Stewart Butterfield,
CEO of the workplace messaging platform Slack, announced that he would step
down from his position in January. He would be replaced by Lidiane Jones,
currently executive VP and GM for digital experiences clouds at Salesforce.

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Salesforce Inc.
acquired Slack last year in July. Butterfield’s stepping down news came days
after Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor announced his resignation. 

Who is Stewart
Butterfield?

Stewart Butterfield was born
on March 21, 1973, in a small fishing village in Lund, British Columbia,
Canada. His father David and mother Norma actually named him Dharma Jeremy
Butterfield. His father was a sergeant in the US Army. 

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Butterfield’s family
lived in a commune in remote Canada post his father fled the US to avoid being
called for the Vietnam War. They moved to Victoria when he was five years old.
He got his first computer, an Apple II at the age of 7 and learnt coding
himself. He changed his name to Daniel Stewart Butterfield when was 12. 

Butterfield studied at
St. Michaels University School in Victoria, British Columbia where he also
designed websites for extra money. He graduated from the University of Victoria
in 1996 with a B.A. degree in philosophy. Later, he enrolled at Clare
College, Cambridge in 1998 to get a Master of Philosophy.

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Butterfield married
his Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake in 2001 and got separated in 2007. He also
has a daughter with Caterina Fake. In May 2019, he got engaged to Jennifer
Rubio, co-founder of Away Luggage.

Butterfield and Jason
Classon jointly started working on a startup, Gradfinder.com in 2000. In 2002,
he along with Caterina Fake and Jason Classon co-founded Ludicorp. The company
later started a photo-sharing platform called Flickr. In 2009, he co-founded a
new company, Tiny Speck.

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In August 2013,
Butterfield launched Slack, an instant-message-based team communication tool.
It was developed by Tiny Speck while working on Glitch. After its release in
February 2014, the platform grew swiftly to over 120,000 daily users registered
in the first week of August.