But in recent months, the stocks of the ride-hailing firms Lyft and Uber have fizzled after their initial public offerings, raising questions about whether other tech companies would meet the same fate.
This year was supposed to be a banner one for tech public offerings.
Slack’s public listing carries particular significance now. “A quiet period for him is probably more unnatural than it is for most,” Jennifer Rubio, co-founder of luggage startup Away and Butterfield’s fiancée, said of him. And Slack has taken an extremely conservative approach to going public, even telling investors to avoid “liking” tweets about the company. He declined to speak with The New York Times for this article, citing his company’s quiet period ahead of its listing. That has meant that Butterfield has tried to avoid media for the last year. With his company last valued at $7.1 billion, serving more than 88,000 paying customers and employing more than 1,500 workers, he is adapting to life as someone who will soon be openly subject to scrutiny from Wall Street, regulators and others. So it was a signal of how much had changed when Butterfield, 46, tweeted last month that he missed the days when “pretty much no one paid attention to me so I could say whatever I wanted and not worry about it.”īutterfield has had to button up his mouthiness as Slack, which he co-founded in 2009, prepares to go public on June 20. And he has tweeted expletive-laden opinions about President Donald Trump, as well as emoji-heavy messages ruminating on the cosmos. On another occasion, Butterfield bought a snarky full-page newspaper ad to taunt a rival, Microsoft. SAN FRANCISCO - Stewart Butterfield, chief executive of the workplace collaboration app Slack, once offended Robert De Niro at an awards event with an irreverent comment, prompting the actor to curse at him from the stage. Butterfield has had to button up his mouthiness as Slack, which he co-founded in 2009, prepares to go public on June 20, 2019. FILE - Stewart Butterfield, Slack's chief executive, at the company's offices in San Francisco, Feb.
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