Slack’s Butterfield expects to become a Salesforce president

Butterfield, who will continue to lead his workplace chat upstart when it becomes a Salesforce unit, also said the idea that competition from Microsoft Corp. forced the deal will be “dispelled.”

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called the deal with Slack a “marriage made in heaven” this week. (Bloomberg)

Slack Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Stewart Butterfield said he believes he will become one of Salesforce.com Inc.'s presidents after the companies' $27.7 billion combination is completed.

“I'm sick of talking about Microsoft,” he said Friday during an interview on Bloomberg Television. 

“I've given up on trying to point people to the empirical facts here because there's an article of faith on the competition that I have not been able to overcome.”

The billionaire executive made the decision to join Salesforce's cloud-computing empire after years of going it alone against Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, which has a rival workplace communications tool called Teams. 

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called the deal with Slack a “marriage made in heaven” this week. 

Butterfield began discussing the transaction with Salesforce Chief Operating Officer Bret Taylor. The two held late-night calls, “maybe a bit like a romance,” Butterfield said.

By Nico Grant and Emily Chang