Stewart Butterfield, Slack CEO And Cofounder, Is Stepping Down In Salesforce Departure

Stewart Butterfield, the CEO of popular messaging platform Slack—a product he cofounded in 2013 but exploded in use during the pandemic, defining for many a new way of communicating amid the shift to remote work—plans to step down as CEO, departing Salesforce, the software giant that acquired Slack last year.

The news, first reported by Insider comes just days after Salesforce announced that co-CEO Bret Taylor would be stepping down from that joint leadership role in January, making Salesforce cofounder and co-CEO Marc Benioff both chairman and sole CEO again.

In an internal Slack announcement, Butterfield said the two moves were not related, according to Insider. “FWIW: This has nothing to do with Bret's departure. Planning has been in the works for several months! Just weird timing.”

A company spokesperson would not confirm the internal message’s contents or Butterfield’s departure timing, but shared an emailed statement. “Stewart is an incredible leader who created an amazing, beloved company in Slack. He has helped lead the successful integration of Slack into Salesforce and today Slack is woven into the Salesforce Customer 360 platform,” the statement read, noting Butterfield was “instrumental in choosing Lidiane Jones as the next Slack CEO to lead it into its next chapter.”

Jones, an executive vice president of experience cloud, commerce cloud and marketing cloud units, has been with Salesforce since 2019 and previously worked for Sonos and Microsoft MSFT .

The news follows a third quarter earnings report from Salesforce in which it announced Taylor’s departure and missed analysts’ expectations for billings amid reports of growing caution by customers of business software companies.

In an interview with Forbes Oct. 20, Butterfield did not hint at a coming departure, but spoke about the integration with Salesforce and his own vision for the future of Slack.

Asked about the biggest challenge of the integration, he noted the departures of members of Slack’s management team as the two companies merged.

“I think I didn't really realize how reliant I was, especially on the [general counsel] and the CFO CFO . They were more than support for the organization,” he told Forbes. “They were good partners in thinking about strategy and culture and all of that. So that was harder than I would have thought, in retrospect.”

And, speaking about tech enhancements he could see in the future, Butterfield told Forbes “it's not a specific feature, but I want to have a huddle on a canvas [referring to Slack’s audio and video chat feature and new collaborative “surface” tool for teams to organize resources]. ... It's not a specific feature, but I want to have a huddle on a canvas [referring to Slack’s audio and video chat feature and new collaborative “surface” tool for teams to organize resources].”

In the internal message published by Insider, Butterfield shared that that chief product officer Tamar Yehoshua and Jonathan Prince, Slack’s senior vice president for marketing, brand & communications, were also leaving the company, and gave the following explanation about “why” he was stepping down. “Though it may sounds [sic] hackneyed, I actually am going to spend more time with my family. We have a new baby coming in January. Can I tell you something? I fantasize about gardening. So I'm going to work on some personal projects, focus on health, and try to learn as many new things as I can.”