- Stewart Butterfield, who was hired by Salesforce as part of the Slack acquisition, announced his departure on Monday.
- In a deal that was completed in mid-2021, Salesforce acquired Slack for around $27 billion.
- Bret Taylor, Salesforce’s co-CEO, resigned last week, shortly before Butterfield’s departure.
Founder and CEO of Slack Stewart Butterfield are leaving the firm, according to a statement from Salesforce on Monday.
Lidiane Jones, an executive vice president who joined Salesforce in 2019, will take his place as his successor.
Only a year after being promoted to share the top position with Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff, Butterfield’s resignation was revealed just days prior.
According to people with knowledge of the situation who declined to be identified because they were not permitted to speak publicly, Benioff notified staff members by a phone call on Monday that Butterfield would be leaving.
The largest purchase Salesforce has ever made was Slack, which it acquired for nearly $27 billion last year. Later in 2020, the agreement was announced.
According to a company spokeswoman, Stewart “is an exceptional leader who developed a wonderful, beloved company in Slack.
“Slack is now seamlessly integrated into the Salesforce Customer 360 platform thanks in part to his leadership in driving this successful integration.
In addition, Lidiane Jones’ selection as the next CEO of Slack to guide the company into its future was made possible in large part by Stewart.
Lidiane, a member of Salesforce’s leadership for more than three years, has a solid foundation in both customer and corporate technology.
As Lidiane assumes control of Slack, we are grateful to Stewart and enthusiastic about her.
Jonathan Prince, senior vice president in charge of marketing, brand, and communications, as well as Tamar Yehoshua, Slack’s product leader, will both go, according to the sources with knowledge of the situation.
According to a Slack message Butterfield sent to every Salesforce employee that CNBC saw, Noah Weiss, senior vice president of product at Slack, will take over for Yehoshua.
Prior to leaving Microsoft in 2015 to work for Sonos, Jones worked there for more than 12 years.
She has been working at Salesforce since 2019, and she is currently the executive vice president and general manager of the cloud-based digital experience.
At Flickr, a service for sharing photos that Yahoo purchased in 2005, Butterfield first collaborated with Slack’s other co-founder, Cal Henderson.
While attempting to create the online video game Glitch, the two men formed Tiny Speck in 2009.
Tiny Speck shut down the game because it wasn’t a worldwide smash hit. In 2014, the startup Tiny Speck released Slack, a product that was based on the software that its staff had created to create Glitch.
Rapid growth caused Microsoft to mobilise. Slack ran a New York Times commercial to welcome Microsoft to the market when it introduced Teams in 2016.
According to Butterfield’s Slack message, “I’m not going to do anything entrepreneurial.” “These days, as I mentioned in my Slack team announcement, gardening is the subject of my fantasies.
As cliché as it may sound, I actually am going to spend more time with my family (along with working on some personal projects, putting more emphasis on my health, and generally making time for those things that are tougher to do when one is heading a major business).
Taylor and Butterfield had a meeting in March 2020 at which Butterfield informed Taylor that Slack wanted to buy Quip, the productivity tool Taylor had sold to Salesforce in 2016, from Salesforce.
Years later, Taylor informed Butterfield that although Salesforce was not interested in selling Quip to Slack, it was interested in acquiring Slack.
According to Butterfield, the announcement of Taylor’s resignation from last week had nothing to do with the Slack leadership changes. According to Butterfield, “We’ve been preparing for this for a while.”