Slack’s Butterfield to Go away Salesforce in Exodus of Leaders

(Bloomberg) — Stewart Butterfield, chief government officer of Salesforce Inc.’s Slack, is leaving the corporate, one other blow to the software program big that has seen an exodus of executives not too long ago.

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Two different veteran Slack executives additionally will depart, shaking up the division that Salesforce bought a 12 months in the past for greater than $27 billion in its largest acquisition.

Butterfield’s departure follows the announcement final week that Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor would go away the corporate on the finish of subsequent month. Butterfield, who was seen as a doable successor to Taylor, additionally will depart in January, the corporate mentioned.

In a memo to employees, Butterfield mentioned his departure is unrelated to Taylor’s. “Planning has been within the works for a number of months,” Butterfield wrote. “Bizarre timing!” Slack Chief Product Officer Tamar Yehoshua and Senior Vice President Jonathan Prince may even go away the corporate, Butterfield wrote.

Butterfield “is an unbelievable chief who created a tremendous, beloved firm in Slack,” a Salesforce spokesperson mentioned. “He has helped lead the profitable integration of Slack into Salesforce.” The corporate declined to touch upon the departures of Yehoshua and Prince. Enterprise Insider earlier reported Butterfield’s exit.

Lidiane Jones will succeed Butterfield as CEO at Slack, the spokesperson mentioned. Jones most not too long ago served as government vp of Salesforce’s expertise cloud, commerce cloud and advertising cloud items and labored for Sonos Inc. and Microsoft Corp. earlier than becoming a member of Salesforce in 2019. Butterfield was “instrumental in selecting” her as the subsequent CEO, the spokesperson mentioned.

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Butterfield’s exit “is a threat for the corporate, given different high-profile government departures up to now few months,” Anurag Rana, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, wrote in a notice. “This might put extra stress on CEO and founder Marc Benioff to guarantee buyers that the corporate nonetheless has a deep bench of leaders that may revive natural progress, which has seen regular decline up to now few quarters.”

Salesforce is combating slowing progress and rising stress from buyers to enhance revenue. The corporate final week projected income progress of 8% to 10% within the present interval — which might could be the slowest year-over-year enhance since Salesforce went public in 2004.

The corporate additionally has been working to additional combine different massive acquisitions, Mulesoft and Tableau, right into a cohesive platform of providers. Tableau, which Salesforce purchased in 2019 for $15 billion, has seen the same thinning of government ranks not too long ago. On Friday, Mark Nelson, the CEO of the unit, introduced he would go away the corporate, somewhat over a 12 months after Adam Selipsky, who ran Tableau on the time of the Salesforce’s buy, left to guide Amazon.com Inc’s cloud-computing division. Tableau Chief Advertising and marketing Officer Jackie Yeaney and and Chief Knowledge Officer Wendy Turner-Williams additionally left in current months.

(Updates with feedback from Butterfield’s memo starting within the fourth paragraph.)

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