Stewart Butterfield speaks on November 08, 2019 in San Francisco, California.
Phillip Faraone | Getty Visuals
Salesforce stated on Monday that Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield is leaving the firm. He’ll be replaced by Lidiane Jones, an executive vice president at Salesforce who joined in 2019.
Butterfield’s declared departure will come days immediately after Salesforce said co-CEO Bret Taylor was stepping down just a year after remaining promoted to the share the top rated career with Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder.
Benioff informed workers on a call on Monday that Butterfield was leaving, in accordance to folks common with the make a difference who questioned not to be named since they were not licensed to discuss on the history. Salesforce obtained Slack for about $27 billion final year, its major buy at any time. The deal was announced in late 2020.
“Stewart is an extraordinary leader who developed an incredible, beloved enterprise in Slack,” a firm spokesperson explained to CNBC in a assertion. “He has helped guide the effective integration of Slack into Salesforce and currently Slack is woven into the Salesforce Client 360 platform. Stewart also was instrumental in picking out Lidiane Jones as the following Slack CEO to direct it into its subsequent chapter. Lidiane has a robust background in purchaser and organization tech and has been amid Salesforce’s management for above 3 a long time. We are grateful for Stewart and fired up for Lidiane as she will take in excess of the reins of Slack.”
Tamar Yehoshua, Slack’s products chief, will also depart, together with Jonathan Prince, senior vice president in cost of promoting, model and communications, the men and women familiar said. Noah Weiss, senior vice president of item at Slack, will change Yehoshua, Butterfield stated in a Slack message to all Salesforce staff members that CNBC viewed.
Jones spent over 12 several years at Microsoft, prior to leaving to join Sonos in 2015. She’s been at Salesforce due to the fact 2019 and is now executive vice president and common supervisor of digital practical experience clouds.
Butterfield initially labored with the other co-founder of Slack, Cal Henderson, at image-sharing web site Flickr, which Yahoo obtained in 2005. In 2009 the two guys founded Small Speck as they sought to build an on the web video clip activity named Glitch. The recreation unsuccessful to become a environment-beating hit and Small Speck shut it down. Little Speck experienced made application workforce experienced used to establish Glitch, and the startup built the program out there to the general public as Slack in 2014.
It grew promptly, mobilizing Microsoft. When Microsoft released Groups in 2016, Slack took out an advert in the New York Occasions to welcome Microsoft to the sector.
“I am not likely to do something entrepreneurial,” Butterfield wrote in the Slack information. “As I said in my announcement to Slack staff, these days my fantasies are about gardening. As hackneyed as it may well seem, I genuinely am likely to devote a lot more time with my family (as nicely as operate on some particular projects, emphasis on well being and typically set time into all those points which [are] tougher to do when a single is main a substantial group).”
In March 2020 Butterfield achieved with Taylor and advised him Slack wished to get Quip, the productivity application Taylor offered to Salesforce in 2016, from Salesforce. Months later on, Taylor informed Butterfield that although Salesforce was not interested in selling Quip to Slack, Salesforce was interested in obtaining Slack.
Butterfield explained that the management modifications at Slack had been not linked to the announcement of Taylor’s resignation from previous week. “We’ve been arranging this for a while,” Butterfield wrote.
Look at: Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff on Bret Taylor’s departure from the corporation
