Slack Co-Founder Stewart Butterfield Departs Salesforce

Stewart Butterfield is a Canadian tech entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Slack, a team-based messaging software. In 2021, Salesforce acquired Slack for $27.7 billion in cash and stock. This acquisition was one of the largest deals in the history of the tech industry at the time.

Butterfield departed Salesforce in 2022, following an exodus of executives from the company. Despite his success in the tech world, Butterfield's educational background is in philosophy. He majored in the subject as an undergraduate at Canada's University of Victoria and later earned a Master of Philosophy degree from the University of Cambridge.

Besides Slack, Butterfield has also been involved with other notable companies. In 2003, he co-founded Flickr, an image hosting site that was eventually purchased by Yahoo for $35 million in 2005. Today, he and his wife, Jen Rubio, live in Aspen, Colorado.