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Salesforce

includes Salesforce AppExchange, Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce Data Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Agentforce, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Einstein, Salesforce Service Cloud, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce AI Research, Salesforce Research, Salesforce Foundation

230 statements across 118 episodes · 92 bullish · 72 bearish · 74 people on the record · first statement Feb 2, 2015 by Joe Floyd · said 1,527 times in 339 episodes since 2015 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (511), Jason Lemkin (180), Marc Benioff (63), Rory O'Driscoll (55), Ariel Cohen (20), Todd McKinnon (16), Saam Motamedi (16), Richard Socher (14)

tap a year for its mentions
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04080201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
00340680201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 391 mentions in 69 episodes 6 per episode
2025 409 mentions in 75 episodes 5 per episode
2024 251 mentions in 46 episodes 5 per episode
2023 154 mentions in 44 episodes 4 per episode
2022 53 mentions in 22 episodes 2 per episode
2021 57 mentions in 11 episodes 5 per episode
2020 22 mentions in 8 episodes 3 per episode
2019 36 mentions in 17 episodes 2 per episode
2018 15 mentions in 8 episodes 2 per episode
2017 95 mentions in 21 episodes 5 per episode
2016 34 mentions in 10 episodes 3 per episode
2015 10 mentions in 8 episodes 1 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Salesforce, oldest first

Feb 2, 2015 neutral
Disclosure
Floyd: Emergence Capital primarily backs founders from Salesforce, Facebook, Google, Oracle
“If you look at the entrepreneurs that we fund here at Emergence, you know, primarily a lot of them come out of the same few companies. Salesforce, Facebook, Google, Oracle.”
Joe Floyd Feb 2, 2015 ▶ 4:56 20 VC 009: Red Flags, Saas and becoming a VC with Joe Floyd
Feb 23, 2015 positive
Disclosure
Salesforce was Choice Pass's top acquisition target from day one
“Everybody was really excited about like Salesforce as a company, and when we started, we sort of looked at, you know, companies that we admire, companies that we'd like to partner with, potentially get investments from, or potentially be acquired by, and Sales…”
Kyle Lui Feb 23, 2015 ▶ 5:19 20 VC 014: Acquired by Salesforce turned VC with Kyle Lui
Jul 8, 2015 positive
Insight
Helgason: Predictable Revenue should be mandatory reading for software CEOs
“It's based on the model that Salesforce used to get from zero to a hundred million dollars in annual recurring revenue, and I really think it should be mandatory reading for every Software, CEO, or salesperson.”
Ari Helgason Jul 8, 2015 ▶ 16:32 20 VC 052: How To Make The Leap From Seed To Series A with Ari Helgason @ Dawn Capital
Nov 2, 2015 negative
Assertion Supported
Salesforce discontinued RelateIQ's European clients after acquiring the CRM startup
“On the CRM side, we started with RelateIQ. Sadly, they got bought out by Salesforce, and they decided to discontinue their European clients, which was a bit annoying.”
Antoine Nussenbaum Nov 2, 2015 ▶ 18:02 20 VC 084: Meet Felix Capital: A Venture Firm For The Creative Class with Antoine Nussenbaum
Feb 3, 2016 bullish
Prediction Held up
Mobile enterprise will produce a Salesforce-scale breakout within 5 to 10 years
“Under hyped for us, I think is mobile enterprise. I think you're going to see a lot of amazing companies come out in, in grow in the next five, 10 years both for desk and non-desk workers. You know, I think there's going to be A Salesforce Oracle type company …”
Hadley Harris Feb 3, 2016 ▶ 22:23 20VC: The Evolution Of Mobile & The Importance Of Follow On Funding with Hadley Harris @ Eniac Ventures
Dec 5, 2016 positive
Opinion
Dorsey: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is an excellent manager
“What most people may not know is he's actually an excellent manager.”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 7:20 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Dec 5, 2016 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dorsey: Salesforce operated at a faster pace than ExactTarget
“We felt like we operated at a fast pace at ExactTarget, and the pace at Salesforce was even faster”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 8:07 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Dec 5, 2016 positive
Assertion Supported
Salesforce acquired ExactTarget in July 2013 with 2,000 global employees
“And then in July of 2013, we were acquired by Salesforce. That was incredible. That was a rich moment of achievement and satisfaction. We had about 2000 employees all over the world at the time”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 4:56 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Jan 9, 2017 bullish
Opinion
Salesforce could double its prices without losing many customers
“Salesforce could double their prices. I don't think they would lose many customers.”
Josh Stein Jan 9, 2017 ▶ 20:09 20VC: DFJ's Josh Stein on Why VCs Must Adapt To Their Founders, The Major Transition Points For Aaron Levie @ Box & Why SaaS Startups Are Growing At A Rate Never Seen Before
Mar 3, 2017 positive
Disclosure
Netflix and Amazon employees adopted x.ai without any sales contact.
“On the thousands and thousands of people that have adopted the single-use case version of Amy, I never talked to the New York Times, or Netflix, or Amazon, or Salesforce, but those companies, they just have employees in pain, and since there's no integration, …”
Dennis Mortensen Mar 3, 2017 ▶ 17:50 20VC: Why Product Market Fit Is Like Porn, How The Entrance of Facebook and Google Into Enterprise Software Effects Traditional Enterprise Companies & The Future Pricing Model For The Enterprise with Dennis Mortensen, Founder @ X.ai
Mar 13, 2017 neutral
Insight
Grady: Early SaaS was a business model shift, not a UX revolution
“If you look at the last decade or so of software, the transition has been from on-premise to SaaS or on-premise to cloud, and that's been a wonderfully impactful transition, but at a very fundamental level, it's been a transition in the business model, not a t…”
Pat Grady Mar 13, 2017 ▶ 8:23 20VC: Sequoia Partner, Pat Grady on Why Data Is The New Oil, Why We Will See The Return of The Apprenticeship Model in VC & The Defining Characteristics of The Next Generation of Great Software
Sep 14, 2018 negative
Opinion
Lerman: Billing and Contract SaaS Companies Should Just Be Salesforce Features
“A lot of the SaaS companies out there should just be features of Salesforce. In fact, it's annoying that they're not features of Salesforce. Things like billing, things like order management, things like contract management, but Yext is a platform in itself.”
Howard Lerman Sep 14, 2018 ▶ 21:24 20VC: Behind The Scenes of a $Bn IPO Process, What Startups Can Learn From Teddy Roosevelt's "Five Minute Meetings" and What John Lennon Teaches Founders About Storytelling with Howard Lerman, Founder & CEO @ Yext
Mar 4, 2019
Assertion Partly supported
Salesforce acquired Buddy Media for $800M at $20M to $25M in sales
“Which Salesforce acquired several years ago for eight hundred million dollars, and when we were scaling the company, we got to about 20 or twenty-five million in sales”
Jeff Richards Mar 4, 2019 ▶ 18:22 20VC: The Transition From Founder To CEO, How To Determine When To Stretch On Price in Venture & The Benefits of Attribution for Partnership Dynamics with Jeff Richards, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital
Mar 25, 2019 bullish
Opinion
Braze will win marketing automation over legacy giants Salesforce, Adobe, and Oracle
“Braze. It's an incredible team and product in the marketing automation space. They are helping company large brands figure out how to engage with their customers and giving them a single view of their business across channel. And that's something that Salesfor…”
Alex Clayton Mar 25, 2019 ▶ 28:08 20VC: Spark Capital's Alex Clayton on How The Best Growth Investors Source, Evaluate and Win Deals, Why Market Depth Is Crucial When Analysing Markets & Why Capital Is Only A Temporary Competitive Advantage
Apr 5, 2019 positive
Insight
Russakow: 200-500 person growth companies are the best early career environment
“When you're in a company that's maybe already gotten to a couple hundred people on its way to 1500, you get this wonderful middle ground where it's big enough that a lot of the systems and infrastructure is in place and mentors may exist within the company, bu…”
Jeff Russakow Apr 5, 2019 ▶ 8:40 20VC: One Question Founders Must Ask Themselves When Approaching Investor Selection, Why Series B Is One Of The Most Challenging Phases & What Makes For A Successful CEO Transition with Jeff Russakow, CEO @ Boosted
May 3, 2019 positive
Insight
Kerrest: Successful Enterprise Software Founders Are Industry Veterans, Not 20-Somethings
“I think if you look at successful enterprise software founders, whether it was Mark Benioff and Parker Harris, Salesforce, or whether it was Anil Bushri, And Dave Duffield at Workday or whether it was Fred Luddy at ServiceNow, these are all folks who did not s…”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 10:37 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Apr 26, 2021 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Conrad: Most massive tech outcomes are compound startups with broad portfolios
“If you look at the really big outcomes, most of them end up being compound companies. You look at Microsoft, Salesforce, those are all companies that succeed because they have this broad product portfolio, and because of the ways that all of these products int…”
Parker Conrad Apr 26, 2021 ▶ 10:58 20VC: Rippling's Parker Conrad on Why The VC/Founder Marriage Analogy is Weird, Why The Notion of Focus, Focus, Focus is Overrated, Why Narrow Point Solutions Are Not Best in Class Products & The Rise of the "Compound Startup"
Apr 26, 2021 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Conrad: Rippling will become the Salesforce for employee data
“I think Rippling is going to be the Salesforce for employee data.”
Parker Conrad Apr 26, 2021 ▶ 37:56 20VC: Rippling's Parker Conrad on Why The VC/Founder Marriage Analogy is Weird, Why The Notion of Focus, Focus, Focus is Overrated, Why Narrow Point Solutions Are Not Best in Class Products & The Rise of the "Compound Startup"
Apr 26, 2021 positive
Insight
Conrad: Salesforce is a compound startup built on customer records
“Salesforce is, at least for us, one of the best examples of a compound company because they're taking this underlying primitive concept of customer data, and they're saying that there are a whole bunch of systems and applications that need to be built on top o…”
Parker Conrad Apr 26, 2021 ▶ 17:45 20VC: Rippling's Parker Conrad on Why The VC/Founder Marriage Analogy is Weird, Why The Notion of Focus, Focus, Focus is Overrated, Why Narrow Point Solutions Are Not Best in Class Products & The Rise of the "Compound Startup"
Aug 2, 2021
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lazerow: Worked harder at Salesforce than at Buddy Media
“Salesforce is an incredible company. I was working, you know, probably harder at Salesforce than I was at Buddy Media, and I was working really hard at Buddy Media.”
Mike Lazerow Aug 2, 2021 ▶ 20:17 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them
Oct 14, 2021 bullish
Prediction Held up
Kurtz predicts CrowdStrike will mirror Salesforce's platform and revenue trajectory
“I think the next five years probably look a lot like, you know, Salesforce trajectory where you continue to build out your platform, you continue to scale your revenue, your annual recurring revenue, additional geographic expansion.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 30:03 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Oct 14, 2021 positive
Assertion Contradicted
CrowdStrike was the third fastest-growing enterprise software company to IPO
“I think we were the third fastest growth company to ever IPO behind like Zoom and Salesforce.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 11:09 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Oct 14, 2021 negative
Opinion
Kurtz: Legacy security resembled Siebel instead of cloud-native Salesforce
“Everything to me looked like Siebel, and I thought it should look like Salesforce.”
George Kurtz Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 3:35 20VC: Crowdstrike Founder, George Kurtz on Scaling to a $60Bn Market Cap, How to Acquire and Retain the World's Best Talent & The Right Way to View Competition in Today's Market?
Dec 8, 2021 negative
Insight
Hiring big-tech sales veterans is often a mistake for early startups
“Some founders get, you know, really, really star eyed around, Oh, they were at Salesforce for 15 years. There's such a great fit for my 40 employee startup to come and build sales or come and be the first rep. And I'm not saying that they couldn't be, but gene…”
Kyle Parrish Dec 8, 2021 ▶ 20:07 20 Sales: When To Hire Your Head of Sales/ First Reps, What To Look for in 10x Sales Candidates, How To Structure The Hiring Process, How To Onboard New Reps Efficiently, How To Set First Quotas and more with Kyle Parrish, Figma's VP Sales
Mar 9, 2022
Insight
Grosser: Early startups should hire nerdy, product-oriented sales reps
“One, you've got to have a product oriented salesperson. So somebody who's going to get deep in your product, geek out on it, can articulate the vision and the product capabilities in line with how a founder would. Which is very different than hiring somebody w…”
Jeanne DeWitt Grosser Mar 9, 2022 ▶ 8:35 20 Sales: The Stripe Sales Playbook; Who Should Create It, When Should it Be Done, Where Do Many Go Wrong | How To Identify 10x Sales Hires and How To Structure the Hiring Process in Sales with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, Head of Americas Revenue & Growth @ St
Mar 9, 2022 positive
Insight
Stripe uses sales loss retrospectives to drive product and GTM strategy
“And then you often find when you've reviewed the losses and you can put in Salesforce loss reasons, those types of things you wind up with like clear go to market challenges where our messaging, our strategies off, as you think about positioning yourself relat…”
Jeanne DeWitt Grosser Mar 9, 2022 ▶ 27:28 20 Sales: The Stripe Sales Playbook; Who Should Create It, When Should it Be Done, Where Do Many Go Wrong | How To Identify 10x Sales Hires and How To Structure the Hiring Process in Sales with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, Head of Americas Revenue & Growth @ St
Apr 8, 2022 neutral
Prediction Held up
Liaw: Salesforce will pause major M&A while digesting Slack
“Now, I think Salesforce is probably going to be quiet for a little bit as they digest Slack.”
Eric Liaw Apr 8, 2022 ▶ 12:27 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP
Aug 30, 2022
Disclosure
Logan Bartlett initially expected Braze to be acquired for $300M-$400M
“At the time I was convinced that the most likely outcome was that it was going to be a 300 or four hundred million dollar acquisition by sales or Adobe or someone like that. And so I felt like I had to be really disciplined on the entry price because it just s…”
Logan Bartlett Aug 30, 2022 ▶ 32:33 Logan Bartlett: WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? | 20VC #920 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 13, 2023 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Marc Benioff just repeated his biggest admitted mistake by cutting sales
“Mark Benioff in his book wrote his biggest mistake in the last downturns was cutting sales. And what did he just do? Cut sales.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 13, 2023 ▶ 13:04 Jason Lemkin: WTF is Going On in VC? Are LPs Investing in New Funds? | 20VC #965 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 8, 2023 negative
Opinion
Cohen: SAP and Salesforce have not innovated in decades
“Salesforce and SAP, which are not innovating. I think the last time that SAP innovated something was in the nineties, and the last time that the, that Salesforce innovated was in the beginning of 2000.”
Ariel Cohen Feb 8, 2023 ▶ 5:50 Ariel Cohen: The Death of Salesforce; How OpenAI is Changing the Travel Industry | 20VC #975 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 8, 2023 bearish
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Cohen: Nobody will use Concur, Amex GBT, or Salesforce by 2028
“In five years from now, nobody is using, going to use Conquer and Emacs. Nobody, by the way, nobody is going to use Salesforce.”
Ariel Cohen Feb 8, 2023 ▶ 24:12 Ariel Cohen: The Death of Salesforce; How OpenAI is Changing the Travel Industry | 20VC #975 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 8, 2023 bearish
Assertion Contradicted
Cohen: Salesforce and SAP revenues are currently declining, not growing
“If I look at the numbers, I think both Salesforce and SAP actually specifically now are not growing and in fact declining, right?”
Ariel Cohen Feb 8, 2023 ▶ 31:53 Ariel Cohen: The Death of Salesforce; How OpenAI is Changing the Travel Industry | 20VC #975 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023 positive
Insight
Fillmann: Ask Interviewed Sales Reps for Referrals to Find Top Talent
“Whenever you're on the interview cycle, the first question I always ask full stop is, hey, top rep, who are your friends? And should I have an opportunity to meet them? Because they're always going to know the best talent.”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 12:05 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Enterprise Sales Proposals Must Be Tailored to the CFO
“Because that's like the new, we have a new buyer in the cycle that was never there. That's the CFO. And they're probably going to get personally involved in an enterprise deal that's material. And if you haven't evaluated that and haven't like role played that…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 36:16 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Junior Reps Gain Three Years of Experience Paired With Alphas
“I want to be able to pair that person with someone who might say, you know what? I don't have as much at bats. Like I don't have the experience pair me with them. And they're going to exponentially learn. They're going to get three years of education in a year…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 23:01 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Teaming Two Sales Alphas Together Will Crash and Burn
“I think for me I'd say the biggest mistake I've made was trying to team people together that were both alphas. And like, I think being an alpha in sales is really, really good. You want the natural leader, but if they do it at the expense of other people and t…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 22:37 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023 positive
Insight
Fillmann: Enterprise Buyers Want Role-Specific Value, Not Software Demos
“If you want to drive client relevance and you're going to show up to an insurance firm, and you're going to work with like an insurance claims adjuster, they don't want to see a demo of technology. They want to know, how do you make the life of a claims adjust…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 7:32 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Accurate Sales Forecasting Requires Math Models, AI, and Qualitative Analysis
“I think there's three pieces. One is you need like a very left brain math model that looks at all the historicals and says, you know, like on an average ratio, this is our close rate to pipe. Like there's basic math that everyone should include as part of the …”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 39:59 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023 bullish
Insight
Fillmann: Industry-Focused Playbooks Compress Enterprise Sales Cycles
“If you identify the TAM and you create a vision and you put an industry lens on it, the client gets engaged faster and the rep Gets to go a lot faster. It actually compresses the sales cycle, and now you're finding where the dollars are in April, May, or June,…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 8:14 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Enterprise Clients Care About Their Metrics, Not Your Product
“Clients don't care about you, your gear, your product, your organization. They care about them, their metrics, their firm. And so it's gotta be client oriented.”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 4:07 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Fillmann Clears Two to Three Unscheduled Hours Daily to Assist Reps
“A big part of my day is I clear two to three hours that I have no plans for, specifically so a rep says, hey, I've got a big account meeting coming up, and I feel stuck, or I have an account meeting coming up, and I want you to join, I can immediately, I will …”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 26:27 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Sales Comp Plans Must Align Rep Pay With Shareholder Metrics
“I think the biggest challenge you want to solve is alignment with how the company reports to their shareholders, whether that's a private or a public company. How is the company measured? And then make sure there's alignment all the way down to how the sales r…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 51:45 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Scale Sales Teams by Having Experienced Reps Teach Peers
“If you selectively build teams in the right way, then you're having the team teach the team, and that starts to drive scalability and repeatability, and you're not doing everything yourself, right?”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 9:29 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Enterprise Sales Information Asymmetry Became Obsolete 20 Years Ago
“Protectionism. I think, like, things are a lot more transparent. Customers have access to all kinds of data about your organization, about products, about negotiation. So, like, the idea of being closed-ended, like, you have all the information and you don't w…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 18:59 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Align Deal Reviews With Reps' Personal Financial Goals Over Quotas
“The first question I ask on a big deal review is, what's your goal? Not your quota. What's your goal? What do you need to be financially successful this year? Great. Now, how do we get there? Here's this proposal. You're not going to get there with this propos…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 42:50 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Solving Unknown Customer Problems Eliminates Direct Sales Competition
“It's about identifying problems a customer has that they don't know how to solve, creating a vision, and then encouraging them that you have an opportunity to solve that problem for them. And now you're hunting for a way larger pot of money and you're actually…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 6:07 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Prioritize Potential Over Experience, Except for Mature Enterprise Accounts
“It's always hypo one experience to the, there's always an exception to that though. I think when you have like a big mature customer and a big brand with a lot of visibility, You'll always have to take experience first. You don't want someone learning on the j…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 23:41 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Disclosure
Fillmann: Open Peer Leader Meetings With Metrics and Mutual Priorities
“The first question I always ask every time I meet with those leaders is how are you measured? What do you need from me? And this is, these are the three things I need from you.”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 49:35 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Executive Top-to-Top Alignment Must Happen Before Deal Time
“The other thing you want to do is have really good top-to-top alignment. And I don't mean when it's deal time. I mean, like, before it's deal time, where there's a thoughtful conversation of aligning, whether it's the CEOs together, or the CIOs together, or li…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 47:59 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Sending Price Proposals Early Derails Negotiations Into Price Haggling
“So I think the biggest mistake is when you just send a price over, right? And then you end up arguing about numbers that you ever see this, you send a proposal, And whether it's like a percentage savings or the absolute number, it's like human nature in negoti…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 16:52 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023 negative
Opinion
Fillmann: Founders Should Hire Sales Reps Individually, Not in Competing Pairs
“If you want the environment where people perform at their best, you need safety. If you want safety, they have to know that you're trusting them, that you've got their back. And if you have two different people kind of competing in the same environment, I don'…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 10:27 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Evaluating Customer Success Against Everything Leaves Them With Zero Focus
“But if you're measured against everything, you're measured against nothing, and so I think one way to make it that to kind of make that problem smaller, bring success on the sales calls with you.”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 50:18 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 22, 2023
Insight
Fillmann: Create Deal Urgency by Working Backward From Client Go-Live Dates
“And if you actually take that very logical objection of, not now, we're six months away, and you programmatically work back, and you create a success plan based on their timeline, chances are they need to get going right now. But like, you can't make the assum…”
Frank Fillmann Mar 22, 2023 ▶ 34:50 Frank Fillmann: How I Boosted Revenue by $500M at Salesforce; Tips for Hiring Salespeople | E992 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 9, 2023 negative
Opinion
Ariel Cohen: SAP and Salesforce haven't innovated since the 90s and 2000s
“I think the last time that SAP innovated something was in the nineties, and the last time that, that Salesforce innovated was in the beginning of 2000.”
Ariel Cohen Jun 9, 2023 ▶ 16:57 20VC: What are the World's Tech Leaders Running From? Fear? Insecurity? Poverty? What Drives the Best with Orlando Bravo, Bill Ackman, Dara Khosrowshahi, Parker Conrad, Tobi Luttke, Brian Armstrong and more..
Jul 12, 2023
Disclosure
Salesforce and Slack used different sales candidate mock scenarios
“At Salesforce, we gave them a fictitious company and a business set of business problems that they would solve using the Salesforce set of solutions. At Slack, we were comfortable with them positioning their own service, and so I think both have their advantag…”
Kevin Egan Jul 12, 2023 ▶ 15:37 Kevin Egan: Biggest Lesson on Managing Sales Teams at Slack and Atlassian | E1034 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 12, 2023 positive
Opinion
Egan: Salesforce Is Underrated as an Early Product-Led Growth Innovator
“Salesforce does not get enough credit for being one of the original product-led growth companies.”
Kevin Egan Jul 12, 2023 ▶ 1:40 Kevin Egan: Biggest Lesson on Managing Sales Teams at Slack and Atlassian | E1034 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 21, 2023 bearish
Opinion
Salesforce Has Become a Backend Database Rather Than a UX Layer
“Salesforce to me feels like it's an increasingly like a database, like a store and not where the UX happens”
Jean-Denis Greze Jul 21, 2023 ▶ 39:03 Jean-Denis Greze: CTO of Plaid, the $18B Fintech Startup; How to Hire, Fire & Build Great UX | E1038 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 21, 2023 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2033
Salesforce Will Lose Its Top CRM Market Position Within 10 Years
“So I would say I am bearish on Salesforce ability to stay number one over the next decade.”
Jean-Denis Greze Jul 21, 2023 ▶ 39:32 Jean-Denis Greze: CTO of Plaid, the $18B Fintech Startup; How to Hire, Fire & Build Great UX | E1038 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 2, 2023
Insight
Stebbings: Young founders make big-tech logo hires out of personal insecurity
“The most common I see with young founders is actually an insecurity in themselves of their lack of Experience, which leads to what you said earlier, which was the logo higher. They look for the Salesforce logo because they're aware that they don't have that ex…”
Harry Stebbings Aug 2, 2023 ▶ 27:38 Lori Jiménez: How to Increase Sales; Hiring Tips from Google; Best Way to Grow Sales Teams | E1043 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 18, 2023 neutral
Insight
Socher: Incumbents hold a data advantage over startups in AI customer support
“If you want to answer customer emails automatically, it's very helpful if you're Salesforce and you already have all those emails, you already have labels that people, you know, mark that this knowledge-based article answered this email or answered this questi…”
Richard Socher Aug 18, 2023 ▶ 17:44 Richard Socher: The 3 Biggest Barriers to Building AGI; AI Startups vs Incumbents | E1050 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 25, 2023 neutral
Insight
Howie Liu: Software Companies Under $1B Revenue Are Still Upstarts
“I think any company sub one billion in revenue is, is is an upstart compared to the enterprise type, you know, whether you're Salesforce or service now, or obviously you know, the big thing companies, we're just still operating at a much smaller, leaner scale …”
Howie Liu Aug 25, 2023 ▶ 25:05 Howie Liu: Decoding Airtable's $11B Valuation; The Impending AI Revolution in Enterprise | E1053 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 15, 2023 positive
Insight
Richard Socher: Enterprise Incumbents Hold a Key Advantage in Proprietary Data
“So it's complicated in the sense that unsupervised data, just raw internet text is easily accessible, but there's still a lot of data sets out there that are not out there. They're actually stored in a private databases. And indeed, if you want to answer custo…”
Richard Socher Sep 15, 2023 ▶ 9:08 20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents
Sep 25, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce engineers are only required in-office 10 days per quarter
“Our engineers only have to come in the office 10 days a quarter.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 17:22 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Benioff: Salesforce is San Francisco's largest philanthropist, donating $250M+
“Salesforce is now San Francisco's largest philanthropist. And we've given more than a hundred million dollars to the children's hospital and more than a hundred and fifty million dollars to the public schools.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 23:17 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 bullish
Disclosure
Salesforce subleased 250,000 square feet in SF to a year-old startup
“We just subleased a quarter million square feet of space in one of our buildings, the former Slack headquarters. To a company that didn't exist a year ago”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 4:27 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Benioff: Salesforce built the first AI operating without seeing customer data
“We were really the first AI that was built where it was able to operate on the data without us seeing the data.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 1:59 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce threatened to pull Dreamforce until San Francisco leaders delivered
“I mean, I had to kind of lay down the gauntlet. You probably saw that. I had to threaten the city and all the leaders and say, if you guys don't get your act together, we're not coming back, and They delivered.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 26:05 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce expects sales, marketing, and G&A staff in-office three days weekly
“I think that for our sales and marketing people, We tell them that four days a week we want to see them, you know, in person with a customer. For our sales and for our marketing people and our G&A people, we like to see them in person three days a week.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 18:09 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce pledged 1% equity, product, and time at founding
“When we started Salesforce, 25 years ago, we put one percent of our equity, one percent of our product and all of our employees time, one percent of our employees time into a foundation.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 23:33 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce has become the number one enterprise AI platform
“And that's kind of how we became the number one enterprise AI today.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 0:48 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce team, not CEO, will decide Dreamforce's future in SF
“I'm allowing my team to make the decision. We have a new CMO who. You know, move the Oracle conference out of San Francisco and moved it to Vegas. So it's definitely on his mind that that's a real possibility. I'm going to obviously advocate for San Francisco,…”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 26:22 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 27, 2023 bearish
Opinion
Lanng: Salesforce is just a database and LLMs bypass software UI layers
“I'm so sorry, but Salesforce is just a database. And LLMs are really good at talking with databases and querying data. You don't need 15 layers between you and that database to do it.”
Christian Lanng Sep 27, 2023 ▶ 1:07:29 Christian Lanng: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me" | E1065 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 27, 2023 negative
Opinion
Lanng: Salesforce turns software users into robotic button-clickers
“Salesforce don't have a human in the center. Salesforce makes you into a robot that has to click buttons in a certain order.”
Christian Lanng Sep 27, 2023 ▶ 51:21 Christian Lanng: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me" | E1065 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 9, 2023 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Farquhar: AI will disrupt high-cost per-seat SaaS pricing models
“I will put pressure on per seat pricing. I agree with that premise in general. For example, if you provide help desk software and it's, you know, licensed on a per agent basis. And in many cases, these, our competitors have these things that are a hundred doll…”
Scott Farquhar Oct 9, 2023 ▶ 37:57 Scott Farquhar: Founding Atlassian; How We Scaled to a $50B Valuation; The 4 Jobs of a CEO | E1070 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 16, 2023 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Salesforce created $48M in daily shareholder value during its second decade
“Over that same period of time, they had generated something like forty eight million dollars of shareholder value”
Matthew Prince Oct 16, 2023 ▶ 1:05:28 Matthew Prince: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes | E1072 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 10, 2023 neutral
Disclosure
Degnan barred Snowflake sales reps from forecasting deals before product trials
“Early on, I actually wouldn't let the sales team put an opportunity in Salesforce to forecast it unless the customer had tried the product.”
Chris Degnan Nov 10, 2023 ▶ 22:36 Chris Degnan: Why You Should Hire a Head of Sales Sooner Than You Think | E1080 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 22, 2023 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe Nov 2028
Seibert: OpenAI won't build direct Notion or Salesforce competitors
“I would doubt if opening eye goes and builds like an ocean competitor or an HR or Salesforce competitor or so on, they probably want to stay at the more generic level”
Jeff Seibert Nov 22, 2023 ▶ 27:49 Jeff Seibert: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play | E1085 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 13, 2023 positive
Opinion
Steve Goldberg: Marc Benioff cultivated a culture of perfection at Salesforce
“He cultivated such a culture of, like, perfection, that people wanted to win for him, and he cultivated so many incredible leaders, And that company just had such an incredible sales process.”
Steve Goldberg Dec 13, 2023 ▶ 53:57 Steve Goldberg: Core Questions All CFOs Ask Today When Buying | E1094 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 4, 2024 bearish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Slack was acquired for $27B but is worth $2B today
“Slack was worth twenty seven billion when Salesforce bought it and probably worth two billion today.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 4, 2024 ▶ 1:14:36 Jason Lemkin: Predictions for 2024 - What Does a Trump Administration do for Startups? | E1099 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 4, 2024 positive
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
HubSpot's CRM hit $700M revenue and threatens Salesforce
“And then the fact that now they're doing seven hundred million, their CRM product. There's CRM, which is the first real threat in some, to at least to the low end of Salesforce we've ever seen.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 4, 2024 ▶ 5:02 Jason Lemkin: Predictions for 2024 - What Does a Trump Administration do for Startups? | E1099 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 9, 2024 positive
Assertion Contradicted
George: Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow command market cap in B2B
“In B to B, you know, Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow, they command almost all the market cap in their respective markets.”
David George Feb 9, 2024 ▶ 24:58 20VC: Doug Leone, Bill Ackman, Bill Gurley and Orlando Bravo on "Does Price Matter"; When to Pay Up vs When to Stay Disciplined, The Biggest Lessons on Price Discipline from 8 of the World's Best Investors
Mar 1, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Quattrone: Salesforce submitted higher unsolicited bids during LinkedIn's exclusivity window with Microsoft
“So they went into like a 30 day exclusivity to try to get to definitive agreement. And during that period, Salesforce lobbed in Several offers that were higher. And that meant that towards the end of that period, we had to inform Microsoft, Hey, your deal is n…”
Frank Quattrone Mar 1, 2024 ▶ 35:04 Frank Quattrone: Lessons from 650 M&A Deals Worth Over $1TRN & Taking Amazon and Cisco Public| E1121 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 1, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Quattrone: Microsoft and Salesforce submitted nearly identical bids at every stage for LinkedIn
“With LinkedIn, we had interest from several parties, but it really kind of came down to Microsoft and Salesforce. And I've never seen companies bid privately and come up with such close prices on every stage Like, 151 151 162 163. It was very, very close, and …”
Frank Quattrone Mar 1, 2024 ▶ 33:36 Frank Quattrone: Lessons from 650 M&A Deals Worth Over $1TRN & Taking Amazon and Cisco Public| E1121 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 6, 2024 bearish
Opinion
Wagner: Replacing Salesforce with a new CRM is a fool's errand
“I'd rather have been doing that in sales tech than, oh, here's a better CRM, you know, unplug Salesforce and plug in my CRM. You know, like to me, that's a fool's errand. You know, that's not happening.”
Peter Wagner Mar 6, 2024 ▶ 30:02 Peter Wagner: 27 Years of Investing Lessons of Picking Founders, Price Discipline & Reserve | E1123 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2024 negative
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Cassidy: DocuSign lost S&P deal by ignoring evaluators and end-users
“DocuSign had just, that's all DocuSign did was go C-suite, Salesforce's endorsement, but there was all, there were two other layers of people, right? Evaluators and users that were, and then we just basically, Sam and I were like, yeah, And at that, at this po…”
Brendon Cassidy Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 42:10 Brendon Cassidy: Why You Should Never Hire Someone You Do Not Know in Your First Five Hires | E1124 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cassidy: Reps at Salesforce and Oracle Never Need to Prove Problem Validity
“There's no comps there for like Salesforce or Oracle or Adobe or whatever, right? You don't ever have to make that kind of case there ever.”
Brendon Cassidy Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 23:19 Brendon Cassidy: Why You Should Never Hire Someone You Do Not Know in Your First Five Hires | E1124 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 8, 2024 negative
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Cassidy: Never hire 10-year Salesforce veterans for early-stage startups
“Versus like, oh, this guy was a sales force for 10 years. I won't ever hire that person in a startup generally, right? Because there's no, no comparable motion, right?”
Brendon Cassidy Mar 8, 2024 ▶ 22:31 Brendon Cassidy: Why You Should Never Hire Someone You Do Not Know in Your First Five Hires | E1124 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 10, 2024 bullish
Prediction Held up
Ryan: Salesforce will incorporate AI and defend market share from startups
“Salesforce is going to incorporate that in and, you know, a large company with a thousand person Salesforce is not going to easily switch off. To a startup company. And so I have confidence that Salesforce will incorporate AI into their product. Maybe it's six…”
Kevin Ryan Apr 10, 2024 ▶ 22:28 Kevin Ryan: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers & Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC|E1138 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 12, 2024 negative
Insight
Blond: Do Not Hire Initial Sales Reps From Salesforce or Rippling
“If you are hiring your first AE, first AEs number one and two, They need to have seen an early stage startup environment. Do not hire from an extreme example, be Salesforce, but gosh, even today, you know, don't hire from a rep who came from rippling. And join…”
Sam Blond Apr 12, 2024 ▶ 13:45 Sam Blond: Why Startups are Doing Outbound Wrong and How to Fix It | E1139 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 19, 2024 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Mathrubootham: No enterprise software company has successfully transitioned down to SMB
“Oh, start high and go down never, never works. In the history of software, you can tell me which company has succeeded in starting at enterprise and actually winning in SMB. It's not happened. But if you look at many companies, including Salesforce and Freshwo…”
Girish Mathrubootham Apr 19, 2024 ▶ 8:23 Girish Mathrubootham: Biggest Product and Pricing Lessons from Scaling to $597M in ARR | E1142 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 26, 2024 positive
Insight
Gross: Salesforce succeeded through intentional marketing and narratives, not virality
“Salesforce owned its own growth. The growth didn't happen to it. It didn't just, it kind of experienced, you know, kind of a viral growth and Kind of took off on the internet when it started. Maybe the internet wasn't even big enough for that to happen. It own…”
Adam Gross Apr 26, 2024 ▶ 2:08 Adam Gross: Why Startups Doing Paid Under $100M ARR are not PLG | E1145 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 27, 2024 bearish
What-if
Lemkin: Slack Would Be Worth $12B Today Despite Doubling Revenue
“What would Slack be worth today at two billion in revenue? Maybe it would be worth twelve billion, right? At twice the revenue.”
Jason Lemkin May 27, 2024 ▶ 27:51 Jason Lemkin: Why Pricing is Worse Than Ever and There is More Funding Than Ever | E1157 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Sales Cloud is only Salesforce's third largest cloud product
“And Salesforce has five clouds and sales is not their, is, is I think their third biggest cloud. It's not even their top product.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 18:54 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 bearish
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: SaaS incumbents see no revenue boost from AI features yet
“So far the evidence is no. So far it says the incumbents are gonna, they're gonna do great things with AI, great, great things. The product's gonna be much better, but it's not clear they're gonna get any revenue boost from it. No one's saying that none of the…”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 24:36 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 negative
Insight
Lemkin: Customer acquisition costs in SaaS never decrease with scale
“One good thing we learned in SAS is until the Salesforce decline, we learned that generally high NRR lasts forever. It lasts to a 1,000,000,02 1,000,000,010 billion, but we also learned the CAC never comes down. And actually the public SaaS companies have the …”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 50:07 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 neutral
Opinion
Lemkin: Salesforce and MongoDB stock drops were justified by lowered growth guidance
“I think that the Salesforce crash was merited based on the projections, not on the miss, based on the projections. I think the Mongo crash was merited based on them saying, hey, we're only gonna grow in the teens.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 28:19 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 bearish
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Salesforce reported permanent slowdown to single-digit growth
“The issue is that Salesforce said we have fallen to single digit growth, and we're not coming back.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 14:51 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 bearish
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Salesforce now requires 3x pipeline coverage, up from 2x historically
“Salesforce also just said that now they need three X pipeline coverage versus two X historically. So in other words, if they want to close a billion dollars, they used to need two billion dollars of deal in flight. Now they need three because it's just 50% har…”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 21:48 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 bearish
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Demand environment is worsening for Salesforce, MongoDB, and Workday
“Yamini got on the last call a couple of weeks ago and said, yeah, we saw a little bounce at the end of the year and HubSpot had a great quarter, but it's not any easier. She said, it's not one lick easier right now. So HubSpot, not any easier Mongo worse. Sale…”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 36:55 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 3, 2024 bearish
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Salesforce lost $50 billion in market capitalization overnight
“Salesforce lost fifty billion dollars in market cap.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 3, 2024 ▶ 14:40 Jason Lemkin: PluralSight S*** the Bed & The Next IPO Candidates | E1160 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 15, 2024 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2034
Motamedi: Sales reps won't use Salesforce's interface in 10 years
“And I would argue in 10 years, sales reps won't even know what the Salesforce UI looks like because the interface to the underlying system of record has changed.”
Saam Motamedi Jul 15, 2024 ▶ 19:01 Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 24, 2024 bearish
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: Salesforce's revenue growth has decelerated to 7 percent
“It's not that fun to see Salesforce now decelerating to seven percent.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 24, 2024 ▶ 12:07 Jason Lemkin: Crowdstrike, WTF Happens From Here? Wiz Rejects Google’s $23BN Acquisition Offer|E1181 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 2, 2024
Insight
Fiechtner: Win enterprise accounts by treating conglomerates as individual commercial accounts
“You got to treat this account like 80 little accounts. It's a big global conglomerate. They have multiple different P and L's. They have multiple different regions. And if you just treat them all like little commercial accounts and do the homework for each and…”
Ben Fiechtner Aug 2, 2024 ▶ 30:03 Ben Fiechtner: 12-Week Step-by-Step Framework to Crush Every Sales Quarter | E1185 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 5, 2024
Opinion
Cahn: Rational AI strategy is unclear for non-cloud giants like Salesforce
“I mean, I do think the like tier below those three big companies are scared right now. I think there's probably like those boardroom conversations are probably tense, right? I think on the one hand, huge opportunity, right? Make the product better. You already…”
David Cahn Aug 5, 2024 ▶ 27:06 David Cahn: Why Servers, Steel and Power Are the Pillars Powering the Future of AI | E1186 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 14, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Frankel: Writing off Salesforce in AI ignores their massive proprietary data advantage
“So Mark Benioff, Salesforce, you write that off at your peril, because the amount of data they have, right, they throw in these AI tools, they're doing their own stuff, right? That is, that, like, their opportunity is enormous”
David Frankel Oct 14, 2024 ▶ 1:06:43 David Frankel, MP @Founder Collective: Investing Lessons from Seeding Coupang, Pillpack & Suno|E1214 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 28, 2024 negative
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Khachab: AI will not enable enterprises to replace Salesforce with internal tools
“I don't think so. Because, okay, like AI today, like even the best LLM won't enable you to build something like Salesforce fairly quickly. There's so much code, so much customization in there. And then plus, even if it would, then you would have to maintain it…”
Daniel Khachab Oct 28, 2024 ▶ 19:50 Daniel Khachab: "We Are in the Middle of a Cold War for AI Talent" | E1220 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 negative
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce Has Never Experienced Government Coercion or Censorship
“I haven't seen it in my own company. That's why I've been so surprised that, but I don't run a social media company, so I don't really know what the government does with these big consumer platforms.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 34:15 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Salesforce Is Building an AI Agent Layer for Heathrow Airport
“We're building an agentic layer completely around the airport with Heathrow so that from the beginning of your journey to your end, you're going to be partnered with an agent to make sure you have an absolutely great experience at Heathrow.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 8:20 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce Agentforce Pricing Starts at $2 Per Conversation
“Agent force is consumption pricing. So you're being charging per conversation. The starting price is about two bucks per conversation, and then it's negotiated based on volumes for customers.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 13:25 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Prediction Held up
Benioff: Salesforce Projects Thousands of Agentforce Deals in Q4
“We'll do thousands of agent force deals this quarter”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 11:16 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 negative
Prediction Held up
Benioff: Salesforce Will Reduce Support Engineer Headcount in 2025
“We will have less support engineers next year because we have an agentic layer”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 12:53 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2029
Benioff: Salesforce Overall Workforce Will Likely Be Larger in Five Years
“I think we'll probably be larger.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 12:23 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce Built Two of the Top Five AI Models
“Well, two out of the top five models in the industry are Salesforce models, Salesforce builds a lot of models.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 15:25 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Benioff Reaffirms Salesforce Almost Acquired Twitter
“We almost bought one. You probably remember we almost bought Twitter.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 34:25 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce Shifted Help.Salesforce.com to 100% AI Agents
“This week, I think I already told you, we turned on help.salesforce.com. I stripped out my previous support infrastructure. I've plugged in a new support infrastructure and it's all 100% agent base.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 11:32 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce Guides to $38B Revenue and $12.9B Cash Flow
“We had a great quarter, Harry. We delivered, you know, clear guidance to thirty eight billion in revenue this year, 12.9 billion in cash flow 32.9% margins.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 5:21 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Prediction Partly held up
Benioff: Salesforce Will Not Hire Software Engineers in 2025 Due to AI
“We're not adding any more software engineers next year because we have increased the productivity this year with AgentForce and with other AI technology that we're using for our engineering teams by more than 30% to the point where our engineering velocity is …”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 12:33 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce Hosts Over 230 Petabytes of Data on Its Platform
“We have over 230 petabytes of that data in our platform, and that makes it very unique”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 10:26 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce Rehired Many Employees Laid Off Two Years Ago
“Even in the layoffs that we had, which were very dramatic in the company two years ago, we have hired a lot of those employees back into the company.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 20:30 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Benioff: Salesforce Processes Over Two Trillion Enterprise Transactions Weekly
“We'll do more than two trillion enterprise transactions this week.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 7:46 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce Has Invested in Anthropic, Mistral, and Cohere
“We also use a lot of other models. We change that on a regular basis, and we've invested in a lot of model companies, including Anthropic and Mistral and Cohere and many Many of them.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 15:41 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 neutral
What-if
Benioff: Salesforce's Current Success Required Severe Restructuring Two Years Ago
“So this is a great example of no mud, no Lotus, because If we hadn't gone through that two years ago, we probably would not be where we are today.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 7:06 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce Is Focusing Exclusively on AgentForce Over Other Products
“When I just rolled out AgentForce, you'll notice that we're not going to talk a lot about all of Salesforce's products, which are amazing. You know, on the podcast, I'm going to keep coming back to AgentForce because that's all I'm focused on right now.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 23:18 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2025
Benioff: Salesforce Will Add 1,000 to 2,000 Salespeople Short-Term
“We'll have more salespeople next year because we need to really explain to everybody exactly the value that we can achieve with AI. So we will add another probably one to 2000 salespeople in the short term.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 12:58 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2027
Benioff: Salesforce Will Move Its Entire Company Onto Agentforce
“That I've moved my whole support infrastructure to the agentic platform. I will move my whole sales platform to the agentic platform as well. I'll move my whole company onto agent force for no other reason what to show my customers what is possible.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 18:50 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce Currently Employs 9,000 Support Staff
“So I have 9000 people in support today.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 19:47 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2024
Benioff: Salesforce Market Cap Tripled to Mid-$300B in Two Years
“So we ended up in the mid three hundred billion dollars in market cap. And, you know, when I think back I think our stock was about one third this value two years ago, one third.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 5:45 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Insight
Benioff: Layoffs Are a Necessary Tool and CEOs Shouldn't Fear Them
“So layoff is an important tool for CEOs to be able to use, to be able to prepare for a company for the future. And nobody wants to hit the button. Nobody wants to take the action. No employee wants to hear the words. It sends chills down everybody's spine, inc…”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 21:14 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce Sold 200 Agentforce Deals in Q3 2024
“We shipped it October, and the quarter, which closed at the end of October, we already sold 200 deals.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 11:09 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce Added Early AI Models But Didn't Pivot to Deep Learning
“I saw all those models too, and while I added it into Salesforce, I didn't pivot Salesforce entirely around deep learning.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 31:54 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 18, 2024 negative
Opinion
Daniel Dines claims UiPath's technology is much harder to build than Salesforce's
“Look, with all respect to Salesforce, our technology is much harder to build.”
Daniel Dines Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 52:11 Daniel Dines, UiPath CEO & Founder: Why Agents Do Not Mean RPA is F*** | E1240 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 18, 2024 negative
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Dines: Salesforce and SAP Will Limit AI Agents to Own Platforms
“What's the interest of Salesforce to provide amazing connections to SAP and vice versa? No, it's not. So they will focus on building agents that work specifically for workloads that stay within their platforms.”
Daniel Dines Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 21:18 Daniel Dines, UiPath CEO & Founder: Why Agents Do Not Mean RPA is F*** | E1240 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 18, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dines: Enterprise Clients Won't Move Epic Data to Salesforce For Agents
“I was talking to the CIO, which is close to us, and he said, I will never put data from Epic into Salesforce in order to create an agent. Never. There is no chance to do this. So, It's as simple as this. They will prefer to use us to have connectors, feed agen…”
Daniel Dines Dec 18, 2024 ▶ 22:03 Daniel Dines, UiPath CEO & Founder: Why Agents Do Not Mean RPA is F*** | E1240 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 17, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Monday.com was built as a generic platform, not project management software
“We didn't build a work management or project management tool from day one. You know, the equivalent, we built the equivalent of force.com. Which is for Salesforce. We built a generic platform, not about work management, not about CRM, just the building blocks.”
Eran Zinman Jan 17, 2025 ▶ 37:58 Eran Zinman, Co-Founder & Co-CEO @Monday.com: Going Upmarket, International and Multi-Product |E1247 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 22, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Sivulka: Salesforce will survive AI disruption due to human switching costs
“I think that ultimately I don't think they are. I think that I think that Salesforce Like, has built, again, like, a very, very, very sticky network effect with people, and people are the shifting function at the end of the day. It's not a technology problem. …”
George Sivulka Jan 22, 2025 ▶ 1:04:10 George Sivulka, Co-Founder & CEO @Hebbia: The Future of Foundation Models | E1250 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 12, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Odoo and ERP challengers will grow much faster than Salesforce and SAP
“I think same as SAP, most of the, these companies have still a good way to, I mean, you, they will continue. But other challenges like us will grow much faster.”
Fabien Pinckaers Feb 12, 2025 ▶ 56:00 Fabien Pinckaers, CEO @Odoo: The Billionaire Founder Who Doesn’t Care About Money | E1259 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 10, 2025 negative
Opinion
Salesforce Is No Longer the Best CRM on the Market
“Salesforce isn't the best CRM now.”
Jake Saper Mar 10, 2025 ▶ 47:28 Jake Saper, GP @ Emergence Capital: "We Sold Salesforce Early and Lost Out on Billions" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 10, 2025 negative
Disclosure
Emergence Capital Sold Its Position in Salesforce Too Early
“Yeah we sold Salesforce too early.”
Jake Saper Mar 10, 2025 ▶ 1:09:54 Jake Saper, GP @ Emergence Capital: "We Sold Salesforce Early and Lost Out on Billions" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 14, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Biilmann: AI agents will likely reduce Salesforce to a system of record
“But they definitely feel it very strongly as like the biggest threat to them to be reduced to that system of record and not the actual like workflow platform. And I think that's pretty likely what would happen, right?”
Matt Biilmann Mar 14, 2025 ▶ 9:21 20Product: How to Design and Build Products in a World of Agents | Why AI Will Kill Many SaaS Products | What Products Will Thrive and Die in a World of 100M Developers with Matt Biilmann, Co-Founder and CEO @ Netlify
Mar 17, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
HubSpot aims to define mid-market software within 5 to 10 years
“We want to define a category of mid market software. And, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, when you have guests in your podcast, I want you to ask them, hey, are you like Salesforce? Are you like HubSpot serving mid market? Or are you like Int…”
Yamini Rangan Mar 17, 2025 ▶ 55:54 Yamini Rangan, CEO @ HubSpot: How HubSpot Competes Against Salesforce · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 17, 2025 positive
Opinion
Yamini Rangan: Salesforce excels at marketing and narrative creation
“Salesforce does a really good job of marketing and telling the story and creating the narrative, and we look at that and it's like, we're, you know, we're very impressed, and we learn from it, and hopefully they learn something from us.”
Yamini Rangan Mar 17, 2025 ▶ 28:52 Yamini Rangan, CEO @ HubSpot: How HubSpot Competes Against Salesforce · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 21, 2025 bearish
Opinion
Torres: Salesforce is the biggest short in public software markets
“Salesforce.”
Elias Torres Mar 21, 2025 ▶ 1:09:36 Elias Torres, Co-Founder and CEO @ Agency: What No One Tells You About Selling Your Company · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 1, 2025
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Salesforce commits 20% of its code through AI
“Even Salesforce commits 20% of their code through AI.”
Jason Lemkin May 1, 2025 ▶ 1:25:46 What Does it Take to Be Good at Series A and B Today? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 15, 2025 neutral
Insight
O'Driscoll: VCs Must Maintain Target Lists of 10 to 20 Companies
“My rule of thumb is if I don't have a list in our salesforce of 10 to 20 names That I know I want to see, that I could imagine investing in, in the next 12 months, I'm probably not doing my job.”
Rory O'Driscoll May 15, 2025 ▶ 4:42 OpenAI, SBF & Perplexity: What VCs Know That You Don’t · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 30, 2025
Assertion Supported
Owner uses Momentum to automate Salesforce field entry from call transcripts
“So we use Momentum that looks at the transcript of every single sales call, and it fills in the Salesforce fields for the rep. It fills in their opportunity record, it updates the account, the person, it says whether or not the event was run or not, all of tha…”
Kyle Norton May 30, 2025 ▶ 47:22 20Sales: From $2M ARR to $40M ARR: The Playbook | How to Use AI To Supercharge Your Sales Team | Why Pipeline Reviews are BS | The Sales Call Script that Closes 99% of Prospects and How to Hire the Best Sales Reps with Kyle Norton, CRO @ Owner
Jun 2, 2025 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jun 2030
Varun Mohan: Salesforce won't be dethroned by database-plus-agent competitors
“It's very unlikely to me that what's going to happen is Salesforce will get dethroned by a company that is just a database with an agent operating on top of it. It just, there's too much inertia for the company building out these complex workflows.”
Varun Mohan Jun 2, 2025 ▶ 42:17 Windsurf CEO & Co-Founder, Varun Mohan: AI's Biggest Acquisition to Date! · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Driscoll: Value accretion will shift from Salesforce to AI execution tools
“I think, as I've always said, I think Salesforce instances will be there at scale long after I'm dead, but the value accretion will all go to the technology that's helping me do my job, not the technology that's count keeping score on how well my job's been do…”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 5, 2025 ▶ 57:43 Is DPI The Only Thing That Matters? with Sam Lessin, Jason Lemkin & Rory O’Driscoll · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Marc Benioff has hired three co-CEOs attempting to exit Salesforce
“Mark Benioff's tried four or five times to get out too. He's hired three other co-CEOs, right? It just hasn't worked.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 5, 2025 ▶ 1:24:11 Is DPI The Only Thing That Matters? with Sam Lessin, Jason Lemkin & Rory O’Driscoll · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 12, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: AI spending is actively cannibalizing legacy SaaS budgets
“If cursor did almost half a million, half a billion dollars in revenue in the same time, It sucked up an enormous amount of that dollar that would have gone to Okta and Salesforce, right? Five hundred million. That's a lot in that period of time, right? So AI …”
Jason Lemkin Jun 12, 2025 ▶ 49:50 Elon’s Empire: SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink After the Storm & Anduril’s $2.6BN Power Move · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 19, 2025 bearish
Assertion Supported
O'Driscoll: Dropbox lacks a significant enterprise customer base compared to incumbents
“Your right to win is predominantly in your existing customer base, and ServiceNow is a big one, and Salesforce has a big one, and brutally in the enterprise, Dropbox doesn't.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 19, 2025 ▶ 57:22 Chime IPO: Are IPOs Hotter Than Ever? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 19, 2025 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Slack and Tableau are growing faster than core Salesforce
“All of their, not all of them, but the light, so many of the acquisitions, Slack, even Tableau, which I think was founded in the fifties. They're actually all growing faster than the core Salesforce. So like, we can say, oh, Slack isn't what it was, which it i…”
Jason Lemkin Jun 19, 2025 ▶ 1:00:30 Chime IPO: Are IPOs Hotter Than Ever? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 26, 2025 negative
Prediction Held up
O'Driscoll: Slack restricting customer data access will fail over the medium term
“I don't know if you can get away forever in a horizontal app like Salesforce with a channel like Slack denying access, the denying the customer access to their own content over the medium term. I don't think it stands.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jun 26, 2025 ▶ 1:04:10 Navan Files to Go Public and Canva Pulls the Brakes: Why and What Happens? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 7, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Halligan: Shopify is the only SaaS stock outperforming Oracle and SAP
“If you go from that date and you look at you look at Oracle and you look at SAP, they're both growing, like, 230%. The only SaaS company since August 22 It's growing faster. Shopify. They're growing 300%. So they're outpacing HubSpot, Salesforce, Adobe Box, At…”
Brian Halligan Aug 7, 2025 ▶ 1:00:57 Figma's 250% Pop - The Greatest IPO Mispricing Ever? Meta & Microsoft Blowout Quarters: Broken Down · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Salesforce will redeploy 70% of SDR headcount into higher-value roles
“I think we'll redeploy. He'll, I think Salesforce, I don't know how many like entry-level SDR Salesforce has, but I bet you redeploy 70% of that headcount into enterprise reps or forward deployed engineers. That headcount just becomes more valued with agent fo…”
Jason Lemkin Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 22:40 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Every software product Salesforce sells will be agentic
“I don't think that there will be a piece of software that we sell that will not be agentic.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 7:12 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce owns a 1% stake in Anthropic
“Salesforce owns one percent of Anthropic.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 25:20 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce missed calling back over 100M leads in company history
“Over the last 26 years, Salesforce has had more than a hundred million people contact us that we've not been able to call back.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 6:14 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Benioff: US Government is Salesforce's largest customer after beating Palantir on Army contract
“Because the US federal government is already my largest customer, right? That's our, you know, we run the Veterans Administration, the GSA, and we just won You probably read just, we just run a huge U S army contract. We beat Palantir.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 11:27 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce cut support headcount from 9,000 to 5,000 via AI agents
“And to that point, I've been able to reduce the number of human agents I have in support From about 9000 to about 5000.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 5:31 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Lemkin: His organization spends $500K on 11 AI agents vs $12K on Salesforce
“So we're paying 10 grand, 12 grand a month, 12 grand a year for Salesforce. Nominally, nominally, nominally, we're paying 500,000 dollars for 11 AI agents.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 40:35 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 negative
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce is not participating in AI talent buying frenzy
“No, and we're not.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 4:51 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce Data Cloud and AI reached over $1B ARR
“The data cloud and AI together now is more than a billion in revenue. We talked about that on our last earnings call. It's our fastest growing Cloud product, whatever, ever, you know, in 26 years.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 8:46 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 11, 2025 neutral
Insight
Lawson: In corporate M&A, missing a deal is worse than a failed deal
“Well, I'll tell you the other thing that, that I think is conventional wisdom, especially at companies that do a lot of M&A like Salesforce, which is you don't worry about the deals that didn't work out. But the thing you regret is the ones you, that you shoul…”
Jeff Lawson Sep 11, 2025 ▶ 1:02:18 OpenAI’s $10BN Secondary Sale, Ramp Hits $1BN ARR & Brex Hits $700M · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 11, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lawson: Corporate venture investing gives Salesforce direct core business advantages
“In that, in the Salesforce world, the answer I would say definitely is yes. Obviously it cemented the role in the center of an ecosystem. They ended up making acquisitions. They have more information to make their product decisions on, like all sorts of benefi…”
Jeff Lawson Sep 11, 2025 ▶ 50:52 OpenAI’s $10BN Secondary Sale, Ramp Hits $1BN ARR & Brex Hits $700M · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 12, 2025 positive
Opinion
Bendov: Marc Benioff is pursuing the right AI agent strategy at Salesforce
“Well, I think he's doing the right thing. He's building agents. I think they also recognize the opportunity with AI, and they need to move fast, as fast as they can. So it's a formidable company, definitely capable, and it's impressive that the way that they h…”
Amit Bendov Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 7:19 20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong
Sep 12, 2025 negative
Insight
Bendov: Early startups shouldn't hire big-company sales VPs from Salesforce or Adobe
“You know, I wouldn't hire that, like, high pedigree VP from Salesforce or Adobe or whatever. Salesforce is a great team. You need someone who's still hungry, scrappy, and will figure out the playbook, right?”
Amit Bendov Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 15:21 20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong
Sep 12, 2025 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Stebbings: Gong has surpassed $400M ARR and a $7B valuation
“The company has raised over six hundred million dollars from some of the best, including Sequoia, Thrive, Salesforce, and more, and Gong has surpassed Four hundred million in ARR, and serves thousands of customers, including multiple Fortune hundreds, and is v…”
Harry Stebbings Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 0:17 20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong
Sep 18, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Salesforce gets the majority of its growth from price increases
“At 11% growth, like Salesforce is probably getting the majority of its growth from price increases today.”
Jason Lemkin Sep 18, 2025 ▶ 1:29:45 Opendoor CEO, Kaz Nejatian: OpenAI and Oracle, How Can Either Afford to Do This · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 19, 2025 negative
Opinion
Zhang: Competitor Sierra relies on heavy, Salesforce-style configuration
“The approaches are just very different because of their leadership all coming from Salesforce. They've taken a very Salesforce-esque approach where it's, you know, the heavy configuration and sort of this longer lift to get going. And we're more of a, you know…”
Jesse Zhang Sep 19, 2025 ▶ 52:28 20VC: Why 90% of Founders Build Startups Wrong | Why AI Growth Rates are Sustainable & Remote Work is BS and the AI Talent War | Competing with Brett Taylor and Sierra: Who Wins the Customer Service War with Jesse Zhang, Decagon
Sep 19, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Zhang: Decagon and Sierra will out-execute Salesforce on AI products
“I would expect a Decagon and a Sierra to be able to execute faster on a product side than Salesforce, but Salesforce has like so much distribution.”
Jesse Zhang Sep 19, 2025 ▶ 12:01 20VC: Why 90% of Founders Build Startups Wrong | Why AI Growth Rates are Sustainable & Remote Work is BS and the AI Talent War | Competing with Brett Taylor and Sierra: Who Wins the Customer Service War with Jesse Zhang, Decagon
Oct 10, 2025 negative
Opinion
Former Snowflake CRO Chris Degnan calls Salesforce a terrible product
“Cause God, what a terrible product that is. It is awful.”
Chris Degnan Oct 10, 2025 ▶ 21:00 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
Oct 10, 2025 negative
Opinion
Salesforce salespeople are terrible hires because they are just order takers
“Salesforce. Terrible. Terrible. Because they have no idea how to sell. They, they're order takers. To your point earlier is they don't, if you go to a place that's just an order taker, they'd have no idea how to do it. They have no idea how to sell.”
Chris Degnan Oct 10, 2025 ▶ 56:54 20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
Oct 13, 2025 negative
Opinion
Stebbings: Salesforce retains customers via high switching costs despite poor quality
“It's a fucking nightmare to switch from Salesforce. That's why no one does, despite it being shit.”
Harry Stebbings Oct 13, 2025 ▶ 38:02 Atlassian CEO, Mike Cannon-Brookes on Why Everything is Overvalued & Are We in an AI Bubble · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 23, 2025
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: Salesforce deployed $850M of its $1B AI fund
“Salesforce invested eight hundred and fifty million of their new billion AI fund.”
Harry Stebbings Oct 23, 2025 ▶ 1:03:58 Why VC Today is Worse than 2021 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 6, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: HubSpot and Salesforce must demonstrate AI revenue growth in 2026
“HubSpot and Salesforce got to deliver in 20, 26 because they're in play. They have the AI things they built, they ship the products, but they haven't seen the bump that data dog and Twilio and Mongo have”
Jason Lemkin Nov 6, 2025 ▶ 59:00 Is a $4.5BN Exit Enough in VC? & Harvey Raises $150M & Why Google is a Buy and Amazon is a Sell · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 6, 2025 bullish
Opinion
Lemkin: Salesforce Agentforce is a legitimate, competitive product
“There's 2000 people building agent force and we've deployed it. It's pretty good. It's quite good. It's very competitive with any other agent you're going to buy.”
Jason Lemkin Nov 6, 2025 ▶ 59:31 Is a $4.5BN Exit Enough in VC? & Harvey Raises $150M & Why Google is a Buy and Amazon is a Sell · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 6, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Driscoll: Salesforce must automate 20-30% of customers within two years
“In the next two years, they got to get 20% of their customer base plus maybe 30% onto being as pointy edge as Jason in terms of automation. Otherwise, these guys are going to go somewhere else to get their automation.”
Rory O'Driscoll Nov 6, 2025 ▶ 1:03:57 Is a $4.5BN Exit Enough in VC? & Harvey Raises $150M & Why Google is a Buy and Amazon is a Sell · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 13, 2025 bullish
Insight
O'Driscoll: AI Software Automates Actual Work Rather Than Just Updating UIs
“Salesforce was rebuild Siebel in the cloud, and it was fun, and we made a lot of money, but you're right, somewhat boring. What is really exciting now is you're not just talking about rebuild Salesforce exactly the same, but with a slightly modern UI. You are …”
Rory O'Driscoll Nov 13, 2025 ▶ 1:12:01 Michael Burry Shorts NVIDIA and Palantir & Has Defensibility Died in a World of AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 13, 2025 bearish
Opinion
Lemkin: AI CRM Startups Attempting to Disrupt Salesforce Are Unexciting
“There's like a 400 AI CRM startups out there all saying they're going to eat HubSpots and Salesforce lunch. That's not exciting to me as an investment.”
Jason Lemkin Nov 13, 2025 ▶ 1:09:04 Michael Burry Shorts NVIDIA and Palantir & Has Defensibility Died in a World of AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shlomo: Building custom CRMs via AI will soon beat buying Salesforce licenses
“And there would be a time, it might be in a few months, might be in a few years, where it will be easier to build your own Salesforce type of CRM than to actually buy a license to something off the shelf.”
Maor Shlomo Nov 24, 2025 ▶ 5:39 Base44’s Founder, Maor Shlomo on How Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shlomo: AI will eliminate moatless CRM companies, but Salesforce can adapt
“Smaller CRM companies, every software that's basically front end on top of a database with some team features and some integrations and does not have a moat. And I think Salesforce is so big and so massive that this is like, this is one of their moats. Like th…”
Maor Shlomo Nov 24, 2025 ▶ 11:18 Base44’s Founder, Maor Shlomo on How Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 24, 2025 negative
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Shlomo: SaaS companies requiring implementers will not survive the decade
“I think every software company that needs implementers, right, there's like a Salesforce implementer or whatever maybe in a decade from now is not going to make it.”
Maor Shlomo Nov 24, 2025 ▶ 7:44 Base44’s Founder, Maor Shlomo on How Vibe Coding Will Kill SaaS · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 27, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Jason Lemkin: Salesforce Agentforce could render AI startups obsolete within two years
“Salesforce could be the next Google. It could be in 18 to 24 months. We could be like, oh my god, Agent Force crushed it. All these startups, we didn't need them because Agent Force is so good.”
Jason Lemkin Nov 27, 2025 ▶ 0:20 Anthropic Raises $30B from Microsoft & NVIDIA & NVIDIA’s Core Business Faces TPU Threat · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 4, 2025 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: HubSpot is 2.8x More Revenue-Efficient Than in 2021
“HubSpot, 2.8 times more efficient than 20 21. Salesforce, two times.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 4, 2025 ▶ 33:20 Eventbrite Sold for $500M, Databricks $5B Raise at $134B Valuation & Why SaaS is Like Japan · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 4, 2025 bearish
Assertion Open · timeframe Dec 2030
Lemkin: Drift Is Completely Dead After Being Banned by Salesforce
“They kicked Drift off five months ago. Drift will never come back. It is dead. It is completely dead.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 4, 2025 ▶ 16:58 Eventbrite Sold for $500M, Databricks $5B Raise at $134B Valuation & Why SaaS is Like Japan · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 22, 2025 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Salesforce will be the biggest public tech stock beneficiary in 2026
“I think Salesforce might be the biggest beneficiary next year, and I'll tell you why, because it has, it is, like, you have to also, we go through the ones that declined the most this year, and you have to be honest, are they at least tapping into AI tailwinds…”
Jason Lemkin Dec 22, 2025 ▶ 41:50 Predictions for 2026: Top Buy & Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win & NVIDIA’s Challenges · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 29, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Stebbings: US Army awarded Salesforce a $5.6B contract over 10 years
“I do think a hat tip deserves to be given to our friend of the show, Mr. Mark Benioff, who army just awarded sales. 5.6 billion. Billion dollar contract over 10 years.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 29, 2026 ▶ 1:12:20 Anthropic Inference Costs Skyrocket |TikTok Deal Closes |The IPO Market:Wealthfront & EquipmentShare · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 29, 2026 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Salesforce employees call current AI era most stressful in company history
“And I don't see how even Salesforce is one of the few that can do it with its resources. And even there, it's stressful. If you talk to folks at Salesforce today, they'll tell you this is the most stressful time they've ever worked at Salesforce in history of …”
Jason Lemkin Jan 29, 2026 ▶ 32:00 Anthropic Inference Costs Skyrocket |TikTok Deal Closes |The IPO Market:Wealthfront & EquipmentShare · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 29, 2026 bearish
Opinion
O'Driscoll: AI vibe coding will not replace enterprise systems of record
“I think deals like this put to rest the, anyone who thinks that they're going to vibe code their way to a product that can replace a five hundred million dollar army orders.”
Rory O'Driscoll Jan 29, 2026 ▶ 1:13:43 Anthropic Inference Costs Skyrocket |TikTok Deal Closes |The IPO Market:Wealthfront & EquipmentShare · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 7, 2026 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2036
Cohen: Form-based software like Salesforce will be obsolete within 10 years
“I think I called out Salesforce back then, as I cannot imagine people using something like this in the next 10 years. I think AI accelerates this.”
Ariel Cohen Feb 7, 2026 ▶ 16:44 20VC: From $6.2BN Market Cap to $2.8BN: What Is Not Translating About Navan's Public Story | Are Any Public Company CEOs Actually Happy? | Why Navan Built It's Own Customer Service AI and What it Could Mean For Customer Service AI with Ariel Cohen
Feb 7, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Stebbings: Salesforce is a screaming buy due to its distribution advantage
“I think they're an incredible buy, because I think the only thing that matters is distribution. And when you have an AI sales rep that works, hey, sales reps powered by AI that make you money while you sleep. Everyone will sign up. Yes, please. And all that ma…”
Harry Stebbings Feb 7, 2026 ▶ 17:00 20VC: From $6.2BN Market Cap to $2.8BN: What Is Not Translating About Navan's Public Story | Are Any Public Company CEOs Actually Happy? | Why Navan Built It's Own Customer Service AI and What it Could Mean For Customer Service AI with Ariel Cohen
Feb 19, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Lemkin hasn't logged into Salesforce in six months; AI agents run it
“I haven't logged into Salesforce in six months. But we use it every, every minute. Our agents use it every minute.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 19, 2026 ▶ 24:40 Thrive Raises New $10B Fund | OpenAI Buys OpenClaw | Stripe at $140B: Is Adyen Wildly Undervalued? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 19, 2026 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2029
Lemkin: Monday.com Will Churn Faster Than HubSpot and Salesforce
“The Mondays will churn faster than HubSpot, right? And HubSpot will churn faster than Salesforce. It's just delayed churn, right? That, that's the thing is, you know, ServiceNow takes you 10 years to get off that platform.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 19, 2026 ▶ 1:33:23 Thrive Raises New $10B Fund | OpenAI Buys OpenClaw | Stripe at $140B: Is Adyen Wildly Undervalued? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 28, 2026 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Feb 2031
Jerry Murdock: Salesforce won't melt overnight and will survive long-term
“Salesforce is like a Mount Everest, right? It's an 8000 meter peak sitting there. It's not going to melt overnight. That thing is going to be around for a long time.”
Jerry Murdock Feb 28, 2026 ▶ 17:57 The SaaS Apocalypse: Who Lives & Who Dies | Insight Partners Co-Founder, Jerry Murdock · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 2, 2026 negative
Opinion
Zinman: Salesforce and ServiceNow markets are open to AI competitors
“The way I look at this today, service dominated by ServiceNow, CRM dominated by Salesforce is open market today.”
Eran Zinman Mar 2, 2026 ▶ 1:00:31 Monday.com CEO on Is SaaS Dead: Will Everything Be Vibe Coded | Eran Zinman · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 7, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Green: More tech companies will launch major stock buyback programs
“I would suspect over the next, you will, as our names come through, you know, you will see more things like sales, like Salesforce, people put in place big buyback programs to start buying back stock here. I think you'll see it.”
Mitchell Green Mar 7, 2026 ▶ 24:42 Mitchell Green: Why 50% of VCs Should Not Exist · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 12, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
O'Driscoll: Salesforce will thrive long-term like legacy system-of-record giants
“All the big pre-SaaS companies that had systems of record, Oracle, PeopleSoft, which rolled up into Oracle and SAP. Survived and financially thrived, even if they're not exciting in the age of cloud. And I, my guess is Salesforce does the same in a way that th…”
Rory O'Driscoll Mar 12, 2026 ▶ 1:17:49 Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins? | The Data Center Arms Race | The Ultimate Stock Picks · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 12, 2026 bullish
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: Salesforce has more Agentforce AI demand than it can service
“I'm long on Salesforce. The simple reason, and I know this being super deep on agent force and everything, is unlike a lot of folks on this list, they have more demand than they can service.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 12, 2026 ▶ 1:18:35 Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins? | The Data Center Arms Race | The Ultimate Stock Picks · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Mar 16, 2026 neutral
Insight
Rajaram: Systems of record must commoditize complementary AI products
“And I think that's the way that a net suite or a sales for the system record needs to operate. They have to commoditize a compliment. They can't just wait around for other people to build on top of them.”
Gokul Rajaram Mar 16, 2026 ▶ 18:21 Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 9, 2026 bullish
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Anthropic reached $30B valuation in five years versus Salesforce's 25 years
“Getting to thirty billion up from nine billion at the start of the year. I mean I think it took, I mean, Salesforce is the largest software company, right? Or at least cloud one. And it took them 25 years to get there. Anthropic got there in five, but maybe th…”
Jason Lemkin Apr 9, 2026 ▶ 1:44 OpenAI Buys TBPN & Their Management Team Reboot | Mercor Hack & Why Now is the Time for Cyber · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 16, 2026 bearish
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Salesforce risks becoming another IBM if its AI agents fail
“Unless it gets its shit together and makes great agents, it's another IBM.”
Rory O'Driscoll Apr 16, 2026 ▶ 37:46 SpaceX's Financials Leaked: Is it Worth $2TN | Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Are They Back in the AI Race? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 16, 2026 bearish
Assertion Partly supported
O'Driscoll: Cursor loses money despite generating $4M per employee
“Cursor does four million per employee. Salesforce does 700 per 700,000 per employee. Oh, Cursor must be more efficient. Well, it turns out Salesforce has 30% operating margins and Cursor's losing a lot of money. Why? Because they spend a whole ton on tokens, r…”
Rory O'Driscoll Apr 16, 2026 ▶ 1:11:26 SpaceX's Financials Leaked: Is it Worth $2TN | Meta Debuts Muse Spark: Are They Back in the AI Race? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 23, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Lemkin: Salesforce provides the best API for AI agent integration
“All the APIs that our agents use, our AI, VP of marketing, VP of customer service, Salesforce is the best. It is the best API out there. It crushes everybody, okay? This includes all the new guys, everybody.”
Jason Lemkin Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 1:20:36 Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 23, 2026 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: Core CRM accounts for only 14% of Salesforce revenue
“When most folks hear about Salesforce, they think it's CRM, it's 14% of their revenue, ok?”
Jason Lemkin Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 1:23:03 Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 23, 2026 positive
Opinion
Lemkin: CIOs prefer buying AI agent platforms from incumbents like Salesforce
“Salesforce, Shopify Datadog, Databricks, they, if they can execute faster than they've executed the last 20 years or eight years, however they are, of course, CIOs want to buy from Salesforce.”
Jason Lemkin Apr 23, 2026 ▶ 1:26:34 Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 30, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Lemkin: Salesforce bill jumped to $22,000 while seats dropped to three
“Our Salesforce bill went up from 12,000 to 22,000 dollars a year, and our seats went down from 10 to two plus one.”
Jason Lemkin Apr 30, 2026 ▶ 25:54 Anthropic Raises $45B but Falls Short on Compute & Thoma Bravo Hand Back Medallia Keys to Creditors · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Apr 30, 2026 neutral
Prediction Open · timeframe Oct 2026
O'Driscoll: Analysts will soon press Benioff on Salesforce AI agent API calls
“And I'm willing to bet in a quarter or two, someone's going to be asking Benioff for how many calls to your agent, your headless API did you get?”
Rory O'Driscoll Apr 30, 2026 ▶ 12:41 Anthropic Raises $45B but Falls Short on Compute & Thoma Bravo Hand Back Medallia Keys to Creditors · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 2, 2026 negative
Opinion
Stebbings: Staying at Salesforce for 12+ years signals mediocrity
“If you've been at Salesforce for 12, 1314 years, I automatically think you're not great. I'm like, you got stuck in your ways. You've been there for way too long. Seriously, you were happy just in this kind of melee of Mediocrity for 1213, 14 years.”
Harry Stebbings May 2, 2026 ▶ 3:32 Inside Clay's Sales Playbook | Becca Lindquist · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 11, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Forquer: Legora Survey Shows Most Hyperscaling AI Companies Use Salesforce
“I don't know how it's going to shake out, but I know we did a survey of all the other sort of hyperscaling AI companies and most of them are using Salesforce.”
Patrick Forquer May 11, 2026 ▶ 58:33 Inside Legora: Jude Law Generated $50M Pipeline | Are They Undervalued at $5.5BN? | Patrick Forquer · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 11, 2026 positive
Opinion
Forquer: Traditional SaaS Is Under Threat, but Salesforce Pivoted Early to Agentic AI
“I think all the traditional SaaS companies are definitely under threat right now, but I have to say I've been so impressed with Salesforce. If you look at, they sort of Did a hard break glass in case of emergency pivot last year. And at their scale, they went …”
Patrick Forquer May 11, 2026 ▶ 58:07 Inside Legora: Jude Law Generated $50M Pipeline | Are They Undervalued at $5.5BN? | Patrick Forquer · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 21, 2026 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
O'Driscoll: Salesforce's $300M Anthropic spend is 4% of developer payroll
“Salesforce spends 5.8 billion dollars a year on engineers, right? It's, so it's roughly four percent of the spend. If you want it per head, they have twenty-k developers out of their total 83 k heads, so it's 15 k per head per year, which is 1.2 k per head per…”
Rory O'Driscoll May 21, 2026 ▶ 10:07 Anthropic Raises $30BN at $900BN Price | SpaceX Files S1: How Does it Trade | Cerebras Smashes Day 1 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 23, 2026 positive
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Degnan: Salesforce will remain the system of record as legacy dies
“Legacy dies a slow death. There will, people will still have Salesforce as their, you know, their CRM or their, a source of record.”
Chris Degnan May 23, 2026 ▶ 48:01 Why Anthropic Are Causing a Comp Crisis & Why You’d Never Hire From Salesforce or ServiceNow · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
May 28, 2026
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr Moved to Headless Salesforce and No Longer Logs In
“We moved to headless Salesforce. Okay. We don't log into Salesforce anymore.”
Jason Lemkin May 28, 2026 ▶ 1:20:36 OpenAI & SpaceX S1 Drops | Layoffs at Cloudflare & ClickUp | OpenRouter & Polsia Raise Mega Rounds · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 20, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Petersen: Salesforce's Slack acquisition will prove to be great
“Slack is also going to be a great, turn out to be a great acquisition, because like, that's pretty sticky. Nobody wants to replace, build their own Slack.”
Ryan Petersen Jun 20, 2026 ▶ 48:01 Flexport CEO: Two Questions Every Founder Needs to Ask · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 27, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Salesforce's $300M Anthropic Spend Equals 3.8% of Developer Salaries
“Right now, you know, if you look at Mark Benioff, he said they spent three hundred million on Anthropik. That's about 3.8% of developer salaries spent on tokens.”
Harry Stebbings Jun 27, 2026 ▶ 26:35 How We Got Fred Wilson, Benchmark and Index to Invest $94M | Why Robinhood's Strategy is Wrong · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 2, 2026 bearish
Insight
Lemkin: Autonomous AI agents could reduce Salesforce and HubSpot to dumb databases
“If the agent can run 24 seven autonomously, take all your data and build all the analytics, build all the dashboards, run autonomously out of it then your data can flow between apps and you won't even care where it lives and all the fears about headless become…”
Jason Lemkin Jul 2, 2026 ▶ 1:12:27 Coinbase Cuts AI Spend by 50% | Kalshi's $40B Valuation & Impending IPO | The Year for SaaS Roll-Ups · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 6, 2026
Assertion Partly supported
Stebbings: Salesforce spent $300M on Anthropic tokens for its developers
“And Mark Benioff said that he spent three hundred million dollars on Anthropic, which on specifically for the dev team, which equates to 3.8% of dev Salaries spent on tokens.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 6, 2026 ▶ 21:44 Why Now is the Time for the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Mike Mignano, USV · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 6, 2026 bearish
Prediction Held up
Mignano: Incumbent tech companies will constrain employee token spend budgets
“There's too many employees at a Salesforce or I don't know, a Microsoft such that every employee can just have an unlimited token spend budget. So I think we're going to see a lot of those companies start to constrain their spends.”
Mike Mignano Jul 6, 2026 ▶ 22:47 Why Now is the Time for the App Layer | Why Startups Should be TokenMaxxing | Mike Mignano, USV · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 13, 2026 bullish
Insight
Abrahami: Salesforce's Moat Against AI Is Institutional Data Trust
“Salesforce, what is the biggest value Salesforce provide? It's not the CRM. It's the fact that you trust a SaaS providers with your data, right? You have huge banks, huge companies that actually allow Salesforce to hold all of the customer data because they tr…”
Avishai Abrahami Jul 13, 2026 ▶ 7:18 Wix Founder: Will Base44 Win the Vibe-Coding Wars? | The Truth About the Economics of Vibe-Coding · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 16, 2026 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Next-generation startups may never adopt Salesforce due to AI agents
“The next generation of folks may not graduate to Salesforce. Because they never started there. They started agentically. They may never graduate there.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 16, 2026 ▶ 25:43 Zuckerberg Back on X Challenging Codex & Claude Code | SK Hynix’s $26BN IPO · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 18, 2026 negative
Disclosure
Curative Canceled $600K Salesforce Contract For An Internally Vibe-Coded CRM
“We just recently canceled our Salesforce contract because we have an internal CRM that was vibe coded, that is working better, that is managing our process better, is more integrated into what we're doing. We run our agents inside of it, and no one was using S…”
Fred Turner Jul 18, 2026 ▶ 45:54 We Built Our Own Salesforce in Months. Here's Why We're Cancelling the $600K Contract | Curative CEO
Jul 20, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Fireworks hired former Salesforce president George Hu
“Lin just hired George Hu. He was the former president of Salesforce.”
Harry Stebbings Jul 20, 2026 ▶ 1:01 The Open-Source AI Reality | How Token Costs Will Fall 10X & Usage Will Explode 100X | Lin Qiao
Aug 20, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr runs Salesforce headless using an internal AI revenue agent
“So we run Salesforce entirely headless. Yeah. Okay. So we have our own agent, our own AI VP of revenue. It runs Salesforce under the hood. Pro is it makes Salesforce much more powerful than it ever was. Like I didn't log into Salesforce for seven years. Now I …”
Jason Lemkin Aug 20, 2026 ▶ 58:13 Stripe's $8B OpenRouter Bet | Anthropic's First Profit & The Math Behind Reaching $600B in Revenue?
Aug 29, 2026 positive
Insight
Reyes: Widely disliked enterprise software is durable because of underlying systems of record
“I think that the biggest thing is when people say, I hate that software and everyone buys it, that's probably a pretty good business, because they're not buying the software, they're buying what's underneath of it, and that to me is actually much more durable …”
Eno Reyes Aug 29, 2026 ▶ 1:20:39 Should American Enterprises Work With Open-Source Chinese Models? | Only 10% of Neo-labs survive
Sep 3, 2026 positive
Disclosure
O'Driscoll Claims Salesforce Acquired Customer Service Startup Intercom
“Salesforce just bought Intercom where we were lucky enough to invest less than a year ago, and that's a very outcome-based product for customer support where they charge based on resolutions.”
Rory O'Driscoll Sep 3, 2026 ▶ 1:01:57 NVIDIA Crushes Quarter | OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor | Instinct Hits $2.5B Valuation
Sep 3, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Salesforce Agreed to Shift Its LLM Spending to Anthropic
“Dario is showing up because Mark agreed to move Salesforce agreed to move Their LLM spend to Anthropic.”
Jason Lemkin Sep 3, 2026 ▶ 56:14 NVIDIA Crushes Quarter | OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor | Instinct Hits $2.5B Valuation
Sep 3, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Salesforce Spends $6B on Engineering and $300M on Anthropic Annually
“Salesforce spends six billion a year on engineering, and that probably includes QA and all the rest of it, but that's the right comp. And they're going to spend three hundred million dollars this year on Anthropic.”
Rory O'Driscoll Sep 3, 2026 ▶ 1:03:29 NVIDIA Crushes Quarter | OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor | Instinct Hits $2.5B Valuation
Sep 5, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Stebbings: Bret Taylor is building Sierra to recreate the next Salesforce
“I think Brett Taylor's actually trying to recreate the next generation of Salesforce. He is absolutely not playing the customer support game. He's moving into pre-sales.”
Harry Stebbings Sep 5, 2026 ▶ 54:13 How to Build Your Own Data Center & Why Every Startup Should Do It
Sep 7, 2026 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Greze: Users will rely on one to three digital entry points, not dozens
“Each human will have one, two, maybe three entry points into the digital space, because I don't think you'll want to be like, oh, I'm doing sales. Let me use the Salesforce agent. Oh, I'm doing project management. Let me use the linear agent. Oh, I'm doing thi…”
Jean-Denis Greze Sep 7, 2026 ▶ 9:06 Town vs Instinct vs GrokBot | Why the AI Assistant Market Is Not a Bubble
Sep 10, 2026 neutral
Opinion
O'Driscoll: Sierra must become a complete customer ecosystem to justify massive valuation
“The only way I can justify 15 or twenty billion in market cap for Sierra is not if I build a slightly better next generation service cloud, if I am the entire customer ecosystem for your entire business.”
Rory O'Driscoll Sep 10, 2026 ▶ 1:14:37 Jensen Huang Declares AGI Has Arrived | Tesla Launches Cybercabs | Index Pulls Out of Town
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