FILE PHOTO: April Underwood, Vice President of Product at Slack, talks during the business messaging company's event in San Francisco, California, U.S. January 31, 2017. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach

(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 here.

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 SPOT.N to bypass a traditional IPO process in going public.