Salesforce, the American cloud-based software company, has announced that former President and COO Bret Taylor will lead the company with founder Marc Benioff as Vice-Chair and co-CEO. The news of Taylor’s promotion comes just days after he was appointed Independent Chair of Twitter after CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down. Taylor was a former CTO at Facebook and a co-creator of Google Maps and the Google Maps API. 

After leaving Facebook in 2012, Taylor was announced as the founder and CEO of productivity software company Quip the following year. Quip was acquired by Salesforce in 2016 and he has since been working at Salesforce as the President and COO.

Benioff took to Twitter to congratulate Taylor saying, ‘I could not be excited for our amazing new partnership leading Salesforce together’. Taylor returned the sentiment thanking Benioff and the stakeholders of the company. In an interview with CNBC after Salesforce announced Taylor’s promotion, Benioff expressed his excitement in having Taylor join as co-CEO saying, ‘this is my dream, that Bret would come in the company and we could work it and run it together and lead it together in a trusted partnership, and that’s happening’.

Taylor’s promotion isn’t the only big change happening in Salesforce as the company added new members to its board of directors including Laura Alber, President and CEO of retail company Williams-Sonoma, and Oscar Munoz, former Chair and CEO of United Airlines. 

It remains to be seen what Taylor’s appointment as the co-CEO will mean for the company which announced that revenue and sales have gone up by at least a quarter in their third-quarter earnings. Taylor seems to have his work cut out for him as the company’s shares fell over six per cent in extended trading after earnings guidance for the fourth quarter fell short of expectations.