Intense week for Bret taylor: just two days ago he was appointed independent Chairman of the Board of Directors of Twitter, and as of today he is also one of the two CEOs of Salesforce, since it will occupy together with Marc Benioff. His appointment comes after months of speculation that Marc Benioff was going to retire, likely to follow in the footsteps of other tech CEOs and stay, as a director or at best, as Chairman of the Board of Directors. But finally Taylor has had his promotion at Salesforce and Benioff has not moved on to any other position. The two will run the company. Taylor was previously COO of Salesforce.
For Benioff, this decision is a good system to work from now on, given that the company has grown a lot in recent years, in which it has carried out purchases such as Tableau or Slack, which he negotiated. Taylor himself. Therefore, having a single person in charge of everything that Salesforce supposes today had become complicated. According to Benioff, «We are in a new world, and Salesforce has never been more relevant or strategic to our clients. Together Bret and I will lead Salesforce through the next step, while sharing our values of trust, customer success, innovation and fairness for all.«.
Unsurprisingly, Taylor is grateful for the opportunity, and on being CEO with Benioff stresses that “Partnering with him to run the company he helped found 22 years ago is a tremendous privilege. I am grateful for our Salesforce employees, our Trailblazers, our customers, and all of our shareholders, who help us make our company and our world a better place.«.
It is not the first time that Salesforce has had two CEOs. Keith Block already was with Benioff between 2018 and 2010, when he left the company. As for Bret Taylor, before coming to Salesforce he was CEO of FriendFeed, and CTO of Facebook between 2009 and 2012. He joined Salesforce in 2016, when he bought Quip. From then on, he began to climb positions, overtaking other company executives, who had been at it for some time. In 2019 he was promoted to President and COO of Salesforce, a position just below Benioff’s, which he will equal in power from now on.
