What to Know About New Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor
Marc Benioff once again has a right-hand man after losing Keith Block in early 2020.
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New co-CEO Bret Taylor joined Salesforce in 2016 after the CRM giant bought his startup, Quip. Quip delivered a collaboration tool that provided built-in functionality within word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software.
Taylor spun up Quip in 2012; Salesforce snapped up the company in August 2016 for $750 million. At that time, Taylor came on as Quip CEO. A little more than a year later, Salesforce promoted him to president and chief product officer. Two years later, Taylor took on the role of president and chief operating officer. Now, of course, he serves as Salesforce co-CEO.
Taylor was instrumental in orchestrating Salesforce’s $27.7 billion Slack acquisition, which closed in July. Now all eyes are on Taylor. Salesforce still needs to integrate Slack across its portfolio amid muted investor enthusiasm.
Salesforce is undergoing its own transition from “a vertically integrated, one-trick pony in CRM to a broader platform,” Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives told Bloomberg. Buying Slack, he added, “was the right move, but in the eyes of Wall Street it was the wrong time.”
As the main architect of the Slack deal, Taylor is core to Salesforce’s efforts to prove that the transaction was indeed wise. As such, he helped build the company’s “Customer 360” strategy. That vision unites end users’ marketing, sales, commerce, service and IT departments into one platform. Earlier this year, Taylor called Salesforce Customer 360 “the operating system for growth in this all-digital, work-from-anywhere world.”
And getting buy-in from channel partners has been key.
“With Customer 360, you can sell from anywhere,” Taylor said in February. “And whether your contact center is a building or just exists in a cloud, you can service from anywhere. You can market digitally from anywhere. You can do e-commerce from anywhere.”
Slack, both Taylor and Benioff maintain, will remain vital to Customer 360’s success.
Taylor has served as a Twitter board member since July 2016. This week, in addition to his new role as Salesforce co-CEO, Taylor also became Twitter’s board chairman.
The timing is interesting. On Monday, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey resigned as head of the company. But recall that Salesforce wanted to buy Twitter back in 2016. Investors did not take to the idea and the efforts eventually went fallow.
But Reuters speculates that bringing Salesforce’s Taylor to the top of Twitter will make a mess: “With its executive reshuffle, Twitter may have just traded one conflict for another: an absentee CEO leaves, and the co-CEO of a one-time suitor steps in to lead the board.”
Taylor also spent three years at Facebook, from 2009-2012, as chief technology officer. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University.
News of Taylor’s new role as Salesforce co-CEO broke the same day as the company’s latest earnings report. Investors aren’t terribly happy with the company. While revenue grew 27% to nearly $6.9 billion in Salesforce’s fiscal third quarter, forecasts for the current quarter did not meet expectations. Salesforce’s stock price has dipped as a result.
News of Taylor’s new role as Salesforce co-CEO broke the same day as the company’s latest earnings report. Investors aren’t terribly happy with the company. While revenue grew 27% to nearly $6.9 billion in Salesforce’s fiscal third quarter, forecasts for the current quarter did not meet expectations. Salesforce’s stock price has dipped as a result.
Marc Benioff once again has a right-hand man. On Tuesday, the billionaire entrepreneur appointed 41-year-old Bret Taylor as his Salesforce co-CEO.
Salesforce’s Bret Taylor
Taylor moves up from president and chief operating officer to assume the new role. He came to Salesforce in 2016 when the cloud CRM company bought Quip, which Taylor founded.
Benioff now has a fellow CEO to lean on again, even though he insists he’s “never leaving” Salesforce. Benioff had named Keith Block his first co-CEO three years ago. Block was to handle the day-to-day operations, freeing Benioff to focus on culture and strategy. But the corporate partnership didn’t last long. Block left in early 2020 and Salesforce did not give a reason. Presumably, Taylor will assume the same responsibilities Block handled as Salesforce co-CEO.
Salesforce’s Marc Benioff
“Bret is a phenomenal industry leader who has been instrumental in creating incredible success for our customers and driving innovation throughout our company,” Benioff said. “He has been my trusted friend for years, and I couldn’t be happier to welcome him as co-CEO. … Together, Bret and I will lead Salesforce through our next chapter, while living our shared values of trust, customer success, innovation and equality for all.”
Check out our short slideshow above to learn more about Taylor.
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