Mark Nelson is stepping down as CEO of Tableau Software, less than two years after he took the helm of the Seattle-based data visualization company owned by Salesforce.
Nelson announced the news on Twitter and LinkedIn. His last day is Thursday. “It has been a pleasure and an honor to work alongside all of the people that make Tableau an amazing place to work, grow, and create something that literally changes the world for the better every day,” he wrote.
Nelson said he’s taking down time over the holidays and going on a trip to Patagonia — “and then on to the next adventure.”
Nelson will not be replaced directly, as his team is being integrated into the broader Salesforce product and engineering teams.
“Mark made tremendous contributions since joining Tableau in 2018, first leading the global Tableau product and engineering teams then taking on the role as CEO for the past 20 months,” Tableau spokesperson Tom Kim said in a statement. “We wish him the best in his next chapter and look forward to Tableau’s continued momentum and customer success.”
Nelson joined Tableau in 2018 as executive vice president of product development. He became CEO in March 2021, filling a vacancy created when his predecessor, Adam Selipsky, was named CEO of Amazon Web Services and replaced current Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
Nelson, a Chicago native, previously held engineering leadership positions at companies including Oracle and Concur in the Seattle region.
Tableau originally launched in 2003. It went public in 2013 and Salesforce bought the company for more than $15 billion in 2019, its largest acquisition at the time, before the tech giant acquired Slack last year for $27.7 billion.
Combined, the acquisitions of Slack and Tableau positioned Salesforce as a more formidable rival to Microsoft in enterprise technology, with Slack going head-to-head with Microsoft Teams, and Tableau competing directly against Microsoft’s Power BI data visualization technology.
Tableau generated $516 million in revenue for Salesforce in its third fiscal quarter, up 8% year-over-year and making up about 15% of Salesforce’s total quarterly revenue of $7.8 billion. Tableau’s revenue was $1.95 billion in the 2022 fiscal year ended Jan. 31.
Salesforce stock is down more than 40% this year amid the broader market downturn.
Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor unexpectedly announced Wednesday that he was also stepping down, effective Jan. 31. Salesforce founder and co-CEO Marc Benioff will continue to lead the company.
Salesforce employed about 1,000 people in the Seattle area prior to acquiring Tableau. Including the Tableau acquisition, the number of Salesforce employees in the region is about 4,000.
