Andrei’s great—and kind of an open book. I’ve learned so much from him about building a distributed team and adapting when faced with hurdles.

Plus, he’s willing to up-end any approach, just to see if something else works better. He’s perhaps the most software-agnostic guy I’ve met. Part of this, I think, relates to him trying out so many new products—in part to support other founders.

I look upon the chat between Stewart and Andrei as an interesting historic document. Of course Stewart and his colleagues needed to check out the competition. That said, I know that selling the idea at the time was really difficult, with Kato.

From what Andrei tells me, VCs largely didn’t believe in their vision for chat replacing email. A while after this interaction, those same VCs were all on Slack.

If I were Andrei, I’d still be a little sore about that. He takes it differently, though, and knows it’s part of the deal. I think that’s pretty admirable.

BTW: If you want another way to pay it forward, feel free to sign up on http://www.officehours.io as an advisor.