Salesforce's much-buzzed-about deal to acquire Slack for $28 billion goes back a decade, when Friendfeed founder Bret Taylor met Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield. Now Taylor is Salesforce's president, while Butterfield runs Slack. In this episode, Taylor talks about how the pandemic helped the two friends bring their businesses together, and what a Salesfo ... Show More
Oct 29
Maria Ressa on how to save democracy from Big Tech
When truth is under attack, how do you fight back? Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa has spent years confronting disinformation and political pressure through her news organization, Rappler. In conversation with Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, Ressa explores the cris ... Show More
25m 24s
Oct 27
Eric Schmidt scores US vs. China: who’s winning the AI race?
The AI race between the US and China is the defining competition of our age. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, advisor to the Pentagon, and current CEO of Relativity Space joins Rapid Response live from Masters of Scale Summit to give his most unvarnished assessment yet. He rev ... Show More
26m 34s
Jul 2018
Slack & Flickr: Stewart Butterfield
In the early 2000s, Stewart Butterfield tried to build a weird, massively multiplayer online game, but the venture failed. Instead, he and his co-founders used the technology they developed to create the photo-sharing site Flickr. After Flickr was acquired by Yahoo in 2005, Butte ... Show More
1h 7m
May 2025
Undoing a $5 Billion Acquisition and Building a Durable Standalone Plaid (with Plaid CEO Zach Perret)
We sit down with Zach Perret, CEO of Plaid, to discuss the remarkable journey of Plaid and the broader fintech landscape over the past several years. Zach takes us blow-by-blow through journey of almost getting acquired by Visa, the challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic… ... Show More
59m 7s
<p><!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p><a href="https://twitter.com/stewart">Stewart Butterfield</a> is the Founder & CEO @ <a href="https://slack.com/">Slack</a>, the leading channel-based messaging platform, used by millions to align their teams, unify their systems and drive their bu ... Show More