Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Slack’s CEO Heads to OpenAI

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Slack’s CEO Heads to OpenAI · Elon Musk Podcast

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  Slack CEO Denise Dresser is leaving the company to become
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  Open AI's chief revenue officer. Now, what does that move tell us
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  about Open AI's push into the enterprise?
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  And how will Slack manage the handoff at the top?
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  After the break, I'll explain what Dresser will run inside
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  Open AI, how our Salesforce and Slack track record lines up with
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  that mandate, and what we know about Slack's interim
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  leadership. I'll add context on Slack's path
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  from start up to a Salesforce business unit, then outline the
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  likely first steps for Open A is new revenue chief, so you can
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  read the next press release with more of your mind and less
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  signal and less guesswork. Wired reports that Denise
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  Dresser will join Open AI as Chief Revenue Officer after
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  serving as SLAC's CEOA staff. Memo went out from Salesforce
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  Chief Executive Marc Benioff confirming her departure, and
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  the story says she starts her new rule next week.
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  And with that, we move from boomer to an on the record
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  leadership change in a concrete start date.
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  Now Open AI is placing dresser over its enterprise unit, which
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  has been growing rapidly. And she'll report to Chief
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  Operating Officer Brad Lightcap. That reporting line clarifies
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  where revenue, operations, enterprise sales meet inside of
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  Open AIACRO, tied directly to the COO, signals a focus on
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  execution customer delivery in the systems that support the
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  sales cycle. Now.
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  The near term read is very simple, though.
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  Open EI wants disciplined enterprise growth and
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  accountability for its leadership.
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  You know Dresser arrives with long tenure in enterprise sales
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  and go to market roles. According to sources, she spent
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  about 14 years at Salesforce before becoming Slack CEO in
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  2023. And that's after Lydiane Jones
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  left to run Bumble. Now that sequence that is
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  important because it shows a career built around selling and
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  scaling software to large organizations.
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  Not only running a product team, but running a large team.
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  Now the background fits Acro role seat that touches field
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  sales, customer success, partner deals and post sale adoption.
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  A Slack will be LED an an interim basis by Rob Seaman, its
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  chief product officer, while the company and Salesforce manage
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  the transition. I think it's Slack, a leader who
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  already owns the road map and feature delivery, which helps
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  steady day-to-day decisions while the board and the parent
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  company evaluate next steps. And interim arrangement also
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  keeps the door open for internal and external candidates without
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  forcing an immediate, permanent pick.
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  Now, Slack did not comment. We tried to reach them, but they
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  didn't talk to us. So to understand the weight of
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  this hand off, recall the arc of Slack itself.
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  Slack traces its roost back to 2009 to late 2008, 2009, and it
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  took off by 2014 as a workplace chat collaboration tool.
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  Now, Salesforce acquired the company in 2021 for nearly $28
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  billion, and over time, more of SLAC's operations integrated
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  into Salesforce. Founders and early leaders,
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  including Stewart Butterfield and Kyle Henderson, departed in
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  the years after the acquisition after they got a huge money bank
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  account addition, which often happens when a startup becomes
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  part of a larger enterprise. Now, Wired also points to
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  reporting about culture friction between Slack, startup DNA and
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  Salesforce's scale. And that friction gives context
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  to how leadership shifts land inside a combined organization.
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  But a parent company absorbs operations from a smaller
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  company. Product and policy choices can
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  move into different directions, different cadences, and interim
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  leadership can be a practical tool to collaborate those
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  cadences. Usually what happens is the
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  smaller company gets acquired and then either they a get
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  melded into the larger company or they just get shut down.
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  Luckily if I mean, if you're a Slack user, but it might not be
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  luckily for you and maybe you don't like it and most people
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  don't that I've talked to, they're just like, I don't want
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  to hear another Slack notification ever again in my
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  life if it's possible. Same with Jira, Nobody likes
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  that. But with this new set up, you
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  know a public road map help customers make sense of it.
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  So let's shift over to Open AI again and what ACRO can drive in
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  a year when enterprise demand grows up.
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  Now Dresser's remit is making AI useful and reliable for
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  businesses across industries. Paraphrasing a statement from
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  Open AI leadership that translates into clear
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  priorities, stable pricing and packaging, predictable support,
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  measurable rollout timelines, any path for large customers to
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  pilot, expand, standardize. SARR ties those motions to
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  revenue targets and retention. So Open AI has to be worried
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  about Google right now. Google owns your enterprise.
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  They own basically every part of your system.
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  E-mail, chat, they have conferencing, all the Google Doc
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  stuff, It's all there. And you know what?
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  Open AI just wants a small chunk of that.
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  Google is very competitive. They already have all your
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  information. They have all the systems in
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  place to just add AI, just add Gemini to everything, right?
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  And then they have the the backbone to a either wipe out
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  open AI immediately. I don't think they're going to
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  do that. I think people will continue to
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  subsidize open AI with more money.
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  Over time, Open AI will eventually start making money,
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  more money because the CRO coming in, they're working on
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  the business part of it. Can they do things better than
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  Google? It's tough to tough to feel that
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  out right now. It's still the very early 80s.
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  It's like the beginning of the Internet with Netscape Navigator
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  and Internet Explorer and also Opera.
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  Do you remember Opera, I think still around.
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  And what was the one Mosaic? Mosaic was great.
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  I remember those times and even in the terminal, we used to
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  search in the terminal and like type in things.
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  There was servers you can connect to and you could find
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  documents in like just the terminal window.
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  It's crazy. And now of course, you can watch
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  full movies anytime you want to on your phone.
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  So it's like that when Google is the big player now.
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  It used to be IBM back in the day.
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  Microsoft came out of nowhere, took him out.
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  Open AI could be the next player to take out Google, possibly.
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  And that's why Google's kind of afraid.
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  But they jumped on it with Gemini.
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  Now, Slack isn't really an AI program, you know, It's not an
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  app that's touted as an AI first application.
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  But Dresser's recent work at Slack included rolling out large
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  scale AI features such as AI generated meeting summaries and
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  integrations with Salesforce's AI agents.
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  That experience lines up with enterprise buyers who now expect
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  concrete productivity gains and not just a chatbot.
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  It also means she has navigated the governance, security, and
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  procurement steps that big customers require.
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  Dresser is all about the money, that's why they got her on and
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  for a hefty price. So if she can turn this around
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  and if she can make open AIA Enterprise player, even though
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  you know some people already use open AI for enterprise, don't
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  blame them for it. I could see why some companies
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  would jump over to Google because if they already use the
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  Google suite, they may as well use the Gemini suite with the
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  Google Suite and it's just can go hand in hand now.
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  And I love it. I love the invention of chat
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  bots and I love that things that used to take copy and pasting
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  into ChatGPT to get a summary. So say if somebody emailed me,
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  right? So like right when the ChatGPT
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  came out, somebody would e-mail me, a client would e-mail me and
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  I would send it over to ChatGPT. I would paste it in there and
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  say can you summarize this e-mail for me?
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  OK, super simple. And it would summarize the
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  e-mail and I'm like OK cool. Like give give me like 4 bullet
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  points and it would do that. And I'm like oh, is this worth
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  it for me to check this out? Sometimes it would be, sometimes
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  it wouldn't be. But I without that step now
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  because Gemini's there, it's all integrated.
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  I don't have to do that anymore. What's the summary of this
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  e-mail? Let me know if the email's, you
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  know, 4 paragraphs long. I don't want to read the whole
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  thing. I need a summary so I can
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  quickly make a decision if I want to read the whole thing.
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  Now, if I do, that's great. Gemini can tell me is it worth
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  it? Yes.
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  Now Dresser's going to be starting soon.
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  Our start date is compressing the onboarding curve few weeks.
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  She's starting next week and suggests that Open AI plans to
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  plug her right into an existing enterprise machine and have her
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  lead without a long runway. She already knows how to do
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  this. She's going to step in here and
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  she's going to be able to kill it.
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  Now that puts early emphasis on pipeline health, top accounts
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  and any quarter end commitments already in flight.
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  So anything that's on the table, the dresser's going to step
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  right in, take care of it. And a swift internal tour with
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  product, trust, security and support leaders would come
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  first. Of course, she's probably
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  already meeting those people behind the scenes, followed by
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  meetings with anchor customers and partners.
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  Just to get to know everybody the first first week or two, get
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  to know everybody. Start doing some business now.
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  Brad Lightcap is worth underlining here.
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  Acro under the CEO aligns revenue with operations and
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  delivery, not only with marketing or finance.
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  Now that set up gives the CROA direct handle on how promises
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  turn into deployments, which is the core friction in enterprise
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  AI. If a customer outcome lags, the
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  escalation path is already inside operation, which shortens
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  the loop from problem to fix. Now I want to ask you for one
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  Hit the follow button and I give you the next 10 years of this.
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  No doubt about it. So here's the short wrap of this
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  episode. Slack's EO Denise Dresser will
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  become open AI's chief revenue officer starting next week.
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  She'll run the enterprise unit report to CEO Brad Lightcap, and
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  bring long expertise from Salesforce and Slack, including
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  recent AI feature rollouts. Slack name's chief product
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  officer Rob Seaman as interim CEO while the company manages
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