💃 Salesforce's Slack CEO is Leaving for Bumble🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Once a jewel 💎 of Salesforce acquisitions, Slack has struggled to find a happy place within the Salesforce family 💔.

On Monday 11/6, you were reminded some families are destined for turmoil. Slack CEO, Lidiane Jones, is departing for Bumble.

😳 

Back in December 2022, with her excellent track record as an executive leading some of Salesforce’s core cloud offerings, her appointment as CEO of Slack was applauded internally, and by industry analysts.

So why, after 4 years of progressive leadership roles at Salesforce, is Lidiane departing?

And less than one year after the original Slack CEO, Stewart Butterfield, left Salesforce 😬.

Should we be worried 😟? First, let’s dive deeper ⬇️

Agenda for today includes

• Salesforce's Slack CEO is Leaving for Bumble

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

Salesforce's Slack CEO is Leaving for Bumble

Today we will discuss-

💃 Timeline of Slack Events 🕺

💃 What’s Going On? 🕺

💃 What’s Next? 🕺

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A BRIEF PROFILE OF SLACK

Searchable Log of All Communication and Knowledge

Back in 2013, the video game developer Tiny Speck was working on their newest online game “Glitch.”

During the development of Glitch, the engineering team desired an internal communication tool that eventually outgrew its original purpose.

Understanding they were on to something, Tiny Speck pivoted from video games to building out Slack as a standalone tool.

It quickly gained traction as the premier communications platform for tech teams 👑.

Despite Goliath competition from Microsoft Teams and other well-established, well-funded companies, Slack proved it had a product its customers loved and paid for 🤑 (often in addition to Teams 👀!).

With its Salesforce-like platform advantages - no/low-code solutions on platform, and out-of-the-box APIs for off-platform connectivity - as well as a focus on features friendly to Software Developers, Engineers, and Product Managers, Slack made a lot of superfans.

With an incredible product, plenty of funding for marketing and sales, and an exponentially growing customer base, Slack was well positioned for a successful 2019 IPO.

By the next year, Salesforce, no stranger to great product and a rabid fanbase, announced its intention to acquire Slack 🤝.

TIMELINE OF SALESFORCE - SLACK EVENTS

July 21, 2021 | Salesforce completes their acquisition of Slack for $28,000,000,000. *pauses to replace worn out 0 button on keyboard

April 5, 2022 | Slack announces Canvas, a Quip-borne product, built into Slack’s platform. If you recall, Bret Taylor is the founder of Quip, and Salesforce’s acquisition of Quip very much had to do with bringing Bret on board. This is interesting because…⬇️

December 5, 2022 | Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield’s departure is announced. Literally just 5 days after former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor had announced his own departure. Lidiane Jones is takes the reins as the new CEO of Slack.

January 5, 2023 | Multiple publications including here, here, and here (paywalled, sorry 😢) report on friction between Salesforce and Slack. Specifically that, per Steward Butterfield, “there’s no incorporation of Slack culture into Salesforce culture.” Ohana is very rigid, it seems…

March 25, 2023 | Salesforce eliminates Slack’s Future Forum, a work-from-home research group. Ohana prefers to work in the office…

October 5, 2023 | Slack announces that they will pause normal biz ops so that employees can catch up on internal training. Eek. A very obvious and painful sign of misalignment with the mothership.

November 6, 2023 | Slack CEO for less than a year, Lidiane Jones announces her departure and will become CEO of Bumble. Marc said a replacement CEO will be announced next week 🤞.

WHAT’S GOING ON?!

The mid-90s Bulls weren’t in love with each other. Kobe and Shaq notoriously did not get along during their championship runs with the Lakers. The Golden State Warriors recent championships included the deep hatred of teammates Draymond Green and Jordan Poole. The incredible New England Patriots dynasty had a coach that the entire team seemed to hate.

But they all won championships, and that’s what you hear about most.

Because winning cures all 💯.

The Salesforce-Slack partnership has been devoid of winning. Look at these three indicators-

🙁 Slack’s customer marketplace was bleak before Salesforce took over. With Microsoft’s impenetrable distribution channels already laid out, Slack would always fight a tough customer acquisition battle.

🙁 Slack’s workers are suffering from the culture shock “The Ohana.” For the aforementioned quote, “there’s no incorporation of Slack culture into Salesforce culture,” to be plastered in the media is a failure of relations.

🙁 Slack’s revenue is not covering the costs of its gigantic sales price of $28BB.

No winning = bad times.

🙁🙁

WHAT’S NEXT?

Slack is still an amazing product. It’s just not $28BB amazing - there’s not enough customers or use cases to scale up to that value; Microsoft is too entrenched for Slack to gain marketshare.

Investors are undoubtedly uncomfortable with not only Lidiane Jones leaving Slack, but one of Salesforce’s best executives leaving the mothership.

The Q3 earnings call is still about 30 days away. Analysts will want answers-

• Who will the new Slack CEO be, and how will they fare better than the previous 2 CEOs?

• How will Slack grow, especially with Microsoft’s Teams dominance and the a customer base facing economic headwinds?

• What is Marc’s succession plan? (How did this question NOT get asked in the Q2 call?)

Daily Principle

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