According to the owner of Salesforce, Stewart Butterfield, co-founder, and CEO of Slack Technologies will step down from his position in January.
Butterfield played a key role in the company’s expansion over the past few years and assisted in establishing Slack as a platform for corporate communication during its early formation in 2013. Salesforce purchased Slack for $27.7 billion in December 2020, becoming the app’s largest owner.
Days after Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor announced he would leave the firm, the co-founder left. The Wall Street Journal claims that Taylor was a key player in the deal to purchase Slack last year.
Taylor’s resignation is unrelated to Butterfield’s leaving, he told staff, adding that “Planning has been on for a while now! merely odd timing “based on the Verge.
1/ Today is a new and exciting day for me, @SlackHQ and @salesforce. I am proud to be named Slack's new CEO, accepting the baton from the thoughtful and innovative found @stewart. In true Slack fashion, here's a 🧵on my thoughts.
— Lidiane Jones (@LidianeJones) December 5, 2022
Next year, the business will bring in Lidiane Jones, the current executive VP and GM of digital experience clouds, to take over for Butterfield. Slack’s leadership and functionality have stayed mostly the same since Salesforce acquired the company.
Slack was founded by exceptional leader Stewart, according to a statement from a Salesforce representative. As a result of his leadership, Slack has been successfully integrated into the Salesforce Customer 360 platform.
The spokesman continued, “Stewart also had a significant role in selecting Lidiane Jones as the next CEO of Slack to guide the company towards its next chapter. “Lidiane has been a member of Salesforce’s leadership for more than three years and has solid expertise in enterprise and customer technology. We are appreciative of Stewart and anticipating Lidiane’s leadership of Slack.”
In an internal communication, Butterfield stated that his priorities will be “learning new things” and spending time with his family. The millionaire businessman previously co-founded Flickr, a photo-sharing platform that Yahoo acquired.
