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We’ve heard an terrible lot over the previous couple of weeks concerning the executives who’re leaving Salesforce, however not a heck of so much concerning the girl who’s taking up for Stewart Butterfield as CEO at Slack when he takes off to spend a while gardening. It’s time we modified that.
Her identify is Lidiane Jones, a girl with a deep background in enterprise software program. (I requested an interview with Jones for this piece, however the firm was not making her obtainable to talk with the press.) Surprisingly, most of the analysts I discuss with about Salesforce knew little about her, however that may very well be as a result of she simply hasn’t been made obtainable on analysts’ days.
That may possible change when she takes over on the finish of subsequent month.
However she didn’t come out of nowhere. Jones, who lives within the Boston space, has been at Salesforce for 3 years and rapidly rose up the ranks: She began as head of product for Commerce Cloud, then was bumped as much as GM of Commerce Cloud earlier than — previous to her promotion this week — holding the title of GM of Commerce Cloud, Advertising Cloud and Expertise Cloud, which mainly encompasses the corporate’s total B2C enterprise.
Earlier than that, she spent 13 years at Microsoft engaged on quite a lot of merchandise, from Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Challenge to Enterprise Utility Virtualization, Workplace Collaboration and at last Azure Machine Studying.
She additionally spent nearly 4 years at Sonos as VP of product administration. Her distinctive mixture of enterprise and client expertise ought to put together her nicely for her new job operating Slack, the place she should stroll a effective line between consumer expertise and enterprise necessities.
In Butterfield’s farewell Slack announcement, made obtainable to TechCrunch by sources earlier this week (was it solely this week?), he effusively praised his substitute. Whereas he may very well be making an attempt to promote her to a skeptical group used to his decade of regular management, it feels like he additionally genuinely likes her:
So, about this Lidiane. You’re going to like her. She’s pragmatic and sensible, insightful, passionate, inventive, form, and curious. She’s proper at that little diamond-shaped coronary heart within the four-circle Venn diagram of Good, Humble, Hardworking, and Collaborative. Earlier than Salesforce she spent 4 years main product at Sonos the place she fell in love with Slack. She has a deep respect for our strategy to product, our buyer obsession, and our distinctive tradition. She’s one among us.
That’s a fairly robust welcome, and Anand Thaker, a advertising and marketing know-how advisor and the founding father of a number of startups who follows Salesforce intently, additionally believes that she’s an excellent match for Slack.
“She has a strong technical and administration background, and the tasks and teams she has been engaged on inside Salesforce — expertise, advertising and marketing, commerce — had been all locations Slack would match and drive one of the best worth. Every of those has robust client commerce components the place the bigger progress (or much less churn) will possible come and is in line (studying the tea leaves) with the place Beinoff has wished Salesforce to go,” Thaker informed TechCrunch.
Butterfield added that her roles inside Salesforce will make her a powerful voice for Slack contained in the bigger group, which might come in useful because the management handover happens.
Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and principal analyst on the agency Deep Evaluation, mentioned that in some ways, she is healthier ready for this job than some longtime CEOs.
“I don’t know Lidiane personally, however she appears the logical choice as she appeared to do an excellent job operating the Advertising, Expertise, Commerce Clouds, and operating these isn’t a lot totally different from operating a number of giant companies, so sarcastically she has extra true CEO expertise as a first-time CEO than many skilled CEOs. Plus she was with Microsoft a very long time — and may convey a few of their rigor to the desk,” he mentioned.
Jones definitely has huge footwear to fill, taking up for a founder-CEO within the midst of a giant transition for the corporate, however with a few many years of tech expertise behind her, she appears greater than ready for the problem.
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