser Episode räumen wir mit 7 Mythen auf, die wir häufig bei Gründern sehen, die das erste Mal ein Startup gründen.Die Erkenntnisse in dieser Episode Unicorn Bakery basieren auf über 500 Interviews mit erfolgreichen Gründern weltweit.Was du lernst:Warum die erste Idee oft nicht die ist, die zum Erfolg führtWeshalb Investoren nicht nur darauf warten, dir Geld zu gebenWorauf Investoren wirklich achten, wenn sie überlegen in dein Startup zu investierenWie du wirklich skalierbar Kunden gewinnstWarum der Einfluss von Investoren oft überschätzt wirdWarum Gründerteams oft nicht für immer zusammen bleibenWenn die Episode dir weitergeholfen hat, findest du hier die angesprochenen weiterführenden Episoden:Alles was du zu Finanzierungsrunden wissen musst: https://drp.li/KdiysAlles was du über rechtliche Klauseln bei der Gründung wissen musst: https://drp.li/CV0O2Interview mit Slack Gründer Cal Henderson: https://drp.li/316qsNoch mehr rechtlicher Input: https://drp.li/34gTyALLES ZU UNICORN BAKERY:https://zez.am/unicornbakery Mehr zu Fabian Tausch:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabian-tausch/ Join our Founder Tactics Newsletter:2x die Woche bekommst du die Taktiken der besten Gründer der Welt direkt ins Postfach:https://newsletter.unicornbakery.deMarker:(00:00:00) Mythos 1: Unsere Idee ist perfekt(00:04:56) Mythos 2: Kunden warten nur darauf, das Produkt zu kaufen(00:06:12) Mythos 3: Investoren wollen unbedingt in uns investieren(00:17:16) Mythos 4: Meine ersten Kunden sind Freunde und Familie(00:25:08) Mythos 5: Die Idee ist unbezahlbar(00:28:25) Mythos 6: Unsere Investoren werden uns erfolgreich machen(00:34:00) Mythos 7: Unser Gründerteam wird für immer zusammenhalten(00:40:40) Bonus Mythos 8: Mit einem Startup werde ich schnell reich Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Uber launched at South by Southwest, as did Twitter, Pinterest and Foursquare. Billie Eilish was discovered as an unsigned 14-year old. Mumford and Sons first made their name at the creative-tech-culture jamboree in Austin, Texas. In three months time the world will learn whether the powerhouse event can replicate itself outside of the Lone Star State. SXSW Sydney MD, Colin Daniels, is backing Sin City to deliver – with the likes of futurist Amy Webb, Coachella co-founder Paul Tollet and Slack co-founder Cal Henderson joining “titans of every industry” across tech and innovation, music, games and screens. He says every one of its 70 featured speakers would likely be the keynote at any other event. No wonder circa 500 brands are keen to get involved – which is one of the reasons Seven West Media is going large, partnering with SXSW Sydney and planning to spring a very different kind of upfront during the week-long festival. Chief Revenue Officer, Kurt Burnette, said getting the investment over the line was a “difficult conversation”, but he's backing the play to position the network at the heart of the creative-tech nexus and change perceptions. CMO Mel Hopkins will have a big hand in shaping what that looks like. No pressure then. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Cal Henderson (Co-Founder & CTO @ Slack) and Maria Kazandjieva (Co-Founder @ Graft) discuss strategies for how to be a force multiplier within your organization! They cover Cal's leadership journey & the early days of Slack, how to identify lateral inflection points, aligning your people throughout periods of change, tips for personal retrospectives on where you invest your time, and more. Additionally, Cal & Maria share plenty of frameworks for both identifying if you are currently a force multiplier & how to identify opportunities to inspire productivity in others.This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022 - check out all of the sessions here: elc.community/public/contentABOUT CAL HENDERSONCal Henderson (@iamcal) is the co-founder and CTO of Slack. He oversees Slack's world-class engineering team and sets the technical vision for the company.In 2019, he was named a Fortune 40 Under 40 honoree and recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.Previously, Cal built and led the engineering teams at Flickr, through its acquisition by Yahoo. An experienced technology leader and a popular speaker on engineering scalability, he authored the best-selling O'Reilly Media book Building Scalable Websites. Cal was also a pioneer in the use of web APIs, and created the basis for OAuth and oEmbed, now used by YouTube, Twitter and many others.Cal was involved in London's early online network through his work with digital creative communities and the blogosphere. He has a BS in Computer Science and has received an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University. He now resides in San Francisco."What every leader needs to do is recognize when the things that you are spending your time on aren't aligned with what's really important or what's the most value that you can get out of your time. I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of having a very full calendar, feeling very busy, feeling like there's so many things to do and the things that you do don't move the needle in any way.”- Cal Henderson   ABOUT MARIA KAZANDJIEVAMaria (@stranger_quark) is a co-founder and an engineering leader at Graft, an early-stage AI startup. Prior to that, Maria worked at Netflix, where her team earned two Emmy awards for technical achievement. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Outside of work, you can find Maria kickboxing & trail running, baking & eating carbs, or relaxing with a non-fiction book and her two feline supurrvisors, Foosball and Gemma.Looking for ways to support the show?Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcastsIf your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available.To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at sponsor@sfelc.comInterested in joining an ELC Peer Group?ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Cal describes the early days & founding of Slack (2:24)The many hats an eng leader wears during a company's early stages (4:20)How Cal identified key inflection points as Slack evolved (6:31)Essential frameworks for successful reorgs (8:31)Tips for getting more comfortable with delegating (10:49)Why you should spend time & resources on developer productivity (13:31)Defining the leadership version of dev tools (16:52)Strategies for quickly aligning organizations through periods of change (20:04)How to align your calendar with what is most important as an eng leader (22:01)Cal and Maria's tips for personal retrospectives on where you invest your time (24:54)Audience Q&As: why Cal no longer codes for Slack (25:56)Questions to help you identify opportunities to be a force multiplier (27:20)How to measure the success of developer productivity (30:58)Tips for handling force multiplier “killers” (34:33)Why the most brilliant engineers are not only individually productive but also inspire productivity in others (36:50)

Cal Henderson wollte mit seinem Team die Möglichkeiten verbessern, online untereinander vernetzt zu sein. Heraus kamen viele Fehlentscheidungen – und schließlich Flickr und später Slack.Woher kommt der Mut etwas aus dem gescheiterten Haufen solche Erfolgsfirmen zu bauen?Was du lernst:Wann für Cal der richtige Moment war, sich aus Flickr zu verabschieden und wie daraus die Idee für Slack entstandWelche Strategien haben sich etabliert, um als kleines Unternehmen eine Software im B2B-Bereich bekannt zu machen?Welche Rolle spielen Blockchain, Crypto, AI & Co. für die Zukunft – und kann künstliche Intelligenz Softwares wie Slack verbessern?Die Kapitel:(00:03:11)Wann und wie hast du als Entrepreneur angefangen?(00:06:41)Warum bist du doch nicht zu Microsoft gegangen und wie war deine Arbeit bei Flickr?(00:08:46)Wie hat der Kauf durch Yahoo! eure Arbeit verändert und wie hat sich der Kauf durch solch einen Konzern angefühlt?(00:09:50)Wann und warum hast du beschlossen, Flickr zu verlassen und wie kamst du dann auf Slack?(00:14:46) Wieso ein Kommunikationstool und wie bist du auf die Unternehmen zugegangen, um Slack bekannt zu machen?(00:17:20)Würdest du aus heutiger Sicht eine Software genauso promoten wie damals mit Slack?(00:20:53)Wann ist dir aufgefallen, dass Slack mehr kann als nur Unternehmenskommunikation und welchen Impact bringt das für die Zukunft?(00:23:43)Was denkst du, wird technologisch in den nächsten Jahren auf uns zukommen? Werden Sachen wie Blockchain und AI wichtiger?(00:27:10)Wie würdest du die Rolle von Blockchain und Crypto aus Expertensicht bewerten und machst du dir selbst Gedanken darüber?(00:31:17)Welches Buch würdest du weiterempfehlen?(00:35:58)Wie ist eure Firmenkultur entstanden, wenn ihr so schnell gewachsen seid?(00:38:08)SchlussworteCal HandersonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamcalSlack: https://slack.com/ WHATSAPP NEWSLETTER:1-2x wöchentlich bekommst du eine persönliche Sprachnotiz oder Inhalte von mir, die dich zu einem besseren Gründer machen, melde dich jetzt mit einem Klick an: https://bit.ly/ub-whatsapp-newsletter Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cal Henderson and his team wanted to improve ways to connect online. The result was a lot of bad decisions - and finally, Flickr and later Slack. Where did the courage come from to build something from the failed pile to such successful companies? What you learn: When was the right moment for Cal to walk away from Flickr, and how that led to the idea for Slack What strategies have been established for a small company to make software popular in the B2B space? What role do blockchain, crypto, AI, and other technologies Play in the future - and can artificial intelligence improve software like Slack? Chapters: (00:03:11) When and how did you start as an entrepreneur? (00:06:41) Why didn't you go to Microsoft after all, and what was your work like at Flickr? (00:08:46) How did the purchase by Yahoo! change your work, and how did it feel to be bought by such a corporation? (00:09:50) When and why did you decide to leave Flickr, and how did you end up on Slack? (00:14:46) Why a communication tool, and how did you approach companies to promote Slack? (00:17:20) From today's perspective, would you promote software the way you did with Slack back then? (00:20:53) When did you realize that Slack could do more than just enterprise communications and what impact does that bring to the future? (00:23:43) What is coming technologically in the next few years? Will things like blockchain and AI become more critical? (00:27:10) How would you evaluate the role of blockchain and crypto from an expert perspective, and are you concerned about it yourself? (00:31:17) What book would you recommend? (00:35:58) How did your company culture evolve when you proliferated? (00:38:08) Closing Words Cal Handerson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamcal Slack: https://slack.com/

Steve Vamos is joined by Cal Henderson, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Slack - the fastest startup to reach  “unicorn” status, achieving a billion-dollar valuation in just over a year. This is a fascinating discussion about how staying true to your purpose can lead you in many different directions on the path to success. Cal shares details of his journey and the many lessons he has learnt along the way.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cal Henderson, CTO of Slack, creator of Flickr, and author of ‘Building Scalable Websites' (O'Reilly Media, 2006) shares how Slack was built from both a tech and product perspective and what you should be doing to reclaim your focus time ⏱️. You don't want to miss out on hearing about the Slack tech stack from someone who is a pioneer in the use of web APIs and created the basis for OAuth and oEmbed. Listen to find out: >> How Slack does focus time >> What tech stack

Returning for season three of the Restless Ones, an original podcast from T-Mobile for Business and iHeartRadio, host, Jonathan Strickland, sits down with some of the most forward-thinking technology leaders—those at the intersection of technology and business—to explore their unique missions, challenges, and approaches to driving their organizations forward. Tune in to learn how these leaders think about building a bridge to what’s next and leveraging transformative technologies like 5G to create a more connected and meaningful future today.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Forming connections across the workplace is the key to a strong company culture and even stronger bottom line. Whether chatting with someone down the hall, or across the world, the new age of remote work has made tools like Slack more critical than ever. Combining the power of Slack with the advanced wireless connectivity now available in 5G is allowing that work to happen anywhere. In this episode of The Restless Ones, we sit with Cal Henderson, CTO & Co-Founder of Slack, who's lifelong love of technology has translated into building one of the most successful software stories of recent years. We'll hear how Cal capitalized on the work and insights from one of his biggest professional setbacks to create a collaboration and productivity tool used and loved by millions of workers worldwide. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's a whole new manner of interacting at work now, especially with the rise in remote and hybrid workflows. The digital transformation was already well under way and then, if the transition was a campfire, the pandemic poured lighter fluid on it. Fortunately, lots of companies responded by making s'mores rather than getting burned, and utilized the technological tools that were already developed to help.Main TakeawaysOrganizational Alignment: The pace of technological change is breathtaking. Companies must continually be making sure their entire organization is aligned with their mission. This requires working quickly and adapting accordingly. Communication via channels helps to ensure the right people in an organization all have access to the same info to allow for conversations to to quicken the pace of workMental Shift: Working in channels is significantly different than an email workflow. For those that liked the finality of responding to an email and closing it out, the channel system can feel like it is without an end. The positive aspect of this feeling could be that the information is always available and can be of easy access as needed. When it comes down to it, individual mindsets can be adjusted to reframe the channel experience in a manner that's helpful.Focusing on Virtual and Physical Spaces: For a long time, companies primarily focused on physical places for employees to work and, in many cases, for customers to interact with a business too. Now, the focus is adjusting, partly based on necessity, to creating supportive virtual places. Moving forward, companies will need to integrate physical and digital spaces. In many businesses, and in most human interactions, there is a place for both the physical and digital spaces.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

In our latest episode, regular hosts Haitch and Jason are joined by by the co-founder and CTO of Slack, Cal Henderson. We complete our Ridley Scott doubleheader, with his 1982 masterpiece, the greatest science fiction film of all time? Question mark? Blade Runner. We cover the power of production design, debate whether Deckard is a replicant (again), and make the biggest announcement in show history! Chapters Introduction (00:00:00) Dune News (00:09:01) Roundtable Discussion (00:19:17) Your Letters (01:31:08) Notes and Links Denis said Chani is the protagonist for Dune 2. Check out the translation of Denis' interview in Il Venerdì di Repubblicaur by our man Johnny Sobczak. Read our episode transcripts! Check out our transcripts every week on the Dune Pod Medium page. Join the Dune Pod Discord Server! Hang out with Haitch, Jason, guest hosts, and other friends of the pod. Check out the invite here. Dune Pod is a TAPEDECK Podcasts Jawn! Dune Pod is a member of TAPEDECK Podcasts, a collaboration of podcasts, featuring tons of talent you have heard on Dune Pod, including: 70mm (a podcast for film lovers), Bat & Spider (low rent horror and exploitation films), Cinenauts (exploring the Criterion Collection), Lost Light (Transformers comics and movies), Will Run For (obsessing about running), and Film Hags (a podcast about movies hosted by four hag friends). Check these pods out!. Tim O'Reilly's 1977 biography Frank Herbert See the movies we've watched and are going to watch on Letterboxd Dune Pod's Breaking Dune News Twitter list Rate and review the podcast to help others discover it, and let us know what you think of the show at letters@dunepod.com or leave us a voicemail at +1-415-534-5211. Dune Pod: your one stop shop to get fully prepared for the new Dune movie by delving into the books, as well as the films directed by Denis Villeneuve and featuring the cast and crew of the new film. Dune neophytes and historians alike are welcome to join our tribe. Follow @dunepod on Twitter and Instagram Music by Tobey Forsman of Whipsong Music Cover art by @ctcher Dune Pod is a TAPEDECK Podcasts Jawn Dune Pod is a production of Haitch Industries

The simple story of Yahoo! Is that they were an Internet search company that came out of Stanford during the early days of the web. They weren't the first nor the last. But they represent a defining moment in the rise of the web as we know it today, when there was enough content out there that there needed to be an easily searchable catalog of content. And that's what Stanford PhD students David Philo and Jerry Yang built. As with many of those early companies it began as a side project called “Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web.” And grew into a company that at one time rivaled any in the world. At the time there were other search engines and they all started adding portal aspects to the site growing fast until the dot-com bubble burst. They slowly faded until being merged with another 90s giant, AOL, in 2017 to form Oath, which got renamed to Verizon Media in 2019 and then effectively sold to investment management firm Apollo Global Management in 2021. Those early years were wild. Yang moved to San Jose in the 70s from Taiwan, and earned a bachelors then a masters at Stanford - where he met David Filo in 1989. Filo is a Wisconsin kid who moved to Stanford and got his masters in 1990. The two went to Japan in 1992 on an exchange program and came home to work on their PhDs. That's when they started surfing the web. Within two years they started their Internet directory in 1994. As it grew they hosted the database on Yang's student computer called akebono and the search engine on konishiki, which was Filo's. They renamed it to Yahoo, short for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle - after all they maybe considered themselves Yahoos at the time. And so Yahoo began life as akebono.stanford.edu/~yahoo. Word spread fast and they'd already had a million hits by the end of 1994. It was time to move out of Stanford. Mark Andreesen offered to let them move into Netscape. They bought a domain in 1995 and incorporated the company, getting funding from Sequoia Capital raising $3,000,000. They tinkered with selling ads on the site to fund buying more servers but there was a lot of businessing. They decided that they would bring in Tim Koogle (which ironically rhymes with Google) to be CEO who brought in Jeff Mallett from Novell's consumer division to be the COO. They were the suits and got revenues up to a million dollars. The idea of the college kids striking gold fueled the rise of other companies and Yang and Filo became poster children. Applications from all over the world for others looking to make their mark started streaming in to Stanford - a trend that continues today. Yet another generation was about to flow into Silicon Valley. First the chip makers, then the PC hobbyists turned businesses, and now the web revolution. But at the core of the business were Koogle and Mallett, bringing in advertisers and investors. And the next year needing more and more servers and employees to fuel further expansion, they went public, selling over two and a half million shares at $13 to raise nearly $34 million. That's just one year after a gangbuster IPO from Netscape. The Internet was here. Revenues shot up to $20 million. A concept we repeatedly look at is the technological determinism that industries go through. At this point it's easy to look in the rear view mirror and see change coming at us. First we document information - like Jerry and David building a directory. Then we move it to a database so we can connect that data. Thus a search engine. Given that Yahoo! was a search engine they were already on the Internet. But the next step in the deterministic application of modern technology is to replace human effort with increasingly sophisticated automation. You know, like applying basic natural language processing, classification, and polarity scoring algorithms to enrich the human experience. Yahoo! hired “surfers” to do these tasks. They curated the web. Yes, they added feeds for news, sports, finance, and created content. Their primary business model was to sell banner ads. And they pioneered the field. Banner ads mean people need to be on the site to see them. So adding weather, maps, shopping, classifieds, personal ads, and even celebrity chats were natural adjacencies given that mental model. Search itself was almost a competitor, sending people to other parts of the web that they weren't making money off eyeballs. And they were pushing traffic to over 65 million pages worth of data a day. They weren't the only ones. This was the portal era of search and companies like Lycos, Excite, and InfoSeek were following the same model. They created local directories and people and companies could customize the look and feel. Their first designer, David Shen, takes us through the user experience journey in his book Takeover! The Inside Story the Yahoo Ad Revolution. They didn't invent pay-per-clic advertising but did help to make it common practice and proved that money could be made on this whole new weird Internet thing everyone was talking about. The first ad they sold was for MCI and from there they were practically printing money. Every company wanted in on the action - and sales just kept going up. Bill Clinton gave them a spot in the Internet Village during his 1997 inauguration and they were for a time seemingly synonymous with the Internet. The Internet was growing fast. Cataloging the Internet and creating content for the Internet became a larger and larger manual task. As did selling ads, which was a manual transaction requiring a larger and larger sales force. As with other rising internet properties, people dressed how they wanted, they'd stay up late building code or content and crash at the desk. They ran funny cheeky ads with that yodel - becoming a brand that people knew and many equated to the Internet. We can thank San Francisco's Black Rocket ad agency for that. They grew fast. The founders made several strategic acquisitions and gobbled up nearly every category of the Internet that has each grown to billions of dollars. They bought Four 11 for $95 million in their first probably best acquisition, and used them to create Yahoo! Mail in 1997 and a calendar in 1998. They had over 12 million Yahoo! Email users by he end of the year, inching their way to the same number of AOL users out there. There were other tools like Yahoo Briefcase, to upload files to the web. Now common with cloud storage providers like Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and even Office 365. And contacts and Messenger - a service that would run until 2018. Think of all the messaging apps that have come with their own spin on the service since. 1998 also saw the acquisition of Viaweb, founded by the team that would later create Y Combinator. It was just shy of a $50M acquisition that brought the Yahoo! Store - which was similar to the Shopify of today. They got a $250 million investment from Softbank, bought Yoyodyne, and launched AT&T's WorldNet service to move towards AOL's dialup services. By the end of the year they were closing in on 100 million page views a day. That's a lot of banners shown to visitors. But Microsoft was out there, with their MSN portal at the height of the browser wars. Yahoo! bought Broadcast.com in 1999 saddling the world with Mark Cuban. They dropped $5.7 billion for 300 employees and little more than an ISDN line. Here, they paid over a 100x multiple of annual revenues and failed to transition sellers into their culture. Sales cures all. In his book We Were Yahoo! Jeremy Ring describes the lays much of the blame of the failure to capitalize on the acquisition as not understanding the different selling motion. I don't remember him outright saying it was hubris, but he certainly indicates that it should have worked out and that broadcast.com was could have been what YouTube would become. Another market lost in a failed attempt at Yahoo TV. And yet many of these were trends started by AOL. They also bought GeoCities in 99 for $3.7 billion. Others have tried to allow for fast and easy site development - the no code wysiwyg web. GeoCities lasted until 2009 - a year after Google launched Google Sites. And we have Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, and so many others offering similar services today. As they grew some of the other 130+ search engines at the time folded. The new products continued. The Yahoo Notebook came before Evernote. Imagine your notes accessible to any device you could log into. The more banners shown, the more clicks. Advertisers could experiment in ways they'd never been able to before. They also inked distribution deals, pushing traffic to other site that did things they didn't. The growth of the Internet had been fast, with nearly 100 million people armed with Internet access - and yet it was thought to triple in just the next three years. And even still many felt a bubble was forming. Some, like Google, had conserved cash - others like Yahoo! Had spent big on acquisitions they couldn't monetize into truly adjacent cash flow generating opportunities. And meanwhile they were alienating web properties by leaning into every space that kept eyeballs on the site. By 2000 their stock traded at $118.75 and they were the most valuable internet company at $125 billion. Then as customers folded when the dot-com bubble burst, the stock fell to $8.11 the next year. One concept we talk about in this podcast is a lost decade. Arguably they'd entered into theirs around the time the dot-com bubble burst. They decided to lean into being a media company even further. Again, showing banners to eyeballs was the central product they sold. They brought in Terry Semel in 2001 using over $100 million in stock options to entice him. And the culture problems came fast. Semel flew in a fancy jet, launched television shows on Yahoo! and alienated programmers, effectively creating an us vs them and de-valuing the work done on the portal and search. Work that could have made them competitive with Google Adwords that while only a year old was already starting to eat away at profits. But media. They bought a company called LaunchCast in 2001, charging a monthly fee to listen to music. Yahoo Music came before Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, and even though it was the same year the iPod was released, they let us listen to up to 1,000 songs for free or pony up a few bucks a month to get rid of ads and allow for skips. A model that has been copied by many over the years. By then they knew that paid search was becoming a money-maker over at Google. Overture had actually been first to that market and so Yahoo! Bought them for $1.6 billion in 2003. But again, they didn't integrate the team and in a classic “not built here” moment started Project Panama where they'd spend three years building their own search advertising platform. By the time that shipped the search war was over and executives and great programmers were flowing into other companies all over the world. And by then they were all over the world. 2005 saw them invest $1 billion in a little company called Alibaba. An investment that would accelerate Alibaba to become the crown jewel in Yahoo's empire and as they dwindled away, a key aspect of what led to their final demise. They bought Flickr in 2005 for $25M. User generated content was a thing. And Flickr was almost what Instagram is today. Instead we'd have to wait until 2010 for Instagram because Flickr ended up yet another of the failed acquisitions. And here's something wild to thin about - Stewart Butterfield and Cal Henderson started another company after they sold Flickr. Slack sold to Salesforce for over $27 billion. Not only is that a great team who could have turned Flickr into something truly special, but if they'd been retained and allowed to flourish at Yahoo! they could have continued building cooler stuff. Yikes. Additionally, Flickr was planning a pivot into social networking, right before a time when Facebook would take over that market. If fact, they tried to buy Facebook for just over a billion dollars in 2006. But Zuckerberg walked away when the price went down after the stock fell. They almost bought YouTube and considered buying Apple, which is wild to think about today. Missed opportunities. And Semmel was the first of many CEOs who lacked vision and the capacity to listen to the technologists - in a technology company. These years saw Comcast bring us weather.com, the rise of espn online taking eyeballs away from Yahoo! Sports, Gmail and other mail services reducing reliance on Yahoo! Mail. Facebook, LinkedIn, and other web properties rose to take ad placements away. Even though Yahoo Finance is still a great portal even sites like Bloomberg took eyeballs away from them. And then there was the rise of user generated content - a blog for pretty much everything. Jerry Yang came back to run the show in 2007 then Carol Bartz from 2009 to 2011 then Scott Thompson in 2012. None managed to turn things around after so much lost inertia - and make no mistake, inertia is the one thing that can't be bought in this world. Wisconsin's Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo! In 2012. She was Google's 20th employee who'd risen through the ranks from writing code to leading teams to product manager to running web products and managing not only the layout of that famous homepage but also helped deliver Google AdWords and then maps. She had the pedigree and managerial experience - and had been involved in M&A. There was an immediate buzz that Yahoo! was back after years of steady decline due to incoherent strategies and mismanaged acquisitions. She pivoted the business more into mobile technology. She brought remote employees back into the office. She implemented a bell curve employee ranking system like Microsoft did during their lost decade. They bought Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion. But key executives continued to leave - Tumbler's value dropped, and the stock continued to drop. Profits were up, revenues were down. Investing in the rapidly growing China market became all the rage. The Alibaba investment was now worth more than Yahoo! itself. Half the shares had been sold back to Alibaba in 2012 to fund Yahoo! pursuing the Mayer initiatives. And then there was Yahoo Japan, which continued to do well. After years of attempts, activist investors finally got Yahoo! to spin off their holdings. They moved most of the shares to a holding company which would end up getting sold back to Alibaba for tens of billions of dollars. More missed opportunities for Yahoo! And so in the end, they would get merged with AOL - the two combined companies worth nearly half a trillion dollars at one point to become Oath in 2017. Mayer stepped down and the two sold for less than $5 billion dollars. A roller coaster that went up really fast and down really slow. An empire that crumbled and fragmented. Arguably, the end began in 1998 when another couple of grad students at Stanford approached Yahoo to buy Google for $1M. Not only did Filo tell them to try it alone but he also introduced them to Michael Moritz of Sequoia - the same guy who'd initially funded Yahoo!. That wasn't where things really got screwed up though. It was early in a big change in how search would be monetized. But they got a second chance to buy Google in 2002. By then I'd switched to using Google and never looked back. But the CEO at the time, Terry Semel, was willing to put in $3B to buy Google - who decided to hold out for $5B. They are around a $1.8T company today. Again, the core product was selling advertising. And Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo! In 2008 for over 44 billion dollars to become Bing. Down from the $125 billion height of the market cap during the dot com bubble. And yet they eventually sold for less than four and a half billion in 2016 and went down in value from there. Growth stocks trade at high multiples but when revenues go down the crash is hard and fast. Yahoo! lost track of the core business - just as the model was changing. And yet never iterated it because it just made too much money. They were too big to pivot from banners when Google showed up with a smaller, more bite-sized advertising model that companies could grow into. Along the way, they tried to do too much. They invested over and over in acquisitions that didn't work because they ran off the innovative founders in an increasingly corporate company that was actually trying to pretend not to be. We have to own who we are and become. And we have to understand that we don't know anything about the customers of acquired companies and actually listen - and I mean really listen - when we're being told what those customers want. After all, that's why we paid for the company in the first place. We also have to avoid allowing the market to dictate a perceived growth mentality. Sure a growth stock needs to hit a certain number of revenue increase to stay considered a growth stock and thus enjoy the kind of multiples for market capitalization. But that can drive short term decisions that don't see us investing in areas that don't effectively manipulate stocks. Decisions like trying to keep eyeballs on pages with our own content rather than investing in the user generated content that drove the Web 2.0 revolution. The Internet can be a powerful medium to find information, allow humans to do more with less, and have more meaningful experiences in this life. But just as Yahoo! was engineering ways to keep eyeballs on their pages, the modern Web 2.0 era has engineered ways to keep eyeballs on our devices. And yet what people really want is those meaningful experiences, which happen more when we aren't staring at our screens than when we are. As I look around at all the alerts on my phone and watch, I can't help but wonder if another wave of technology is coming that disrupts that model. Some apps are engineered to help us lead healthier lifestyles and take a short digital detoxification break. Bush's Memex in “As We May Think” was arguably an Apple taken from the tree of knowledge. If we aren't careful, rather than the dream of computers helping humanity do more and free our minds to think more deeply we are simply left with less and less capacity to think and less and less meaning. The Memex came and Yahoo! helped connect us to any content we might want in the world. And yet, like so many others, they stalled in the phase they were at in that deterministic structure that technologies follow. Too slow to augment human labor with machine learning like Google did - but instead too quick to try and do everything for everyone with no real vision other than be everything to everyone. And so the cuts went on slowly for a long time, leaving employees constantly in fear of losing their jobs. As you listen to this if I were to leave a single parting thought - it would be that companies should always be willing to cannibalize their own businesses. And yet we have to have a vision that our teams rally behind for how that revenue gets replaced. We can't fracture a company and just sprawl to become everything for everyone but instead need to be targeted and more precise. And to continue to innovate each product beyond the basic machine learning and into deep learning and beyond. And when we see those who lack that focus, don't get annoyed but instead get stoked - that's called a disruptive opportunity. And if there's someone with 1,000 developers in a space, Nicholas Carlson in his book “Marissa Mayer and the Fight To Save Yahoo!” points out that one great developer is worth a thousand average ones. And even the best organizations can easily turn great developers into average ones for a variety of reason. Again, we can call these opportunities. Yahoo! helped legitimize the Internet. For that we owe them a huge thanks. And we can fast follow their adjacent expansions to find a slew of great and innovative ideas that increased the productivity of humankind. We owe them a huge thanks for that as well. Now what opportunities do we see out there to propel us further yet again?

We’ve been making the UK’s startup podcast since 2017 and this is our 100th episode. To celebrate, we’re doing something a little different and bringing you a bunch of the most powerful stories and insights from some of the amazing guests we’ve had the honour of talking to over the years. In celebration of this milestone, we’re also giving away a pair of Apple Airpod Pros to a lucky Secret Leaders subscriber/follower. Entering is super simple and takes just a few seconds - go to www.secretleaders.com/competition to win.We’ve divided this episode into three sections. In the first, you’ll hear war stories from the founders of some of the world’s biggest unicorns; in the second we share tales of mental health and adversity; and in the third we bring you big ideas. “What I want them to learn from me is to find that thing that really makes you happy, and where you're really creative, because that's what will bring you fulfilment in your life.” From Daniel Schreiber, co-founder of insurance disruptor Lemonade, on how he formulated the product, to Jo Malone talking about growth, to Will Shu, founder of Deliveroo, talking about those early scrappy days when everyone had to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in:“We would do stuff like just hand out flyers in the street. I wore a kangaroo costume too many times. I didn't enjoy wearing the kangaroo costume.”You’ll hear Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack, talking about his company's reaction to the pandemic, former Chief Business Officer for Google X, Mo Gawdat, sharing how even the worst times in our lives can be gateways into something beautiful, and Jason Calcanis, the self-proclaimed ‘greatest angel investor of all time’: “A lot of founders and people have early success. The things that made them successful in that first phase of their career will actually work against them in the second phase.”For all you entrepreneurs out there, don’t miss this ultimate episode, jam packed full of 12 insightful, key takeaways. Download and listen now. We chat about:How to be a disruptorLay the foundations for success The value of happiness, resilience and a culture of opennessDevelop atomic habitsSupport women in business Be humbleLinks:Daniel SchreiberWill ShuJo MaloneCal HendersonNicola KilnerMo GawdatMartha Lane FoxDamien BradfieldJames ClearDebbie WosskowAlain De BottonJason Calcaniswww.secretleaders.com/competitionWant to receive our podcast on a weekly basis? Subscribe to our newsletter!

This week we bring you a special episode that's all about hiring for startups. It's the last episode of this year and we've been busy lining up guests for the next season. In the last four months, we've had 16 guests on the show and we asked many of them about how they look at hiring. This episode features Cal Henderson, the co-founder of Slack, investor and advisor Elad Gil, Rahul Chari, the co-founder of India's largest payments company, Tyler Sloat, the Chief Financial Officer of Freshworks, Yamini Bhat, the co-founder of Vymo, Jose Morales, the Chief Revenue Officer of Freshworks and a few others. We talked about hiring engineering talent, product managers, sales leaders, chief financial officers, and so on. Check out the Freshworks for Startups program, where we give out $10,000 worth of free credits to startups that are looking to engage with their customers better. We also have white-glove onboarding, mentorship, and resources for startups that are part of the program. Sign up for regular updates from The Orbit Shift Podcast.The Orbit Shift Podcast is Powered by Freshworks Inc. a global SaaS company headquartered in San Mateo, California. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. Host and Producer - Jayadevan PKAssistant Producer - Shashwath JAudio Engineer - Rajesh Subramanian  

Last week, Slack and Salesforce announced an acquisition agreement worth $27.7bn (€22.9bn). It's the biggest tech deal of the year and one of the biggest of all time. This week, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson spoke exclusively to technology editor Adrian Weckler about keeping a separate identity, the tech industry, remote working, Ireland's place in the world and other things.

Die wichtigsten News der Startup Szene für alle, die mitreden wollenDie News der Woche:- Kampfansage an Microsoft: Salesforce kauft Slack für 27,7 Mrd Dollar, um die Zukunft der Workforce abbilden zu können- 10 Mrd. Dollar für die deutsche Startup Szene im Zukunftsfonds bewilligt- Die Business Punk Watchlist mit ehemaligen Podcast Gästen wie Alex Giesecke und Max Rellinn- Kolibri Games gewinnt den Fast 50 Award by Deloitte mit einem Wachstum von 12.310,45%- Finn Hänsel's Sanity Group sichert sich Investment von Promis wie Will.i.am, Mario Götze und Klaas Heufer Umlauf- Bastian Krautwald's DeineStudienfinanzierung sichert sich ein Investment von der Fintech Holding Finleap- Elon Musk erhält den Axel Springer Award und nimmt ihn persönlich in Berlin in Empfang- AirBnb plant Börsengang mit einer Bewertung von ca. 35 MrdWichtige Links:- Zum Startup Briefing als Newsletter: https://jungunternehmerpodcast.com/startup-briefing-newsletter-https://jungunternehmerpodcast.comnterview mit Cal Henderson, CTO von Slack: https://jungunternehmerpodcast.com/2020/03/05/cal-henderson-slack-best-of-jungunternehmer-podcast-2/- Das Interview mit Daniel Stammler, Kolibri Games: https://jungunternehmerpodcast.com/2020/08/14/daniel-stammler-kolibri-games-just-create/- Das Interview mit Alexander Giesecke und Nicolai Schork: https://jungunternehmerpodcast.com/2018/05/24/produktivitaets-strategien-fuer-einen-erfolgreicheren-tag-2/- Das Interview mit Max Rellin: https://jungunternehmerpodcast.com/2020/07/29/max-rellin-tellonym-gruendernachwuchs/- Das Interview mit Bastian Krautwald: https://jungunternehmerpodcast.com/2020/05/07/bastian-krautwald-deinestudienfinanzierung-gruendernachwuchs/- Zur neuen Business Punk Ausgabe: https://shop.business-punk.com/de_DE/startseite See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Many of us know that familiar chime. It’s the sound you hear when someone messages you inside a channel on Slack, the business world’s leading communications platform. It’s a sound that has become synonymous with the company, which, as a matter of fact was never supposed to be the platform it has become.  Cal Henderson, the co-founder and CTO of Slack, will tell you that the platform that has helped transform the way distributed workforces operate, was actually originally designed as a simple tool his team used to work on a game they hoped to launch. And when that video game failed to take-off and the team was looking for a way to salvage all of the work they did, they saw a light at the end of the tunnel.“We knew we wanted to keep working together and we realized that the way we had been collaborating and working together while working on this game, the set of tools that we'd built, we realized we always wanted to keep working together in that way. We wanted to use a set of tools like that. And if we did, maybe other small development companies like us would, and so we turned that into the product and that became Slack.”On this episode of IT Visionaries, Cal discusses Slack’s journey. He dives into its initial struggle as a video game developer, and details the pivot they made to turn it into one of the premiere platforms for distributed workforces used around the world. Main TakeawaysPivot! Pivot!: During its infancy, the Slack team was focused on developing a video game. But once they realized the product-market fit wasn’t there, they quickly realized that the tools they were using to communicate were great for collaborating, which led to a complete pivot in the business model. Tweet Tweet: When you’re developing a platform that is built around the user experience, one of the easiest and fastest ways to build a feedback loop is through social media. When Slack wants to get an idea of what issues customers are having in real-time, they look at what users are saying to them on social media. Then, once they have an idea of those pain points, they work with them to rectify those issues.The Office: While more and more employees begin working from home, distributed workforces are only growing. However, that doesn’t mean the physical office is going away. Teams will still use office spaces for collaborating and ideating. The use of platforms such as Slack, serve as tools to amplify those creative sessions.---IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform

Twenty years ago, Cal Henderson was working in London while Stewart Butterfield was making a game called Game Neverending. Henderson, a big fan of the game, broke into the email server to join the internal mailing list of Butterfield's 4 person company. Eventually, Cal convinced Butterfield to hire him.  The game was not going anywhere, so they started focusing on a side project which eventually became Flickr and eventually sold to Yahoo in 2005. The two founders went back to building another gaming company called Glitch. That didn't do well either. Another side project, that helped Glitch manage their remote teams now became the core product. They called it Slack. And the rest is history.  Today Slack has a market cap of almost $15 billion. In the quarter ended April 2020, it pulled in over $200 million in revenues, growing at 49% compared to the year-ago quarter, with a gross margin of 87.3% and a stellar net retention rate of 132%.This episode of The Orbit Shift Podcast brings you a fireside chat between Cal Henderson and Girish Mathrubootham. The two talked about 

In our latest episode, we discuss an early role for Duke Leto himself, Oscar Isaac, the 2011 crime thriller, Drive. Regular hosts Haitch and Jason are joined by the Chief Technology Officer of Slack, Cal Henderson. We cover how sympathetic villains can be, just how hunky Ryan Gosling is, and the dangers of listening to REO Speedwagon while under the influence. Chapters Introduction (00:00:00) Dune News (00:09:57) Roundtable Discussion (00:13:41) Your Letters (01:21:46) Notes and Links There was a Dune (2021) test screening in Arizona. Apparently this has been confirmed. There have been reports of thunderous applause at the end, and that the running time was 2h 10 mins. Check out Secrets of Dune’s Reaction Video Tim O’Reilly’s 1977 biography Frank Herbert See the movies we’ve watched and are going to watch on our Dune Pod Set List on Letterboxd Dune Pod’s Breaking Dune News Twitter list Rate and review the podcast to help others discover it, and let us know what you think of the show at letters@dunepod.com or leave us a voicemail at +1-415-534-5211. Dune Pod: your one stop shop to get fully prepared for the new Dune movie by delving into the books, as well as the films directed by Denis Villeneuve and featuring the cast and crew of the new film. Dune neophytes and historians alike are welcome to join our tribe. Follow @dunepod on Twitter and Instagram Music by Tobey Forsman of Whipsong Music Cover art by @ctcher

The story behind Slack—the communication platform used by millions around the globe—is almost a happy accident. Cal Henderson and his co-founders had been toiling away on a gaming startup, Glitch, when they realized the product of most value within their organization were the tools they'd hacked together to collaborate across locations. That collaboration tool spun off into Slack, which IPOed in 2019 and now has a market cap of over $16 billion. Slack has become more vital than ever in 2020, standing in as our "digital office." Cal shares how to scale an engineering organization, why the role of the office is forever changed, and how to master personal time management.

Overnight, businesses around the world have found themselves faced with a new way of working. Organizations are trying to adjust to this unfamiliar world of remote work and find alternative ways to get things done. In this week's episode, Cal Henderson, co-founder and CTO at Slack, will discuss key aspects of this reformed style of work and how we can emerge stronger – with better methods of collaboration – once it's safe to return to the office. He'll also discuss the implications of this changing landscape on Slack's business.Support the show (https://websummit.com/)

My guest for Episode 118 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & CTO of Slack, Cal Henderson. Cal has co-founded two successful startups, with his co-founder Stewart Butterfield, from the ashes of failed video games. Initially, he co-founded photo sharing application Flickr which was acquired by Yahoo! Today he's Co-founder and CTO of Slack and looks after the technology behind the growing platform. Slack is a team collaboration and communication tool that publicly listed on NYSE in 2019 and has a market cap of $18B (as of June 2020). In this interview we discussed: Managing failure and pivotsThe challenges and opportunities of building out new categoriesDealing with competitors like MicrosoftResponsibility of products like Slack in how their products are usedWhat the future of work may look like in a post COVID world& much more Full interview below! Show notes: FlickrFlickr acquisitionSlackGlitchCal Henderson & Stewart Butterflied (Web 2.0 - 2010)RdioSlack Connect Next interview: Join our next live podcast interview with DHH, the Co-founder & CTO at BasecampDate: 7th July 2020Time: 8-9am (AEDT)Registration link: https://tinyurl.com/Ep119DHH Feedback/connect/say hello: Rohit@startupplaybook.co@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)My Youtube Channel Credits: Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams Other channels: Don't have iTunes? The podcast is also available on Soundcloud & Stitcher Audio Player and now also available on Spotify. https://youtu.be/TpVIeP3BIVY The post Ep118 – Cal Henderson (Co-founder & CTO – Slack) on pivots, product & the future appeared first on Startup Playbook.

My guest for Ep117 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder of Finder, Fred Schebesta. Finder is a global personal finance comparison website, which attracts over 10 million visitors each month, has grown to over 400 staff across six offices, and can be found in over 80 countries. Fred spearheaded the group's venture capital arm, Finder Venture where he thrives in the startup phase of building new business ideas. He led the launch of cryptocurrency brokerage HiveEx.com in 2018, which traded over $100 million in its first year. For the past 2 years, Fred has been leading the group's latest project, the Finder App, which combines personal finance management with comparison. The app launched in March 2020 and has already received over 37K downloads! We covered a range of topics in this interview including: Balancing data driven decisions with gut feelHiring for cultural fit and valuesStructuring growth strategiesBuilding phoenix companies & much more! Full interview below! Show notes: Frank Restuccia (Co-founder at Finder)Topgrading (How to Hire, Coach and Keep A players) by Brad & Geoff SmartFinder AppFred Schebesta (LinkedIn) Join our next live podcast interview with Cal Henderson, the Co-founder & CTO at SlackDate: 30th June 2020Time: 8-9am (AEDT)Registration link: https://tinyurl.com/Ep118Slack Feedback/connect/say hello:Rohit@startupplaybook.co@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)My Youtube Channel Credits:Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams Other channels:Don't have iTunes? The podcast is also available on Soundcloud & Stitcher Audio Player and now also available on Spotify. https://youtu.be/mY4bYS31QY4 The post Ep117 – Fred Schebesta (Co-founder – Finder) on building phoenix companies appeared first on Startup Playbook.

Shelley Trask is the Senior Executive Assistant to Cal Henderson, CTO at Slack in San Francisco. The Slack team does not use email. I love email. Shelley loves Slack. I'm not a big fan of how easy it is for people to get ahold of me via Slack. This should be fun... Shelley talks about what she loves about the EA role, productivity tips, and why Slack doesn't use email internally. She also shares some insider tips on getting the most out – and embracing Slack, and talks about what it's like to work for a fast-growing company.Show notes -> leaderassistant.com/65 The Leader Assistant book -> leaderassistantbook.com Leader Assistant Membership -> members.leaderassistant.com Join the community -> slack.leaderassistant.com or facebook.leaderassistant.com

Today’s guest is someone we’ve had on the show before, in fact, he kicked off season 4 for us. So don’t be confused and think we’ve got our seasons muddled up. We thought we’d invite Cal Henderson back onto the podcast because his company, Slack, is one of only a few companies that aren’t in a tailspin currently. They’re facing an entirely different dilemma - they’re scrambling to keep up with demand, what with the majority of the world now in self-isolation and having to work from home (WFH). “One of the challenges of remote work for folks has always been the boundary between being at work and not being at work. And that's, you know, that's one thing when it's individuals, and [another] when it’s an entire company in one go.”If you’re wanting to hear the story of how Slack started, take a listen here, because we don’t rehash it in this episode. Instead we talk with Cal about Slack’s sudden increase in user numbers, how they’ve responded to the crisis as a global company (they have employees and offices around the world), as well as what decisions they are making with regards the platform and its new features, as well as offering advice to listeners about productivity and how to work productively, when WFH. So if you’re taking five minutes out from juggling your kids and your day job, this episode might be the very tonic you need to get you back into the WFH headspace. “In many ways as a company, we were built for this kind of thing. Like, we didn't start Slack because we thought there'd be some kind of global pandemic that forced people to work from home.”We chat about:Slacks features that enable greater productivityTracking the impact of the virus around the worldHow Slack enables distributed workLooking after your mental health when isolatedThe importance of great internal communications when WFHLinks:https://www.yourheights.com/@stewartWant to receive our podcast on a weekly basis? Subscribe to our newsletter!

How to turn failures into billion-dollar companiesSlack wasn’t founded as Slack, also Flickr wasn’t. Everything started with a game to make better connections via the internet and both companies were founded because of failure.Because Cal Henderson and his Co-Founders couldn’t make the game itself a success they thought about a better idea and business model. They founded Flickr and Slack, one after an other with a few years in between.In the interview Cal tells us more about the details how Slack and Flickr were founded and also which kind of impact the team had. He talked about establishing a certain culture in the company while scaling up to 1000 employees and also where he sees the emerging markets in the future.How will AI help to improve Slack?What will Blockchain do for the world?Is AR / VR relevant in the next few years?That are some of the questions that we focus on in the interview. Definitely worth listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Welcome back to series 4 - what a season have we got lined up for you!Kicking us off is Cal Henderson, co-founder and CTO of one of this decade’s most famous tech companies - the team communications platform the majority of companies couldn’t be without, Slack.But Cal hasn’t always been CTO of Slack, he cut his teeth as co-founder and VP Eng for Glitch, a web-based massively multiplayer game, before that, he was the Director of Engineering for Flickr at Ludicorp (where he first met Slack fellow co-founder Stewart Butterfield) and then Yahoo.As you will shortly hear, Cal is considered to be one of Britain's finest exports. Although it's probably fair to say that he divides people much less than Marmite. Now residing in San Francisco where Slack is headquartered, Cal grew up in the humble county of Bedfordshire, England.After completing a computer science degree from Birmingham City University, he moved to the US in 2003, but not before landing a job after hacking into the email system of the company he wanted to work for and telling his future bosses that he could help them fix the problems they were having.This is a guy who it would appear got lucky, several times over. But in truth, all of Cal’s success has been down to hard work and his first love - computers.“From the first time I got a computer, I was like, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. This is what I want to do for work.”We chat about:How he met Stewart ButterfieldHow he got a job through hacking the company he wanted to work forWhy investors Accel and Andreessen Horowitz didn’t mind them failingHow on Slack launch day they had 8,000 companies sign up to use SlackThe advice he’d give to his 15 year old selfLinks:www.Glitchthegame.comWant to receive our podcast on a weekly basis? Subscribe to our newsletter!

Slack gives teams something new, a home that connects their conversations, information, and software to create the context and shared understanding people need to come together. Slack is a layer of the business technology stack that brings together people, data, and applications – a  single place where people can effectively work together, find important information, and access hundreds  of thousands of critical applications and services to do their best work. The universal challenge for every organisation is to turn groups of individuals moving in many directions  into teams moving in the same direction.​ ​Slack gives teams something new, a home that connects their  conversations, information, and software to create the context and shared understanding people need to  come together.  The company, which went public through a direct listing in June, is now in more than 150 countries, is used by 65 of the Fortune 100 companies and has more than 10 million daily active users. Cal chat's about how he went from game developer to the co-founder of a multi-billion dollar company, his advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, and the future of work. Cal Henderson oversees the engineering organization at Slack. He is an experienced technology leader, having previously built and led the engineering team at Flickr, through its acquisition by Yahoo. As a popular speaker on engineering scalability, he authored the best-selling O’Reilly Media book Building Scalable Websites. He was a pioneer in the use of web APIs, and created the basis for OAuth and oEmbed, now used by YouTube, Twitter, and many others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_API Cal has a BCS from the University of Central England, and was involved in London’s early online community through his work with the early digital community B3ta and his personal blog iamcal.com, which he has run for over 15 years. Cal now resides in San Francisco.

This week on Ep 68 of #OTPBD, we have the Co-founder & CTO of Slack, Cal Henderson. Slack was founded by Stewart Butterfield, Eric Costello, Cal Henderson & Serguei Mourachov. The purpose of Slack is simply helping everyone get their work done. Slack is a one stop communication platform for organisations to work collaboratively and with high efficiency. Cal’s founder journey is definitely one of the adventurous ones. Slack was born out of personal experiences and need felt by the founders themselves. ThTo summarise the making of Slack, the founders were working towards building an online gaming startup and created Flickr along the way. The founders needed to collaborate effectively & communicate from different cities. After realizing that there was no specific platform to do so, they built one themselves. They wanted to make the platform available to public and turned the product into ‘Slack’, as we now know it. Cal is extremely humble and potentially very relatable for other founders. In this podcast, he shares the difficult lessons he learned when his gaming startup failed. They had to lay off 40-50 employees in the process, which is one of the toughest struggles of being a startup founder. He says: It was our own fault; we were unable to turn our vision into reality. He stresses on how crucial it is for organisations to adapt to change and be agile. He shares his take on IPOs, organisational transparency, future challenges for Slack, Australian startups ecosystem, strategic alignment and much more.This is an incredible startup journey and we are so grateful to have Cal on #OTPBD. Tune in now to dive deep into the insider story of a multi-billion-dollar tech giant!

Workplace chat and collaboration technology company Slack is going public on Thursday, with implications for a wide variety of companies in the Seattle region and beyond. Microsoft is Slack’s primary competitor with its Teams service, and Slack is a big Amazon Web Services customer. And many companies that sell technologies to businesses will be watching Slack’s stock market debut closely to assess their own potential in the public markets. So how does Slack work behind the scenes? On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re featuring a conversation with a co-founder of Slack, Cal Henderson, the company’s chief technology officer, recorded during the recent GeekWire Cloud Summit.

Podcasts erreichen Menschen auf einer neuen Ebene, bauen Vertrauen auf und binden Zuhörer. Fabian Tausch ist Gründer des Jungunternehmer-Podcasts und der Podcast Consulting Firma Meucci Media in Berlin. Er sagt: „Um dir Zeit auf dem Weg zum Erfolg zu sparen, lerne von erfolgreichen Leuten“. Nach sechs Wochen brach er sein Studium ab und entschied sich Deutsche Gründer wie Daniel Kraus von Flixbus und internationale Persönlichkeiten, wie Cal Henderson von Slack & Flickr oder Scott Chacon von Github zu interviewen. Mittlerweile hat er über 100 Gäste interviewt und sein Podcast erreichte mehr als 1.000.000 Zuhörer.

Cal Henderson is really into shoes, currently owning about 100 different pairs. His criteria is whatever looks cool to him, and he makes a point of wearing all his shoes instead of merely collecting them. Cal's favorite shoes, special edition of Nike Air Max 97s shoes and keyboard https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/8/8902c1c9-f2fa-4d62-89a4-5ff690afde35/4Df68EJe.jpeg Cal's storage solution where he's currently got about 100 pairs of shoes (every cubby is now filled) cal's-collection https://uploads.fireside.fm/images/8/8902c1c9-f2fa-4d62-89a4-5ff690afde35/Vm7V3VH6.jpg

Slack wasn't founded as Slack, also Flickr wasn't. Everything started with a game to make better connections via the internet and both companies were founded because of failure. In the interview Cal tells us more about the details how Slack and Flickr were founded and also which kind of impact the team had. He talked about establishing a certain culture in the company while scaling up to 1000 employees and also where he sees the emerging markets in the future. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Slack co-founder Cal Henderson and his collaborator Stewart Butterfield started out with the aim of creating a successful video game but ended up doing something completely different. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Sunday Times' tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Cal Henderson, co-founder and CTO of Slack, the wildly popular business messaging platform, on founding photo sharing company Flickr (2:30), its ill-fated sale to Yahoo (6:00), starting again (9:00), the accident that became Slack (10:30), being a unicorn (14:30), his early days in London (17:00), learning to be an optimist (19:15), why he's not worried by Microsoft (21:00), 'Calloween' (25:00), the power of emojis (28:00), what's it's like to be personally worth hundreds of millions of dollars (32:45) and loving Lego (34:00). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.