Twitter/X

Garry Tan calls the a16z/Ben Horowitz account of Slack's origin “inspiring and…

2026-08-07 · 12:19 UTC ·@garrytan ·1 min read

Brief

Garry Tan praises an a16z/Ben Horowitz retelling of how a game studio turned its last $6 million into Slack, calling the story inspiring and urging founders to sample broadly because demand’s “surface area” is effectively infinite. The cited 2016 UC Berkeley anecdote quotes Stewart choosing to productize an internal chat tool with Horowitz’s reluctant blessing.

Why it matters

Garry Tan calls the a16z/Ben Horowitz account of Slack's origin “inspiring and prescient,” arguing that the “surface area of things that the people really want is infinite” and that tenacity in sampling opportunities lets you “create your own luck.”

Key details

  • a16z quotes Ben Horowitz recounting Stewart (Butterfield) saying he had $6 million left and three choices—keep trying, shut down and return the $6M, or release an internal engineering chat tool as a product—told at UC Berkeley in 2016; Horowitz replied, “$6 million is not gonna make any difference in my life. If you really think it’s a good idea, go ahead.”
Source evidence

This is a great story and frankly inspiring and prescient

The surface area of things that the people really want is infinite, just large and requires tenacity in sampling it

You can create your own luck if you keep stories like this close to your heart

a16z (@a16z)

.@bhorowitz on how a game studio turned it's last $6 million into Slack:

"Stewart calls me. He says, 'Ben, I've got $6 million left. I have no way to raise money because I've made really no progress. So I've got three choices. I can pray for rain and try and finish it, I can shut down the company and give you your $6 million back, or we built this tool that we use in our engineering team to communicate with each other, and I could just put that out as a product.'"

"I'm like, 'What? You just built some tool to talk to each other and you want to put that out as a product? And you're a consumer guy, and you want to become an enterprise software guy?'"

"$6 million is not gonna make any difference in my life. If you really think it's a good idea, go ahead."

Ben Horowitz Talks Honesty, Failure, and Secrets at UC Berkeley (2016)

Video

— https://nitter.net/a16z/status/2085518489700421954#m