Salesforce's Taylor emerges as CEO candidate -sources
09/03/2021 17:47
By Jessica DiNapoli and Stephen Nellis
March 9 (Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc CRM.N is grooming
its chief operating officer Bret Taylor for a chief executive
position to support the U.S. business software conglomerate's
co-founder Marc Benioff, people familiar with the matter said on
Tuesday.
The sources said Taylor's potential promotion is not
imminent and could happen in the coming months.
Salesforce's previous co-chief executive, Keith Block,
stepped down last year, leaving Benioff without a formal
co-pilot at a time when the San Francisco-based company is
battling Microsoft Corp MSFT.O and Oracle Corp ORCL.N in the
booming business software market.
Competition intensified after work-from-home arrangements
surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, driving corporate demand
for technology tools to collaborate and process data.
While Benioff accepted a co-CEO arrangement with Block, he
may relinquish his CEO title for an executive chairman role when
Taylor is promoted, the sources said. There is apprehension
about opting for co-CEOs again given the challenges of
delineating responsibilities for these roles, one of the sources
added.
A co-creator of Alphabet Inc's GOOGL.O Google Maps, Taylor
is a Stanford University-trained engineer credited with devising
Facebook Inc's FB.O "like" button as the social media giant's
chief technology officer.
No decision has been made, the sources said. The
preparations are a recognition of Taylor's contributions to the
company, they added.
Colleagues described Taylor as an unassuming executive
focused on developing new products. He was a key driving force
behind Salesforce's biggest acquisition, its $27.7 billion
takeover of workspace messaging platform Slack Technologies Inc
WORK.N , as well as deals for software companies Tableau and
Mulesoft, one of the sources said.
The sources requested anonymity because the matter is
confidential. Salesforce declined to comment. Taylor did not
immediately respond to request for comment.
Since joining Salesforce five years ago after the company
acquired his start-up Quip for $750 million, Taylor has helped
tackle thorny technical and product issues, integrating its
various sales, marketing, e-commerce and customer service tools
that run on different back-end databases.
For example, Taylor spearheaded a system dubbed "Customer
360" with various software tools that allow clients to track
their own customers.
"He's Parker 2.0," said one of the sources, referring to
co-founder and director Parker Harris, who led Salesforce's
early technology and product development and is still involved
in strategic planning.
Taylor served as Salesforce's product chief before becoming
chief operating officer in 2019. One of his biggest challenges
will be to weave Slack into Salesforce's other cloud
applications to compete with Microsoft's messaging service
Teams, the sources said.
Block became Salesforce's first and only co-CEO to date in
2018. He stepped down 18 months later but remained an advisor to
Benioff. A former Oracle sales executive, Block helped
Salesforce land several $100-million-plus contracts.
Benioff, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at $8.5
billion, has expanded his reach beyond Salesforce in recent
years, acquiring Time Magazine and supporting philanthropic
efforts aimed at improving the San Francisco Bay Area.
During the pandemic he has also spent more time working from
Hawaii, where he has maintained a home for decades, the sources
said.
(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Stephen Nellis
in San Francicsco
Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and David Gregorio)
((dStephen.Nellis@thomsonreuters.com; (415) 344-4934;))