00:12:39 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:12:39] S1: And so, you know, maybe like, as I think about, you know, I'm an ambitious AI founder, and selling to Salesforce, why is that the more ambitious choice for me? [00:12:53] S0: Well, imagine having to build that distribution channel on your own, and how long that will take to hire the reps, ramp the reps, enable them, and get them productive. It takes a very, very long time to build that at scale. Oh, and by the way, you've gotta do that across small business, medium sized business, and enterprises. Oh, and you also have to do that globally. It's a heavy heavy task for anyone to take on. And I think that, you know, entrepreneurs have to like make that decision. Is this the right time to sell and and plug my technology into a company that already has that? Or can I continue and go it alone and try to build it on my own and continue to raise money and dilute yourself further and further and further? And it's just many years of undertaking versus getting your technology in the hands of customers as widely as possible, and as quickly as possible. And that's the decision you have to make. [00:13:54] S1: Fair enough. And as you try to integrate these folks into your culture, they bring a certain entrepreneurial spirit their own way, [00:14:06] S0: Which we love, yes. [00:14:08] S1: And so how do you think about bringing them in, and integrating them appropriately, so that that spirit can continue to spread and thrive while being a part of the, you know, larger platform.
00:14:08 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:14:08] S1: And so how do you think about bringing them in, and integrating them appropriately, so that that spirit can continue to spread and thrive while being a part of the, you know, larger platform. [00:14:21] S0: I think that's one of the most exciting things about what we do when we buy a company, is is bring in this exceptional talent to help transform the company. And and in many ways refresh us, you know, and make sure that, like, we're bringing in that entrepreneurial spirit into the company and thinking about new ways of doing doing things. A key focal point of the integration team is on the people and making sure that they're successful in onboarding, learning how things work within Salesforce, but also growing their careers internally. And we've had many many stories of people who have come in, sold their companies to us, and have risen to become our chief product officer. It's happened actually four times now. And or people who have taken on big roles within our sales organization or other leadership roles. And so I think I think it's been an important part of how we've grown the company too through bringing in new talent. [00:15:26] S1: Yeah, mean, have 80,000 employees, I can imagine. You bring in these companies, they help turbocharge certain areas. Is there an example of one of these acquired companies that you point to as having big impact on the culture of the organization?
00:15:26 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:15:26] S1: Yeah, mean, have 80,000 employees, I can imagine. You bring in these companies, they help turbocharge certain areas. Is there an example of one of these acquired companies that you point to as having big impact on the culture of the organization? [00:15:42] S0: Well, I would say, you know, one that springs to mind is David Schmeyer's company, Velocity. So we didn't really have much of an industries bent within Salesforce. And yet, you know, so many... There's so many important verticals that are a key part of the growth of the entire software industry. And we now have 13 verticals actually. And and that all really... That sort of focus on the industries, focus on the specific use cases for that industry that came through that acquisition. And so David came on board, brought Velocity in, it brought in six verticals. We've added another another seven since, and and he went on to be chief product officer, now chief strategy officer. And I think he's definitely helped us think about selling to those industry verticals in ways we never would have otherwise. [00:16:37] S1: That's very interesting. One of the pieces that's also been impressive about Salesforce over the years is there are large companies built on top of you that are just focused on verticals as well, like Veeva and the like. [00:16:51] S0: And Cino was probably a great example of that, and that was one of our early investments in the Ventures program, and they created an incredible company just based in financial services.
00:16:51 · John Somorjai, Alex Immerman
[00:16:51] S0: And Cino was probably a great example of that, and that was one of our early investments in the Ventures program, and they created an incredible company just based in financial services. [00:17:07] S1: Today, as you're thinking about, you know, build versus buy, you probably are told way more that we can just build that. Software development is faster and more affordable than it's ever been. And so, a part of your job must be figuring out, like, when that's actually true. Yeah. I'm curious, like, in this era of software, what is worth actually buying? [00:17:38] S0: Well, I... You know, when we think about the... You know, do we build by partner? I mean, we go through a lot of analysis with the product teams around what their roadmap should look like for the next three years. And do they truly have the people that can build what they're trying to deliver? Do they have the internal expertise for it, for example? Or And can they go out and easily hire it? And you know how hard hiring like AI [00:18:09] S1: It's a competitive
00:18:09 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:18:09] S1: It's a competitive [00:18:09] S0: way. AI engineers right now, very, very hard. And so in many cases, you can really speed up the the development process through an acquisition if you can find the right one and if you can integrate it quickly. And that's that's also, you know, one of the the things that you have to consider because a typical acquisition end to end from the moment you start with the idea to when it's actually integrated, it could be six to nine months. And so could you deliver something on your own much faster than that? And so those are the types of of calculations we we make and try to try to think about. But when the right asset shows up, you know, you really know it. You you can have a sense. And that was in the case when Alfred and Florian came came to meet with Mark and demoed Listen Labs to us. I mean, they were just brilliant. And I think we had... We thought the... Not only was the technology outstanding, but the the interface was so easy. It was so easy that my team started using it with no enablement whatsoever. Within ten minutes, we had we had a survey out and started. And it just could not have been easier. [00:19:23] S1: Is that how you diligence to ListenLabs? [00:19:26] S0: It was part of what we did. [00:19:27] S1: A survey on ListenLabs? [00:19:28] S0: To their customers. [00:19:29] S1: Yeah.
00:19:29 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:19:29] S1: Yeah. [00:19:30] S0: Actually. And that that was incredibly effective. But we do... By the way, our diligence process is pretty rigorous and the customer element, the customer feedback that we do is one of the most important ways of really judging how good the product is, and, you know, are these customers likely to renew? [00:19:52] S1: We're happy Listen Labs customers ourselves, and use it as a diligence tool as well. Very cool. Maybe on on this piece of, like, accelerating capabilities, another acquisition that that you were talking about earlier was Fin. Mhmm. You guys have long had a role in customer support. Maybe talk about what capabilities Fin brought to you all, and maybe the story behind that acquisition.