Salesforce

includes Salesforce Agentforce, Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Foundation, Salesforce Sales Cloud

27 statements across 19 episodes · 9 bullish · 6 bearish · 18 people on the record · first statement Dec 5, 2017 by Benedict Evans · said 245 times in 77 episodes since 2017 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Marc Andreessen (39), Alex Rampell (29), Seema Amble (26), Benedict Evans (15), Steven Sinofsky (12), Scott Wu (10), David George (8), David Ulevitch (7)

tap a year for its mentions
005020100402017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions
020402017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
004208402017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 78 mentions in 13 episodes 6 per episode
2025 48 mentions in 15 episodes 3 per episode
2024 14 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
2023 5 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
2020 7 mentions in 1 episode
2019 91 mentions in 34 episodes 3 per episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Salesforce, oldest first

Dec 5, 2017
Insight
Evans: Oracle's database dominance didn't prevent Salesforce from succeeding
“Pretty much every enterprise software company is a relational database, but nobody looks at CRM or Salesforce or SuccessFactors and says, well, that won't work because Oracle has all the database.”
Benedict Evans Dec 5, 2017 ▶ 8:17 10 Year Futures (vs. What's Happening Now)
Jan 2, 2019
Insight
McGurk: Continuous updates make SaaS products stickier than perpetual software
“You know, you really don't know. So you have to the stickiness of your customers really dictated by in part by the product really, because in a you have constant updates. If you're a Salesforce customer, if you're a any SAS model customer, you're constantly ge…”
Jamie McGurk Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:52 a16z Podcast | Valuing Today's Fast-Growing Software Companies
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Insight
Benioff: SaaS startups must enforce multi-year subscriptions instead of month-to-month contracts
“So when you're signing the customer, if you're just signing the month-to-month. It doesn't work. You've gotta sign them for one or two or three years at a time, and also that was an incredible part of the cash flow, too”
Marc Benioff Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:39 a16z Podcast | Where the Growth in Cloud and Enterprise Software Really Is (with Marc Benioff)
Jan 2, 2019 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Sequoia and USVP rejected Salesforce three times in 1999
“No venture capitalist would give us money. We raised all the money privately. I was thrown out of, you know, Sequoia three times, US venture capital, three times.”
Marc Benioff Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 6:13 a16z Podcast | Where the Growth in Cloud and Enterprise Software Really Is (with Marc Benioff)
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Assertion Partly supported
Salesforce turned cash flow positive immediately after switching to multi-year subscriptions
“When we made that shift, then that next month we were cash flow positive, and we've never looked back on that.”
Marc Benioff Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:07 a16z Podcast | Where the Growth in Cloud and Enterprise Software Really Is (with Marc Benioff)
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Software startup valuations in Japan are much lower than US
“Because there are really great companies in Japan at valuations that are much more attractive than what we're paid for here.”
Marc Benioff Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:52 a16z Podcast | Where the Growth in Cloud and Enterprise Software Really Is (with Marc Benioff)
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Insight
Gorham: Farmers resist software risk because they get only 40 crop cycles
“You get one chance or 40 chances in your whole career to produce a crop. And you, you're not gonna just take a flyer on Some guy with a shiny software package who says this can help. I can try in my business, I can try Salesforce and if it doesn't work, I'll t…”
Sid Gorham Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:28 a16z Podcast | Data Down on the Farm
Jan 2, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Wennmachers: Salesforce defused early service outages by creating a public status site
“Salesforce actually has, was a really good example way back in the day when I was still at OutKast. They had some outage from, that was way more common then because, you know, we weren't all as savvy at it as we are now, and what they did, they went full trans…”
Margit Wennmachers Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 20:14 a16z Podcast | Crisis Communications
Jan 2, 2019 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Rachleff: Apple, Google, and Salesforce failed to succeed on original ideas
“None of their original ideas were the ideas on which they succeeded. So Apple, Google, you name the company, Salesforce, Hewlett Packard, none of them succeeded at their original idea, if you can believe that.”
Andy Rachleff Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:59 a16z Podcast | From Teaching Leadership to Being a Leader
Jan 2, 2019 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levine: Data-driven digital assistants will augment workers across all professions
“I mean, in some ways it's already happening. There are companies out there who look at Salesforce productivity, looking at the most productive salespeople in an organization, learn what they do, modify that, and then go give that information to, so where every…”
Peter Levine Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 15:43 a16z Podcast | The End (and Beginning) of Programming
Jan 9, 2020
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ulevitch: Top Cisco sales reps routinely avoided using Salesforce
“The best sales reps at Cisco who had the biggest deals never put them into Salesforce.”
David Ulevitch Jan 9, 2020 ▶ 12:14 We Don't All Need to Learn to Code
Nov 20, 2024 bearish
Insight
Schmidt: AI-native systems will bypass legacy CRMs by capturing data directly
“Instead of a human being sitting out at their computer and entering something in, we now can have basically AI always on and recording that conversation in real time Or frankly, having that conversation. And so you start to think about all of the legacy system…”
Joe Schmidt Nov 20, 2024 ▶ 1:59 "Death of a Salesforce”: Why AI Will Transform the Next Generation of Sales Tech
Jan 14, 2025 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Rampell: Salesforce risks losing revenue or 10x-ing depending on AI transition
“So that's why, you know, Salesforce, it's a two hundred billion dollar plus public company. If they don't do this right, they could lose all of their revenue or most of it. If they do it really well, they can 10 X the revenue.”
Alex Rampell Jan 14, 2025 ▶ 20:22 How AI is Reshaping Labor Markets: A $Trillion-Dollar Opportunity Explained
Feb 14, 2025 negative
Opinion
Sivulka: B2B enterprise AI apps are becoming feature-bloated like Salesforce
“A lot of B to B enterprise AI apps will have a billion different apps, and they'll just be, you know, here's this feature, here's, here's this feature. And it's already starting to look a little bit like Salesforce.”
George Sivulka Feb 14, 2025 ▶ 35:05 Reasoning Models Are Remaking Professional Services
Mar 20, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jain: Early Salesforce buyers bought the software to learn Salesforce's playbook
“Like in the early days of Salesforce, people bought Salesforce to learn how Salesforce use Salesforce.”
Prabhav Jain Mar 20, 2025 ▶ 13:38 The Future of Digital Workers
Jul 18, 2025 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wu: Salesforce tests roughly a thousand pricing variants behind the scenes
“You even see exploration within, take a large company, take a Salesforce. Behind the scenes, they have their like list price. They have like a thousand variants in production, trying different things out, looking for the one that's going to stick and drive the…”
Scott Wu Jul 18, 2025 ▶ 32:01 Tech Executives: AI Has Changed SaaS Forever (Don't Fall Behind)
Jul 18, 2025 neutral
Assertion Supported
Wu: Salesforce changed its fundamental pricing structure three times in 12 months
“Agent force, like literally Salesforce, one of the biggest companies in the world changes fundamental pricing structure three times in the past 12 months.”
Scott Wu Jul 18, 2025 ▶ 30:22 Tech Executives: AI Has Changed SaaS Forever (Don't Fall Behind)
Jul 18, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Scott Wu: Salesforce combines seat fees with usage pricing for Agentforce
“Salesforce, for instance, you know, they went and like added this agent for stuff. They still have per user access fees, but now the agent forces is variable cost on top that allows them to like, if the agents actually are providing value, now my business will…”
Scott Wu Jul 18, 2025 ▶ 10:40 Tech Executives: AI Has Changed SaaS Forever (Don't Fall Behind)
Jan 15, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Horowitz: Cloud software companies are 10x larger than on-premise predecessors
“If you compared the on-premise software companies to the cloud software companies, so compare PeopleSoft to Workday or compare Siebel software to Salesforce, the cloud version was just 10 times bigger.”
Ben Horowitz Jan 15, 2026 ▶ 10:31 Ben & Marc: Why Everything Is About to Get 10x Bigger
Jan 19, 2026 bearish
Prediction Open · timeframe Jan 2031
Rampell: An AI-native startup will build a better CRM and displace Salesforce
“Somebody is going to out Salesforce, Salesforce, not for the hostages that they have, but is going to build the greenfield version of Salesforce because how is that possible? Everybody hates using Salesforce. There's a new company that's going to do this bette…”
Alex Rampell Jan 19, 2026 ▶ 58:10 The AI Opportunity that goes beyond Models
Jan 26, 2026 neutral
Insight
George: AI Startups Need UI, Data, and Pricing Shifts to Beat SaaS Giants
“I think for startups to win, I think you need all three and that's just in the head-to-head stuff.”
David George Jan 26, 2026 ▶ 55:44 The Biggest Bottlenecks For AI: Energy & Cooling
Jan 26, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
George: a16z has not found a startup capable of dethroning Salesforce
“We haven't found the startup that's like got the killer idea for like dethroning salesforce.com yet.”
David George Jan 26, 2026 ▶ 56:00 The Biggest Bottlenecks For AI: Energy & Cooling
Apr 28, 2026 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levie: Headless AI agents will scale to 1,000x human users
“Where again, you were normally constrained by the number of people on these platforms, but now the headless user can be, you know, a hundred or a thousand X the scale of those human users.”
Aaron Levie Apr 28, 2026 ▶ 26:10 Box CEO on AI Agents & Why Enterprise Can't Keep Up | a16z
Jul 7, 2026 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Amble: Salesforce Headless 360 is merely a rebranding of existing APIs
“I don't, from what I can tell, nothing actually changed. Their three 60 product was the same APIs that had always been exposed, now rebranded as their three 60 product.”
Seema Amble Jul 7, 2026 ▶ 4:00 Software in the Age of Agents | The a16z Show
Jul 7, 2026
Disclosure
Amble: Incoming sales VPs routinely mandate adopting Salesforce
“When, like, new VPs of sales come into our companies, they, they're like, they mandate that Salesforce is there because they're used to using it, their teams are used to using it.”
Seema Amble Jul 7, 2026 ▶ 10:43 Software in the Age of Agents | The a16z Show
Jul 7, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Amble: Notion users are more tech-savvy builders than Salesforce users
“Notion users tend, you know, all things being equal, are more, I'd say, tech-savvy and more agentic as builders”
Seema Amble Jul 7, 2026 ▶ 4:57 Software in the Age of Agents | The a16z Show
Aug 26, 2026 positive
Insight
Acharya: AI applications convert raw model primitives into industry economic outcomes
“The key point about the application layer is that, you know, intelligence is a primitive, just like buying cloud is a primitive. And what does Salesforce do? It sort of takes the, you know, AWS cloud primitive and turns it into CRM software that delivers an ec…”
Anish Acharya Aug 26, 2026 ▶ 14:22 The State of AI: Models, Moats, and the Consumer Renaissance
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