Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff bought Slack for a $28 billion and then never used it
Reports suggest that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff rarely used Slack after acquiring the company for $27.7 billion in 2020. Former employees noted that the acquisition was driven by executive leadership rather than product integration or internal adoption.
Why it matters
It provides insight into the challenges of large-scale corporate acquisitions and the potential disconnect between executive strategy and product utility.
Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield spent barely an hour with Marc Benioff before Salesforce agreed to buy Slack for $27.7 billion in 2020. The last of those meetings ended early because a Hollywood star walked in. The detail comes from Johnny Rodgers, a former Principal Engineer at Slack and one of its earliest employees, who has been documenting the company’s story on his Building Slack blog.“I only got about one hour of total facetime with Marc before the deal was announced. My last meeting with him was cut short because McConaughey arrived,” Butterfield told Rodgers for the second part of his Salesforce series. That is Matthew McConaughey, whom Salesforce reportedly pays $10 million a year to be its spokesperson.
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