Slack’s new CEO, Lidiane Jones, brings twenty years of product expertise to the job • robotechcompany.com

We’ve heard an terrible lot over the previous couple of weeks concerning the executives who’re leaving Salesforce, however not a heck of quite a bit concerning the lady 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 title 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 out there to talk with the press.) Surprisingly, lots of the analysts I discuss with about Salesforce knew little about her, however that might be as a result of she simply hasn’t been made out there on analysts’ days.

That can doubtless 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 shortly 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 principally 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 Venture 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 shopper expertise ought to put together her effectively for her new job working Slack, the place she must stroll a high quality line between consumer expertise and enterprise necessities.

In Butterfield’s farewell Slack announcement, made out there to robotechcompany.com by sources earlier this week (was it solely this week?), he effusively praised his alternative. Whereas he might be attempting 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, artistic, 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 method to product, our buyer obsession, and our distinctive tradition. She’s one among us.

That’s a reasonably robust welcome, and Anand Thaker, a advertising and marketing expertise advisor and the founding father of a number of startups who follows Salesforce intently, additionally believes that she’s a superb match for Slack.

“She has a stable technical and administration background, and the initiatives 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 shopper commerce components the place the bigger development (or much less churn) will doubtless come and is in line (studying the tea leaves) with the place Beinoff has wished Salesforce to go,” Thaker advised robotechcompany.com.

Butterfield added that her roles inside Salesforce will make her a robust voice for Slack contained in the bigger group, which may turn out to be useful because the management handover happens.

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and principal analyst on the agency Deep Evaluation, stated 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 a superb job working the Advertising, Expertise, Commerce Clouds, and working these will not be a lot totally different from working a number of giant companies, so mockingly 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 stated.

Jones definitely has huge sneakers to fill, taking up for a founder-CEO within the midst of an enormous transition for the corporate, however with a few a long time of tech expertise behind her, she appears greater than ready for the problem.