Is there a right way to shut down a business?

Date

May 26, 2020

Category

Economy

Author

Pradyumna Nag

Reading Time

3 mins

A game developer, after raising funding, goes bust as it fails to attract users. However, an internal tool they were able to salvage is worth $18Bn today. Is there really a right way to even shut down?

In 2010, Tiny Speck raised $7M from Andreessen Horowitz & Accel to develop a game called ‘Glitch’ which launched in Sep 2011.|

In Nov 2011, it was rolled back due to accessibility & depth issues.

In Dec 2012, it was officially shut down.

The team sat down dejected and lamented at all their effort for over 3 years wasted.|

Their CEO called in the team and gave them the bad news and had to let most of the team go.|

All the while they continued to use their internal communications tool - an internal tool they had built to help them better manage communication & collaboration.

Someone joked if that tool may have been the most valuable thing they had built.

Áha!

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The tool was called "Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge".

Or Slack in short.

Slack was launched from the ashes of Glitch in Aug 2013.

In 2019, when they went public, they surpassed 10 million DAU.

They listed at a valuation of $23Bn.

57.5x their ARR.

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