Slack’s product chief to step down

(Reuters) – Slack Technologies Inc’s chief product officer, April Underwood, is leaving the messaging startup, at a time when the company is exploring a public listing later this year.

Underwood is leaving to spend more time working at #Angels, an investing group she co-founded three months before joining Slack in 2015, according to her blog post https://medium.com/@aunder/new-year-new-old-hashtag-angels-a4f2b73f68e.

She will be replaced by Google executive Tamar Yehoshua, Slack, which provides chat and direct messaging services for businesses, said on Thursday.

Underwood, a former employee at Google and Twitter, joined when Slack employed just 150 people.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Slack is “seriously” considering making its stock exchange debut through a direct listing, a plan which would make it the second big technology company after Spotify Technology SA to bypass a traditional IPO process in going public.

(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)