Stewart Butterfield, CEO of Salesforce-owned chat service Slack, is leaving the company, a surprise move that comes just days after Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor announced his resignation.
Butterfield announced the news in a Slack message to the #all-salesforce channel on Monday, calling the timing with Taylor’s departure a “weird” coincidence.
“I’m not going to do anything entrepreneurial,” Butterfield wrote in the note, which was viewed by Coins2Day, adding that he plans to spend more time with family, gardening, and focusing on his health and personal projects. Insider first reported the news of Butterfield’s departure.
Lidiane Jones, a VP at Salesforce, will be taking over as the new Slack CEO next month, Butterfield said.
The string of departures raises more questions about Salesforce’s senior management team and its plans to groom a potential successor to founder and CEO Marc Benioff. Salesforce shares were down more than 4% in midday trading on Monday.
Tamar Yehoshua, Slack’s CPO, and Jonathan Prince, the company’s SVP of marketing, brand, and communications, are also leaving along with Butterfield. And last week, the day after Taylor announced his exit from Salesforce, the CEO of Tableau Software, a data visualization company also owned by Salesforce, announced his plans to depart the company.
“Though the time here is coincidental (there’s also no relation to Bret’s announcement; we’ve been planning this for a while),” Butterfield wrote, adding that Noah Weiss, SVP of product, will become the new CPO.
“That’s not to say there won’t be challenges ahead. We’re at a time with an unusual amount of economic uncertainty, and there’s no doubt that makes things harder,” Butterfield wrote. “But in nearly 25 years leading this company, Marc has successfully steered Salesforce through the two biggest economic downturns in modern history, and I know he’ll do it again.”