Benioff has a new book out, Behind the Cloud (co-written with Carlye Adler). Billed as “the Salesforce.com playbook,” the book gives Benioff’s perspective on Salesforce’s history, and distills a business lesson from each anecdote. I interviewed Benioff over email about his book, his tips for entrepreneurs, and how Microsoft is “its own worst enemy.”
VentureBeat: In Behind the Cloud , you talk about dreaming up the software-as-a-service model while on sabbatical in Hawaii. Can you say a little more about the concept’s genesis? Were you consciously looking for a startup idea?
Marc Benioff: I was looking for something — and initially didn’t know that it would definitely be a startup. I was intrigued with what was going on with consumer websites such as Amazon.com and I knew the Internet had the potential to change everything for business customers as well. I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I started my own software company in high school and went to college to study entrepreneurship. Still, I had reservations about leaving Oracle, where I worked for more than a decade and had so many ties.
Of course what I was thinking about in Hawaii, and later in India, wasn’t just a new technology model, but also a new sales model, and a new integrated philanthropic model. As these ideas evolved, it became clear that they could only be pursued through a startup.
VB: I’m also interested in hearing about the decision to launch with a customer relationship management product. To what extent did your initial ambitions extend beyond CRM? Did SaaS and CRM just seem like a good match to start with?
MB: Yes, CRM was the right place to start, but I did not know that in the beginning. I first considered a human resources service, and even purchased the URL you.com. Human resources proved to have many complexities globally, though, and I wanted to do something that could reach people around the world.
I soon realized that CRM was an application category with revolutionary potential as it was a huge market; every company has some kind of sales force. It was also a category in which there was room for improvement. It was especially burdensome for the customer. It required maintenance and customization that needed months, or even years, to get right. It also required a hefty IT resource commitment, and more money than many companies wanted to spend on this aspect of their businesses. Replacing the traditional client-server model for cloud-delivered service that was simple and inexpensive seemed like a sure thing.
That said, it was always my intention to do more than CRM. I’ve always believed that there was the potential to see every kind of application delivered in the cloud. Of course, now that is exactly what is happening.
VB: Can you tell me more about the importance of “carrying a bag” before starting your own company, i.e., having sales experience? Why do you think this is better than just starting your own company right away, or coming from more of a tech/product background?
MB: In school all I wanted to do was build technology. That’s what I loved. But two of my entrepreneurship professors, Tom O’Malia and Mac Davis, had other ideas for me. They told me that the most successful business executives would be the ones who got real-world experience before starting their own companies. In their opinion, ‘‘real-world experience’’ was a sales position focused on building relationships with customers. They called it ‘‘carrying a bag.’’
Their advice led me to accept a job at Oracle, answering customer service calls that came into the software company’s 800 number. I didn’t want to be an 800-number operator, but taking that job was one of the most pivotal decisions of my life. I discovered that working with customers was much more fun than writing code.
Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them. You have to give them what they want (not what you think they want). You can’t do that if you are sitting in an office tower writing code seven days a week with no contact with the outside world. Learning how to interact with customers is something that anyone starting any business must master. It’s an amazing opportunity to be able to learn the ropes at an established company and then employ your expertise at your own company.
VB: In the book, you talk about the need for CEOs to create a persona, and to openly challenge the big incumbents. With that in mind, to what extent should people take you seriously when you say, “Part of our mission is to end Microsoft“?
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http://venturebeat.com/2009/10/30/salesforce-coms-marc-benioff-many-ceos-are-afraid-to-get-too-personal/
Salesforce.com’s annual cloud computing event in San Francisco. CEO Marc Benioff