00:23:14 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:23:14] S1: There's a rumor out there that Mark only spent an hour with Stewart before the acquisition. I don't know if that's typical. [00:23:22] S0: A lot more time than that. Definitely. Definitely. And and I think we... No. We looked at it very closely. We had been using Slack. It was clearly a beloved product in in among its users and and something that needed more distribution. Like it was just really... It was losing to teams. And they were really... They were stuck. I don't know if you remember back in 2020, but there was like one bad quarter, stock went down. And and that's really what triggered a lot of the discussions is that, you know, how can we bring these two companies together and turn Slack into what it really needed to be, which was the user interface for everyone and the collaborative tool where humans and and apps would work together. [00:24:10] S1: And now agents. [00:24:11] S0: And now agents. Yes. And we didn't know the agent part, that came later, but you can just see that it was the perfect interface for that. We also knew that it would be the the interface for all of our products. And so you can access all of Salesforce products now through Slack. And and that was always, one of the key strategic rationales that we had at the beginning. So since then, Slack revenue is now almost three times from what where it was when we bought the company. And it is our fastest growing product. So it's it is taking off like wildfire in this day and age because it's just perfect for agents.
00:24:11 · John Somorjai, Alex Immerman
[00:24:11] S0: And now agents. Yes. And we didn't know the agent part, that came later, but you can just see that it was the perfect interface for that. We also knew that it would be the the interface for all of our products. And so you can access all of Salesforce products now through Slack. And and that was always, one of the key strategic rationales that we had at the beginning. So since then, Slack revenue is now almost three times from what where it was when we bought the company. And it is our fastest growing product. So it's it is taking off like wildfire in this day and age because it's just perfect for agents. [00:24:54] S1: Yeah. Makes a ton of sense. I think I think of Slack in this current era as the unofficial org chart. Like, it knows who reports to who, how people talk to other people. It has all the context on how decisions are made. Yeah. And so, it's a really important corpus for AI. Yeah. But, it's an interface product, as you alluded to, and so, as other products are more headless, it can be the central, you know, repository central, like ground for decision making. [00:25:29] S0: Absolutely. And and because it has all the context from all of your work, if you use Slackbot ever, like you can just get the richest answers that you've ever seen from AI right there within your interface. And so it just couldn't be easier and we're thrilled that we were able to buy the company. And you know, it's been like five years and a quarter since we've owned it, and it's it's just, I think, transformed Salesforce.
00:25:29 · John Somorjai, Alex Immerman
[00:25:29] S0: Absolutely. And and because it has all the context from all of your work, if you use Slackbot ever, like you can just get the richest answers that you've ever seen from AI right there within your interface. And so it just couldn't be easier and we're thrilled that we were able to buy the company. And you know, it's been like five years and a quarter since we've owned it, and it's it's just, I think, transformed Salesforce. [00:25:57] S1: Amazing. And maybe just to, like, hit on that, right? Like, you said it's grown nearly three x, and you know, a bit over five years, that's really strong growth at scale. What about that, you know, story, that integration, what has gone so well with that one relative to, you know, other acquisitions? [00:26:16] S0: Yeah. And I I think you know, it was it wasn't clear that it was going to go so well from the beginning, especially when we were buying it during the pandemic. Right. And we basically negotiated the deal, did everything, all the diligence through Slack, you know, by the company without ever having a lot of face to face meetings. And then it took a little bit of time for the integration to really hit its stride, but once it did, it has taken off. And I think getting again, it's like great technology that was starved for distribution. And I think this is sort of the point I was making about Listen Labs as well. This is the benefit that an entrepreneur can get from a great acquisition partner. [00:27:05] S1: How many of those face to face meetings happened to happen in Hawaii?
00:27:05 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:27:05] S1: How many of those face to face meetings happened to happen in Hawaii? [00:27:11] S0: Well, it was a lot later, actually. That [00:27:14] S1: was not the common ground in COVID times? [00:27:18] S0: No, not then. I mean there were so many restrictions on even travel to Hawaii then. Sure. But I would say we... Hawaii is very useful now. So you know, I think about like Braze for example, which is our most recently announced acquisition. I think the the meeting that the two CEOs had in Hawaii was critical in terms of like jump starting that process, and building the camaraderie, and seeing the alignment, and it just... Hawaii is a magical place. [00:27:48] S1: All good things start in Hawaii. So we we've spent a bunch of time talking about buying companies, and partnering with companies. You have a third option, which is investing in companies, letting them run independently. I used to think of Salesforce Ventures as you partnering with your ecosystem, you know, your close partners. Today, it seems that you're investing much more freely, much more broadly. So, of course, Anthropic, Mistral, close partners of the company, Fall. Base Power seems a little more, you know, out there from a Mhmm. You know, strategic fit. Curious to hear like how the strategy has evolved over the years.
00:27:48 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:27:48] S1: All good things start in Hawaii. So we we've spent a bunch of time talking about buying companies, and partnering with companies. You have a third option, which is investing in companies, letting them run independently. I used to think of Salesforce Ventures as you partnering with your ecosystem, you know, your close partners. Today, it seems that you're investing much more freely, much more broadly. So, of course, Anthropic, Mistral, close partners of the company, Fall. Base Power seems a little more, you know, out there from a Mhmm. You know, strategic fit. Curious to hear like how the strategy has evolved over the years. [00:28:37] S0: Okay. Yeah. That's a great question because it really... There's been an evolution for sure. But you know, when you think about it, the through line has always been the same, which is how can we make sure we're finding the companies that will be delivering enterprise value, whether it's today or in the future. And so it started off in 2009 when we invested in companies like, you know, that were part of our ecosystem, like DocuSign, like Encino, and They [00:29:08] S1: should closely fit with your with your software. [00:29:11] S0: Twilio was another early investment. [00:29:13] S1: Makes complete sense.
00:29:13 · Alex Immerman, John Somorjai
[00:29:13] S1: Makes complete sense. [00:29:15] S0: And we integrated with them, we partnered close to them. We also did a lot of services investments as well to build out our whole ecosystem of services partners regionally. Those were very successful. We then ventured more into new areas where the industry was heading, like companies like Snowflake. That was a very, very critical investment that we made several rounds, and then the IPO round. We also invested in cybersecurity because we could see how that was going to become a massive problem for the industry and we needed to stay current, so Wiz was one of our investments. And then I think when AI became so obvious as the next wave of the industry, we wanted to be very, very big in investing in the best companies there. We created the billion dollar AI fund at the beginning of twenty three. But but in addition to Anthropic, we also invested in Mistral and Cohere in several companies that were more at the at the infrastructure level level. We've invested in voice with Eleven Labs. We've invested in video with runway. And now we're actually venturing into physical AI too, which I think is really a new fun and exciting area. And very... You can see with the improvements like with with... In robotics, with dexterity and mobility, this is going to be a huge future for for the industry. And so we wanna be there. [00:30:53] S1: Totally makes sense. I mean, broad mandate. You know, it seems to cover all of technology wherever there is growth in the sector at large. How are you spending your time personally?