Dive Brief:
- Slack CEO Lidiane Jones will step down to lead online dating app Bumble on Jan. 2, just over one-year after her initial appointment at the collaboration software company, according to a Monday announcement.
- Jones was promoted into the CEO role at Slack last December, following the planned departure of Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield.
- The executive will succeed Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who started the company in 2014. Wolfe Herd will transition to an executive chair role as Jones takes the helm.
Dive Insight:
Jones' announced departure comes as Salesforce, which completed its acquisition of Slack in 2021, is turning to the collaboration platform as a front door to a slew of enterprise-grade AI features.
"Slack is just a treasure trove of information for artificial intelligence, and you'll see us deliver all kinds of new capabilities in Slack along these lines," said CEO Marc Benioff, speaking during an August earnings call for Q2 2024.
The platform has been enlarging its quiver of AI-fueled capabilities, most recently through a September expansion of its on-board automation capabilities. Users launched nearly 8 million workflows per week aboard the platform during Q2, a 71% year-over-year increase according to Benioff.
Earlier this year, the company underwent another top leadership shift as co-CEO Bret Taylor departed the company at the end of January. Taylor joined Salesforce in 2016 and became co-CEO in 2021.
Jones initially joined Salesforce in 2019, and served as EVP and GM of experience cloud, commerce cloud and marketing cloud before rising to the role of Slack CEO.
