Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield leaving Salesforce two years after deal

Salesforce mentioned on Monday that Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield is leaving the corporate. He’ll get replaced by Lidiane Jones, an govt vice chairman at Salesforce who joined in 2019.

Butterfield’s introduced departure comes days after Salesforce mentioned co-CEO Bret Taylor was stepping down only a 12 months after being promoted to the share the highest job with Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder.

Benioff knowledgeable workers on a name on Monday that Butterfield was leaving, in line with individuals acquainted with the matter who requested to not be named as a result of they weren’t licensed to talk on the document. Salesforce acquired Slack for about $27 billion final 12 months, its largest buy ever. The deal was introduced in late 2020.

“Stewart is an unbelievable chief who created an incredible, beloved firm in Slack,” an organization spokesperson informed CNBC in a press release. “He has helped lead the profitable integration of Slack into Salesforce and right this moment Slack is woven into the Salesforce Buyer 360 platform. Stewart additionally was instrumental in selecting Lidiane Jones as the subsequent Slack CEO to guide 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 vice chairman accountable for advertising, model and communications, the individuals acquainted mentioned. Noah Weiss, senior vice chairman of product at Slack, will change Yehoshua, Butterfield mentioned in a Slack message to all Salesforce workers that CNBC seen.

Jones spent over 12 years at Microsoft, earlier than leaving to hitch Sonos in 2015. She’s been at Salesforce since 2019 and is at present govt vice chairman and normal 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 an internet online game named Glitch. The sport did not change 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 accessible to the general public as Slack in 2014.

It grew shortly, mobilizing Microsoft. When Microsoft launched Groups in 2016, Slack took out an advert within the New York Instances to welcome Microsoft to the market.

“I am not going to do something entrepreneurial,” Butterfield wrote within the Slack message. “As I mentioned in my announcement to Slack staff, lately my fantasies are about gardening. As hackneyed as it’d 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 usually put time into these issues which [are] tougher to do when one is main a big group).”

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

Butterfield mentioned 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