A dialog with Lidiane Jones about Slack’s future
In a flurry of exercise on the finish of final 12 months, Salesforce introduced that co-CEO Bret Taylor was stepping down. Shortly thereafter, Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield introduced his exit. We might quickly study that his alternative can be Lidiane Jones, who on the time was GM of Commerce Cloud, Advertising and marketing Cloud and Expertise Cloud at Salesforce.
Whereas Jones was working primarily the whole B2C enterprise with that title, she was comparatively unknown within the business. But she introduced along with her a deep background that included greater than a dozen years at Microsoft and virtually 4 years at Sonos, all of which helped her construct a eager understanding of software program and product improvement.
To make sure, she was strolling right into a tough state of affairs changing a beloved founder-CEO, whereas looking for methods to bridge the hole between Salesforce and Slack. On the similar time these executives have been leaving, Salesforce as an organization was coping with a slew of activist buyers. One in every of their major complaints was a scarcity of integration between the core Salesforce merchandise and the corporate’s costly acquisitions over the past a number of years.
Of these, Slack was by far the costliest at a whopping $28 billion. The hope was to carry the platform into the fold and have or not it’s the communications layer throughout the whole Salesforce household of merchandise. Salesforce has thus far accomplished some integrations between the 2 platforms however not sufficient to fulfill critics.
On the similar time, Jones nonetheless should defend the independence of Slack as a result of it will possibly’t be perceived as being so tightly built-in into Salesforce that it will possibly’t function outdoors of the ecosystem.
No one claimed the job was going to be simple.
TechCrunch+ sat down with Jones just lately on the Salesforce workplaces in Boston to debate how her transition goes to this point and what challenges she faces as she dives into job.
Welcome aboard
Not lengthy earlier than Jones took over as CEO, The Info ran an expose suggesting that the connection between the 2 firms was broken. The report additionally said that Marc Benioff and Butterfield butted heads, the deal was Taylor’s child, and with Taylor and Butterfield gone, Benioff was much less excited by it, some extent that Jones disputes now.