Johnny Rodgers, one of Slack’s original eight team members, has written a first-hand account of Slack’s first two years inside Salesforce. It quotes Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s co-founder and former chief executive, throughout.

Rodgers spent 11 years at Slack and left in the spring of 2023. He published the second part of his Building Slack series on the Salesforce years on Friday.

“I only got about one hour of total facetime with Marc before the deal was announced. My last meeting with him was cut short because McConaughey arrived,” Butterfield told Rodgers, referring to Matthew McConaughey, one of Salesforce’s celebrity spokespeople.

Salesforce announced the deal in December 2020 at $45 a share. That was more than double Slack’s stock price at the time, as Rodgers recounted in part one in March.

Celebrities, tickets and email

Once the deal closed in 2021, the inefficiency Butterfield found at Salesforce “baffled” him, Rodgers writes.…