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Bret Taylor is now the co-chief executive officer of Salesforce. His announcement to the role came on the same day that the company’s shares dropped in after-hours trading, following lower than expected earnings forecast.

Bringing Taylor into the co-CEO role is a big move by the company whose founder, Marc Benioff, has led the company since 2001. He has, however, had a co-CEO in the past.

In a statement, Benioff called Taylor a phenomenal industry leader who has played a key role in creating success for the company’s customers and driving innovation too.

Bret’s journey

Benioff called Taylor a trusted friend, adding that he could not be happier to welcome him as co-CEO.  A former Google employee, Taylor rose to prominence as the founder of FriendFeed, a feed aggregator and social network that showed up in the first decade of this century.

It did not have the same problems its current living counterparts have. It was acquired by Facebook in 2009 and was shut down by 2015.

After the acquisition, Taylor was the chief technology officer at Facebook. He left in 2012 to work on a productivity startup known as Quip that would be acquired four years later by Salesforce for $750 million.

A nice co-CEO

The acquisition of Quip propelled Taylor to the role of president and chief operating officer at Salesforce. Most tech founders are described as money-hungry egomaniacs with nary a nice bone in their bodies.

Taylor seems to have taken the ‘Ted Lasso’ approach of being nice. Employees describe him as open, friendly, and even humble at times.

For the quarter ended October 31, Salesforce reported a profit of $1.27 per share before costs on a 27% rise in revenue from a year ago, to hit $6.86 billion, compared to analyst expectations of 92 cents a share on revenue of $6.8 billion.