No one seemed to see Bret Taylor walking away from Salesforce (even Marc Benioff) • TechCrunch

How can be characterized as an amazing turn of events, co-CEO of Salesforce Bret Taylor announced his resignation yesterday, saying he wanted to return to his entrepreneurial roots. Whatever his reasons, it was a shock to everyone covering this company, and it’s safe to say that few, if any, saw this coming – even his mentor, the co-founder and co-CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff.

Taylor is a Silicon Valley mover and shaker. He worked in big companies like Google and Facebook. Until recently, he was Chairman of the Board of Twitter, helping to steer the social media giant through a turbulent year of Musk Induced Madness until its new owner disbanded its board of directors last month.

He also has small business experience as the former CEO of FriendFeed, an early social network, and Quip, which Salesforce purchased in 2016 for the colossal sum of 750 million dollars.

Taylor and Benioff seemed to hit it off immediately after Quip joined Salesforce, and the relationship was (and apparently remains) deep and sincere. As a result, Taylor rose through the ranks at the CRM giant to co-chairman and co-CEO in just four years.

When Jeff Bezos retired as CEO of Amazon last year after leading the company since its inception in 1994, we speculated that Benioff could be the next executive to take this step. The logical choice, heir apparent, seemed to be Taylor, who was poised to take over whenever Benioff decided to spend more time in Hawaii.

Instead, we have Taylor stepping away and Benioff in charge for the foreseeable future.