Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield leaving Salesforce two years after deal

Salesforce stated Monday that Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield is leaving the corporate. He’ll be succeeded by Lidiane Jones, an government vp at Salesforce who joined in 2019.

Butterfield’s introduced departure comes days after Salesforce stated co-CEO Bret Taylor was stepping down only a yr after being promoted to share the highest job with Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder.

Benioff knowledgeable workers on a name on Monday that Butterfield was leaving, in response to individuals accustomed to the matter who requested to not be named as a result of they weren’t approved to talk on the document. Salesforce acquired Slack for about $27 billion final yr, its largest buy ever. The deal was introduced in late 2020.

“Stewart is an unbelievable chief who created a tremendous, beloved firm in Slack,” an organization spokesperson advised CNBC in an announcement. “He has helped lead the profitable integration of Slack into Salesforce and at the moment Slack is woven into the Salesforce Buyer 360 platform. Stewart additionally was instrumental in selecting Lidiane Jones as the following Slack CEO to steer it into its subsequent chapter. Lidiane has a powerful background in buyer and enterprise tech and has been amongst Salesforce’s management for over three years. We’re grateful for Stewart and excited for Lidiane as she takes over the reins of Slack.”

Tamar Yehoshua, Slack’s product chief, may also depart, together with Jonathan Prince, senior vp answerable for advertising, model and communications, the individuals acquainted stated. Noah Weiss, senior vp of product at Slack, will succeed Yehoshua, Butterfield stated in a Slack message to all Salesforce workers that CNBC considered.

Jones spent greater than 12 years at Microsoft, earlier than leaving to hitch Sonos in 2015. She’s been at Salesforce since 2019 and is at the moment government vp and common supervisor of digital expertise clouds.

Butterfield initially labored with the opposite co-founder of Slack, Cal Henderson, at photo-sharing web site Flickr, which Yahoo acquired in 2005. In 2009 the 2 males based Tiny Speck as they sought to construct a web based online game named Glitch. The sport did not develop into a world-beating hit and Tiny Speck shut it down. Tiny Speck had developed software program workers had used to construct Glitch, and the startup made the software program out there to the general public as Slack in 2014.

It grew rapidly, mobilizing Microsoft. When Microsoft launched Groups in 2016, Slack took out an advert in The New York Occasions to welcome Microsoft to the market.

“I am not going to do something entrepreneurial,” Butterfield wrote within the Slack message. “As I stated in my announcement to Slack group, as of late my fantasies are about gardening. As hackneyed as it would sound, I actually am going to spend extra time with my household (in addition to work on some private tasks, give attention to well being and customarily put time into these issues which [are] more durable to do when one is main a big group).”

In March 2020 Butterfield met with Taylor and advised him Slack wished to accumulate Quip, the productiveness app Taylor bought to Salesforce in 2016, from Salesforce. Months later, Taylor advised Butterfield that whereas Salesforce wasn’t thinking about promoting Quip to Slack, Salesforce was thinking about shopping for Slack.

Butterfield stated that the management modifications at Slack weren’t associated to the announcement of Taylor’s resignation from final week. “We have been planning this for some time,” Butterfield wrote.

WATCH: Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff on Bret Taylor’s departure from the corporate