Salesforce appoints Bret Taylor as chief product officer

Salesforce has named Bret Taylor, the former chief technology officer at Facebook and founder of Quip, as president and chief product officer.

Taylor first joined Salesforce in 2016, when Salesforce acquired word processing app Quip for $750 million. Now, Taylor is replacing Alex Dayon as the company’s CPO and Dayon is moving into the role of chief strategy officer.

As chief product officer, Taylor will be tasked with leading Salesforce’s product vision, design, development and launches.

“We are fortunate to have two such exceptional technology leaders in Alex and Bret to help lead Salesforce’s next wave of growth, innovation and customer success,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said in a press release.

When Salesforce first announced its acquisition of Quip and its team, my colleague Ingrid Lunden suspected Salesforce could be planning to do something bigger. It’s not clear if this was part of the plan all along, but this is how it’s playing out.