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Salesforce

includes Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Agentforce, Salesforce AppExchange, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce Data Cloud, Salesforce Einstein, Salesforce App Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud, Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Field Service, Salesforce Foundation and 5 more

148 statements across 90 episodes · 61 bullish · 32 bearish · 51 people on the record · first statement May 13, 2017 by Byron Deeter · said 1,351 times in 237 episodes since 2015 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Jason Lemkin (547), Amelia Ibarra (92), Marc Benioff (40), Brian Halligan (37), Amelia LeRutte (33), Sam Blond (26), Leila Seka (17), Brendon Cassidy (15)

tap a year for its mentions
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02040201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
007.5201540201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 431 mentions in 30 episodes 14 per episode
2025 268 mentions in 33 episodes 8 per episode
2024 145 mentions in 32 episodes 5 per episode
2023 96 mentions in 38 episodes 3 per episode
2022 121 mentions in 32 episodes 4 per episode
2021 103 mentions in 27 episodes 4 per episode
2020 42 mentions in 11 episodes 4 per episode
2019 72 mentions in 16 episodes 5 per episode
2018 36 mentions in 7 episodes 5 per episode
2017 32 mentions in 10 episodes 3 per episode
2015 5 mentions in 1 episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Salesforce, oldest first

May 13, 2017 neutral
Assertion Supported
Deeter: Over 40% of Public Cloud Value Has Been Acquired
“Over 40% of the value of the public cloud companies has been acquired away, strip out Salesforce at the top there, and well over 50% has been acquired.”
Byron Deeter May 13, 2017 ▶ 5:02 Bessemer Venture Partners: The State of the Cloud, 2017-2018 Edition
Jul 26, 2017 negative
Insight
Roberge: Why Big-Company Sales Reps Fail Under Technical Founders
“When you're two engineering-based founders bringing in that first salesperson, geez, that guy showed up at Oracle or Salesforce or wherever it was. He went through a month of training how to handle the top 20 objections. That process is not built. And if you d…”
Mark Roberge Jul 26, 2017 ▶ 10:16 Sales Mistakes that Can Kill Your SaaS Business & How to Avoid Them
Dec 20, 2017 negative
Insight
Schnaars: Series B Startups Should Avoid Long-Tenured Big-Company Sales Reps
“You can't just bring on that person that's been at Salesforce for the last 15 years, and because they've done really well at Salesforce, they, you know, there's oftentimes this perception that You know, somebody else is gonna make white papers for me. They're …”
Scott Schnarz Dec 20, 2017 ▶ 8:54 How the Relationship Changes Between CEO and VP Sales After Funding
Jan 1, 2018 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Adam Gross: SaaS companies over three years old are decomposing monolithic stacks
“If your company is more than three years old, your engineers are currently on a journey to take the application stack that you created, which was a classic web application stack, right? This is what Salesforce looks like under the hood in 1999. This is kind of…”
Adam Gross Jan 1, 2018 ▶ 7:30 Infrastructure for Non Devs: What CEOs Really Need to Know in 2017
Mar 17, 2018 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Groupon paid Salesforce eight figures annually
“Salesforce had just landed them as a huge customer. Back in the day, it was a marquee customer. I don't know how much they paid Salesforce, but I know it was eight figures a year.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 17, 2018 ▶ 24:20 SaaStrPRO AMA with Jason Lemkin
Mar 7, 2019 positive
Disclosure
Halligan: HubSpot made its CRM free forever to compete with Salesforce
“When we go to market in the same market, we can't just build a me too product. We need to build a lighter product more consumer grade in the front end, enterprise grade in the back end. And we need to have an innovative go to market model. So when we built our…”
Brian Halligan Mar 7, 2019 ▶ 16:36 The Funnel is Dead. Long Live the Flywheel. With Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan
Apr 29, 2019 positive
Insight
Ford: Sponsorship means pitching colleagues' ideas while keeping their names attached
“So it's about advocating for people when they're not physically in that room, taking their ideas forward and keeping their name on it, right? And making sure they're getting the credit for what they did.”
Molly Ford Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 4:59 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Apr 29, 2019 neutral
Assertion Supported
Salesforce spent over $8M across three years fixing compensation disparities
“We did the equal pay audit the first year, and we found about a three million dollar issue. And then we did it the second year, and we found another three million dollar issue. And then we did it the third year, and we found another, I mean, it's north of eigh…”
Leila Seka Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 16:57 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Apr 29, 2019
Insight
Ford: Correcting pay gaps is easier at 200 employees than 40,000
“It's easier to ride a ship when you've got a couple hundred employees, to do that equal pay audit now, to think about diversity in your hiring and your recruiting practices now versus, oh, let me fix things when I'm 40,000 employees in.”
Molly Ford Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 14:39 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Apr 29, 2019 positive
Assertion Supported
Benioff regrets not prioritizing equal pay from Salesforce's inception
“He will openly say, if I'd known, I would have done this in the beginning too. I would have done equal pay and equality, and I would have had a chief equality officer. The second I hired the chief philanthropy officer, like he, Miss Mark Benioff, like the lege…”
Leila Seka Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 15:09 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Apr 29, 2019 positive
Insight
Seka: Corporate equality requires continuous commitment rather than one-off audits
“This is not a one and done. You can't be like, oh, I went to the Bold Force meeting, I went to the Martin Luther King march, I did one pay audit. We're equal. Like, this is something that you decide to commit yourself to, and commit your company to”
Leila Seka Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 17:49 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Apr 29, 2019 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff initially dismissed pay gap claims before approving compensation audit
“Cindy had a one-on-one with Mark, and she invited me, and we got all ready, and we went to the one-on-one, and we sat there, and you know, the crux of the conversation was about equal pay and it really was us sort of saying to him, hey, you know, we think ther…”
Leila Seka Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 3:22 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Apr 29, 2019 neutral
Assertion Supported
First Salesforce equal pay audit adjusted salaries for almost as many men
“That first year we did the audit, we almost paid as many men as we did women to balance the salaries, and no one actually gets a pay cut.”
Molly Ford Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 17:38 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Apr 29, 2019 positive
Insight
Ford: Actionable allyship requires asking, listening, showing up, and speaking up
“We have four steps to being an ally. Ally is actionable. It's ask, ask people about their journey, right? What's it like to be a black woman? Listen, listen with empathy and respect. Show up. So when there's a South Asia force, Diwali festival, show up, right?…”
Molly Ford Apr 29, 2019 ▶ 9:36 How we did it: Gender Equality, Equal Pay, and Racial Equality with Salesforce
Jul 1, 2019 neutral
Disclosure
Slack's early sales team operated out of Zendesk rather than Salesforce
“Early days we had an accounts team and the accounts team would work out of Zendesk, not Salesforce. So it was almost like an extension of customer support and they would talk to a dentist office and the CIO of a fortune 100 company in the same day.”
Danny Herzberg Jul 1, 2019 ▶ 17:09 From Freemium to Enterprise with Slack
Jul 1, 2019 positive
Opinion
Salesforce's 2002 30-day free trial was its key differentiator against Siebel
“The Salesforce trial was a 30 day trial, up to five users, but the sales rep could toggle it up to 20 users, however many users they wanted, and really put the technology in the hands of the user. And that was like the key differentiator from Siebel at the tim…”
Kevin Egan Jul 1, 2019 ▶ 2:40 From Freemium to Enterprise with Slack
Jul 24, 2019 neutral
Assertion Supported
Forbes Data: Salespeople Spend Only 35% of Their Day Selling
“Like, Forbes says, 35% of a sales person's day is actually spent selling, because they're filling out all those 10 extra sales force fields for me, so I can do great segmentation.”
Theresa O'Neil Jul 24, 2019 ▶ 8:40 "Aligning Sales, Marketing, and CS to Scale Revenue and Retention" Theresa O'Neil, Showpad CMO
Aug 7, 2019 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bazin: Doctolib Rebuilt Salesforce From Scratch Three Times
“And what's actually funny is that we had to rebuild our Salesforce from scratch three times.”
Agnes Bazin Aug 7, 2019 ▶ 14:50 "The Secret to SMB Sales" Accel Partner Andrei Brasoveanu and Doctolib CDO Agnes Bazin
Nov 11, 2019 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Cummings: Pardot generated $250M in recognized revenue at Salesforce last year
“Today, six years later, Pardot, as part of salesforce.com, last calendar year, did two hundred and fifty million of recognized revenue.”
David Cummings Nov 11, 2019 ▶ 3:06 7 Lessons Helping Start Pardot, SalesLoft, and Calendly
Jun 10, 2020 neutral
Disclosure
Porter: Salesloft automated CEO follow-up emails for closed-won deals over $50,000
“Once we acquired a new customer, I set this rule up in Salesforce that would say, if customer comes in and deal is closed one, above 50 K is the threshold I put on, you know, you may do differently, then it would automate an email from me to the rep, saying co…”
Kyle Porter Jun 10, 2020 ▶ 18:37 7 Key Tips & Tricks to Getting More Revenue per AE with Salesloft, Zoom and Fireeye
Jul 29, 2020 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: CRM Is Salesforce's Third or Fourth Largest Category
“I think at Salesforce, depending on how you look at it, CRM is either their fourth or third largest category now.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 29, 2020 ▶ 19:12 What’s Changed Since March 15 The Cloud at Hyperspeed. The World in Flux.
Nov 5, 2020 negative
Insight
Lemkin: Sales VPs from giants like Salesforce do not work at startups
“We know that the Oracle VP doesn't work. Salesforce is the same as Oracle today, right?”
Jason Lemkin Nov 5, 2020 ▶ 17:55 How to Hire a Great First VP of Sales
Jan 14, 2021 negative
Opinion
Willey: Salesforce struggles to capture dynamic views of contract timing opportunities
“Unfortunately, Salesforce, isn't that good at kind of capturing dynamic views of these different types of opportunities”
Tim Willey Jan 14, 2021 ▶ 15:39 10 Rules for Defining Churn with ForgeRock and Solarwinds | SaaStr Software Community
Jan 29, 2021 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin notes Salesforce generates 70% of its growth from existing customers.
“It's true of Salesforce. 70% of the growth is from the base.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 29, 2021 ▶ 42:39 The Twists and Turns Along the Way to Building a Unicorn with Salesloft's CEO Kyle Porter
Feb 8, 2021 negative
Opinion
Bonnici: Salesforce Marketing Is Not the Most ROI-Focused
“Realized that I wouldn't have a hundred million dollars to throw an event like I did when I was in Salesforce. Amazing company, but obviously not the most ROI focused marketing,”
Ryan Bonnici Feb 8, 2021 ▶ 1:49 How to Market at Mass Scale | Harry Stebbings, The Twenty Minute VC & Whereby CMO Ryan Bonnici
Feb 18, 2021 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
The vast majority of HubSpot's agency partners sell HubSpot exclusively
“The vast majority are selling. They're not selling Salesforce and dynamics in Adobe. They're selling HubSpot and servicing HubSpot, but you know, I'd say 10% of them and some of the bigger ones support all of them.”
Brian Halligan Feb 18, 2021 ▶ 19:15 Brian Halligan, CEO and Co-Founder at HubSpot: The Secrets to $1B ARR ... And Beyond!
Feb 18, 2021 negative
Opinion
Legacy CRM competitors cannot offer freemium due to software complexity
“Like if one of those companies wanted to do freemium, it would fall down on itself because it's hard to stand that darn thing up. It's really hard to use really hard to set up.”
Brian Halligan Feb 18, 2021 ▶ 33:10 Brian Halligan, CEO and Co-Founder at HubSpot: The Secrets to $1B ARR ... And Beyond!
Mar 14, 2021 positive
Assertion Supported
Deeter: Salesforce paid record 35x multiple for Slack acquisition
“35 X revenue multiple paid for what is a fantastic business by one of the leaders of cloud with Salesforce really showing that this was the second largest enterprise software acquisition in history after only IBM's purchase a red hat, but also the largest mult…”
Byron Deeter Mar 14, 2021 ▶ 18:25 The State of the Cloud: 2021 with Bessemer Venture Partners | SaaStr Software Community
Oct 14, 2021 bullish
Opinion
Deeter: Cloud leaders are superseding FAANG as tech growth drivers
“Our thesis internally is that those horizons and the growth rates of those markets are starting to pull back, and that you see a changing of the guard. And it's really the cloud basket, and we pulled out six names in particular with Microsoft, Twilio, Shopify,…”
Byron Deeter Oct 14, 2021 ▶ 5:09 State of the Cloud 2021 with Bessemer Venture Partners | SaaStr Software Community
Oct 20, 2021 neutral
Assertion Supported
Nottebohm: Top-down sales drove most software companies to $5B revenue
“By the way, this is how SAP and Salesforce made it all the way up and over to the five billion mark, and if you remember that list, the majority of the companies who got to five billion actually got there this way.”
Olivia Nottebohm Oct 20, 2021 ▶ 3:41 How Community-Led Growth Drives Product-Led Growth with Notion CRO, Olivia Nottebohm
Oct 27, 2021
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Talkdesk built the first five-minute call center onboarding flow in Salesforce
“So we built the first kind of, ah, onboarding flow directly through Salesforce so that the sales engineers at Salesforce could create a call center in five minutes on Salesforce. This is the first time that happened.”
Rachel Wolan Oct 27, 2021 ▶ 8:59 Beyond Product-led Growth: 7 Lessons Learned in Product-Led Scaling with Dropbox GM Rachel Wolan
Oct 27, 2021 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Wolan: Only Salesforce mattered among Talkdesk's 20 revenue-driving integrations
“We had something like 20 different integrations that were actually driving revenue. And really all that mattered was one of those integrations. And it was Salesforce.”
Rachel Wolan Oct 27, 2021 ▶ 7:53 Beyond Product-led Growth: 7 Lessons Learned in Product-Led Scaling with Dropbox GM Rachel Wolan
Nov 4, 2021 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Salesforce's share of total cloud market cap halved in five years
“If you look at revenue or market cap, Salesforce has grown incredibly, right? Almost two hundred billion, but its share of, Total revenue and total market cap is half of what it was five years ago, just because the rest of the cloud got so big, right?”
Jason Lemkin Nov 4, 2021 ▶ 27:31 The Sales Playbook for 2022 with Co-Sell CEO Brendon Cassidy and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
Dec 9, 2021 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: 70% of Salesforce's new bookings come from existing base
“70%. 70%. That's the whole story. Think about that.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 5:59 Ask Me Anything About Customer Success with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and ChurnZero CEO You Mon Tsang
Dec 9, 2021 positive
Insight
Lemkin: First enterprise customers must get a dedicated CS hire
“When you close your first enterprise customer, and maybe that's 50 K to start, maybe it's a hundred K later, it's a million or ten million or a hundred million if your Salesforce, that first 50 K to make, maybe it's 20 K if your product's 200 dollars a year an…”
Jason Lemkin Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 29:32 Ask Me Anything About Customer Success with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and ChurnZero CEO You Mon Tsang
Dec 9, 2021 negative
Opinion
Lemkin: Almost 100% of SaaS founders under-invest in customer success
“But if Salesforce at twenty billion in ARR and a three hundred billion market cap can get 70% of revenue from its base, that means who, any founder, CEO that is listening to this, It's under-investing in customer success. Almost by definition, almost a hundred…”
Jason Lemkin Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 6:41 Ask Me Anything About Customer Success with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and ChurnZero CEO You Mon Tsang
Dec 9, 2021 neutral
Insight
Lemkin: Product-led growth is useless without real-time data instrumentation
“You can't have product-led growth Isn't actionable unless you have instrumentation around it, right? What is actionable, right? What is the difference between product-led growth and classic freemium self-service viral word of mouth, which we've been doing for …”
Jason Lemkin Dec 9, 2021 ▶ 36:22 Ask Me Anything About Customer Success with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and ChurnZero CEO You Mon Tsang
Jan 4, 2022 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Box CRO: Microsoft and Salesforce will win enterprise SaaS consolidation waves
“Well, I think that the extra large vendors will benefit big time as they did in the client server era. And so if you think about the number one and the number two cloud investments at the app layer, not the infrastructure layer that organizations are making at…”
Mark Wayland Jan 4, 2022 ▶ 9:46 Reaccelerating Growth at Scale with Box's CRO Mark Wayland and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
Jan 4, 2022 positive
Opinion
Box CRO: Salesforce remains the best-operated software company on Earth
“I'd strongly argue it was the best, you know, operated software company on earth and probably still is today.”
Mark Wayland Jan 4, 2022 ▶ 4:04 Reaccelerating Growth at Scale with Box's CRO Mark Wayland and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
Feb 27, 2022 neutral
Assertion Supported
Bedecarre: Sephora leased major portion of Salesforce's 350 Mission space
“Salesforce themselves put up one of their half of their building at three 50 mission. Sephora took a huge chunk of that.”
Justin Bedecarre Feb 27, 2022 ▶ 6:51 The Office is Back!! But What Will It Be Like? Jason Lemkin & Justin Bedecarre of Raise.Work
Feb 27, 2022 bullish
Prediction Partly held up
Bedecarre: Apple, Meta, Salesforce, and Slack back in offices by April 2022
“Big tech, you know, that Apple, Salesforce, Facebook, Meta you know, Slack all of these companies are kind of targeting over the next couple months, but by April, they will all be back.”
Justin Bedecarre Feb 27, 2022 ▶ 5:56 The Office is Back!! But What Will It Be Like? Jason Lemkin & Justin Bedecarre of Raise.Work
Mar 8, 2022 negative
Insight
At massive scale, Salesforce employee quality maps to society's average
“Don't look at just like certain companies and certain brands and say, I want someone from Salesforce, right? Because Salesforce has how many employees now? At that scale, you start mapping to the average of society.”
Tom Clayton Mar 8, 2022 ▶ 31:02 The Path to a Billion Dollars: How to Create Multi-Revenue Streams with Bill.com CRO Tom Clayton
Jun 1, 2022
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Salesforce's user group program ran 500 monthly meetups globally
“When I was at Salesforce, I ran the user group program, and we had 500 meetups that were happening every month all around the world.”
Holly Firestone Jun 1, 2022 ▶ 12:42 Enterprise Communities: The What, Who, Why, When & How | @VenafiCo Head of Community Holly Firestone
Jul 6, 2022
Insight
Schuck: Startups must develop talent internally rather than hiring from tech giants
“Because you're not going to go out and get the best people from Salesforce or Bill.com or wherever. You're going to get people who are not those people who have an aspiration for the future of being those people, the same way we all do in our startup, and you'…”
Henry Schuck Jul 6, 2022 ▶ 32:03 10 Mistakes the CEO/Founder of ZoomInfo Made on His Journey to IPO (and Beyond)
Jul 12, 2022 negative
Insight
Çilingir: Top reps from Adobe or Salesforce often fail at startups
“Being able to sell this product of Adobe or Salesforce type companies doesn't mean that they can be also successful salespeople in your own organization, because every single product is different.”
Hande Çilingir Jul 12, 2022 ▶ 4:02 Top 10 Mistakes in Building Out Your Revenue Organization with Insider CEO Hande Çilingir | SaaStr
Jul 26, 2022 negative
Disclosure
Zocchetto: Expanding PayFit internationally without a CRM like Salesforce was a mistake
“So we opened Spain. We opened Germany from France without having Salesforce. You know, we were we had our own in-house Salesforce, and that was a mistake”
Firmin Zocchetto Jul 26, 2022 ▶ 29:31 7 Secrets to a Successful SMB GTM Strategy with PayFit and Accel | SaaStr Software Community
Aug 25, 2022
Disclosure
Lemkin: EchoSign listed 20 fake integrations to gauge demand before building
“When we launched back in the, Adobe Sign, he put 20 integrations on our marketing site, of which we did none. Now other people do this. He's like, well, I'm not sure people want a Salesforce integration back then, but I'll make a page that says we have it, and…”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 40:29 The Answers To Scaling, Hiring, And Everything Else: An AMA With Saastr Founder & Ceo Jason Lemkin
Aug 25, 2022 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Early Salesforce was a rudimentary SMB app with four tabs
“Salesforce was a very rudimentary SMB app for a brief period of time, but it was. It sold to very small companies. It didn't even have custom tabs. It just had four tabs out of the box, and even compared to, like, where Pipedrive was in 2013, it did less. It w…”
Jason Lemkin Aug 25, 2022 ▶ 16:44 The Answers To Scaling, Hiring, And Everything Else: An AMA With Saastr Founder & Ceo Jason Lemkin
Nov 3, 2022 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Beechuk: A Pluralsight Rep Won A Multimillion-Dollar Salesforce Deal Via Apple Pie
“So, a series of meetings, one thing led to another, and we, he closed a multi-million dollar deal. Not bad for a 50 dollar apple pie.”
Scott Beechuk Nov 3, 2022 ▶ 17:28 Increasing Runway Without Sacrificing Growth with Norwest Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz
Dec 2, 2022 bullish
Assertion Partly supported
Kayyal: Salesforce listed a $6B TAM in its 2004 IPO filing
“When Salesforce went public in our S-one, our TAM listed was six billion in 2004. That was what we said the TAM was for Salesforce. You know, Jason called it out. It's now a thirty billion revenue company. You look at the TAM, you know, over three hundred bill…”
Alex Kayyal Dec 2, 2022 ▶ 29:43 Accel, Iconiq & Salesforce Ventures: "Where Venture Is Right Now: Gritty & Much Harder" at G2 Reach
Dec 2, 2022 positive
Assertion Supported
Kayyal: Salesforce Grew Over 20% in 2009 Despite Global Financial Crisis
“Salesforce's growth in 2009 you know, in what was the doom and gloom era, as we can all remember of, you know, the world felt, you know, sort of financial markets were about to collapse and Salesforce still grew north of 20% in that period.”
Alex Kayyal Dec 2, 2022 ▶ 5:22 Accel, Iconiq & Salesforce Ventures: "Where Venture Is Right Now: Gritty & Much Harder" at G2 Reach
Dec 7, 2022 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: Salesforce Experienced Zero Customer Churn During the 2008 Financial Crisis
“There was no churn in 2008, 2009. There was none. But there, but NRR shrunk, right? But there was no churn. There was no churn in the worst downturn of my lifetime.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 7, 2022 ▶ 31:31 SaaStr CRO Confidential: Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond + Gong VPS Jameson Yung + Jason Lemkin
Dec 20, 2022 bullish
Disclosure
Liu: Airtable targets Salesforce App Cloud and ServiceNow for enterprise apps
“We want to position ourselves against the Salesforce app clouds and ServiceNow deployments out there. So really robust applications within large enterprises that now, you know, can be built in a much more agile and connected way with Airtable.”
Howie Liu Dec 20, 2022 ▶ 8:28 Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with @AirtableApp CEO Howie Liu
Jan 27, 2023 bearish
Insight
Braverman: Headcount-dependent SaaS models will struggle in a recession
“If you are in one of these businesses that is dependent on other businesses to grow in order for you to sell licenses. This potential recession we're heading into, it's just going to be super tough to thrive.”
Ben Braverman Jan 27, 2023 ▶ 20:56 CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment and Hiring Managers With Ben Braverman
Feb 3, 2023 negative
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Marc Benioff Is Repeating His Past Mistake by Cutting Sales
“I mean, Mark Benioff in his book wrote his biggest mistake in the last downturns was cutting sales. And what did he just do? Cut sales. So we're all, he's making them, he's making the same mistake three times.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 3, 2023 ▶ 12:39 What Venture Looks Like In 2023 | SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin + 20VC Host Harry Stebbings
Apr 27, 2023 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lerman: Salesforce nixed Slack's monthly active user pricing model
“We went with monthly active users, which by the way is how Slack got started, But after the Salesforce acquisition, they nixed it. And so now you have to pay up front for the year and the kind of Salesforce more traditional sales model.”
Howard Lerman Apr 27, 2023 ▶ 28:06 SaaStr CRO Confidential: Howard Lerman, Founder & CEO @ Roam | Founder-led Sales
Jun 16, 2023 neutral
Insight
Lemkin: SaaS Revenue in Tight Markets Requires Stealing Vendor Budgets
“CIOs, small businesses do not have unlimited money. There's a fixed amount, and if you disrupt something, if you do something better than Salesforce or Zoom or HubSpot or Slack or even UiPath, if you do something that is 10 times better, you will get money, bu…”
Jason Lemkin Jun 16, 2023 ▶ 9:50 Why The Era of Efficient Growth is Now: The State of the Market with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
Jun 23, 2023 neutral
Disclosure
Thomas: Pre-seed investors pressured Loom to verticalize for a Salesforce acquisition
“From our pre-seed investors, they wanted us to verticalize specifically with the sales persona, because they're like, you need to build this set of features, and then you do it over the course of the next couple of years, you get to this ARR, and you get acqui…”
Joe Thomas Jun 23, 2023 ▶ 26:08 From 2 Weeks of Runway to $1B Acquisition: The Founder Playbook with Loom's CEO and Co-Founder
Jun 27, 2023 neutral
Opinion
Parker Conrad: Slack sold to Salesforce because Microsoft Teams was bundled free
“That's why Slack is owned by Salesforce now, because, like, Teams is free and the Microsoft bundle.”
Parker Conrad Jun 27, 2023 ▶ 6:59 Rippling CEO Parker Conrad's Theory of the Compound Startup: Disrupting How We Think About Software
Sep 3, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff dismissed early Zendesk threats to Salesforce to avoid fear-based leadership
“I did a year at Salesforce in the middle of all that, and I was mentioning Zendesk. I was like, hey, there's these guys called Zendesk, and they might be a problem for, like, our customer service business and I got the kind of uh-oh moment where, like, oh, and…”
Dave Kellogg Sep 3, 2023 ▶ 16:28 "The Top 5 Questions Every CEO Wrestles With Dave Kellogg, ex-CEO Host Analytics": SaaStr Classic
Dec 28, 2023 neutral
Insight
Lemkin: Platform apps struggle unless they have day-one high attach rates
“There's these day one high attached vendors that make these applications blow up and the rest struggle, which doesn't mean you shouldn't do them, but it does mean it probably can't be everything for you.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 28, 2023 ▶ 13:26 Is AI the Only Thing in SaaS that Anyone Cares About Anymore? AMA Part 1 w/ SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
Dec 29, 2023 neutral
Assertion Not yet assessed · timeframe Dec 2023
Lemkin: monday.com moved from -5% to +20% operating margins in 18 months
“Monday.com in, in 18 months went from Minus five percent operating margins to plus 20, right? Salesforce is hitting plus 30.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 29, 2023 ▶ 17:04 Why the Future of Customer Success, Sales & Marketing Has Changed with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
Jan 24, 2024
Insight
Whalen: Big-tech hires at startups struggle with resource constraints, not work ethic
“The thing that actually is that people struggle with when they lose, when they leave a place like that is when you work for a company that's really well run and you have first party experience of things being done right. And then you go to a startup where thin…”
Mark Whalen Jan 24, 2024 ▶ 25:54 How Revenue Leaders at Box, Calendly, and Lattice Scaled From $0 to $100M+ and Beyond
Mar 20, 2024 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Salesforce's self-serve products never exceeded 0.5% of total revenue
“Salesforce every couple of years comes out with a PLG product at the low end. 11 times in our history, Adam and I, there's a new self-serve version of Salesforce that I don't think has ever been more than half a percent of revenue because it's not their DNA.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 20, 2024 ▶ 28:36 Advice Every SaaS Founder Needs to Know to Scale to $100m with Sam Blond and Jason Lemkin
Apr 13, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Okta's first enterprise customer only integrated Salesforce and Google
“I remember the first customer we had was, there were two apps. There was Salesforce and Google.”
Todd McKinnon Apr 13, 2024 ▶ 9:44 Todd McKinnon CEO of Okta: Top 10 Learnings Building a High Performance Organization (Updated)
Apr 13, 2024 negative
Insight
Incumbents like Salesforce prioritize their own products over helping startup partners
“It turns out that like a lot of companies, Salesforce is more into selling their own product than your product. So it did end up being a, it did not end up being that helpful to have that relationship, but like a lot of things, you gotta do it on your own and …”
Todd McKinnon Apr 13, 2024 ▶ 28:25 Todd McKinnon CEO of Okta: Top 10 Learnings Building a High Performance Organization (Updated)
Apr 13, 2024 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Okta halted feature development for eight months to engineer zero-downtime upgrades
“I remember we spent seven or eight months just engineering the fact that we didn't have to take it down for maintenance. And before I came from Salesforce and we had to take the service down for four hours every three months for maintenance to upgrade it. And …”
Todd McKinnon Apr 13, 2024 ▶ 4:26 Todd McKinnon CEO of Okta: Top 10 Learnings Building a High Performance Organization (Updated)
May 19, 2024
Insight
Lemkin: Shopify and Salesforce app ecosystems are dominated by the top 10
“When you look at partner ecosystems and we could flip it around and talk about Klaviyo's partner ecosystem too, it's almost always a long tail distribution. You could have a thousand apps on Shopify or Salesforce, but it's probably 10 that get half the install…”
Jason Lemkin May 19, 2024 ▶ 17:36 Klaviyo's CEO Founder on the Journey to an $800,000,000 ARR Leader in Marketing
Jun 13, 2024 neutral
Opinion
Bendov: Marc Benioff and Salesforce need better conversion, not 3x more pipeline
“Salesforce, by the way, doesn't need three X more pipeline. They need a better conversion. Just advice to Mark.”
Amit Bendov Jun 13, 2024 ▶ 34:42 The Future of AI in Sales with Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov
Jul 5, 2024 negative
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: MongoDB, Salesforce, And UiPath All Suffered Severe Growth Deceleration
“We talked about the shock to the system of Mongo going from 40 to 17%, Salesforce shrinking to single digit growth, UiPath cutting its guidance in half.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 5, 2024 ▶ 28:00 Top 10 Go To Market Mistakes Founders Make Again … and Again with SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin
Jul 10, 2024 neutral
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: WebEx reached $1B ARR before Salesforce
“You know, WebEx was the first billion dollar ARR SaaS company that blew up even before Salesforce.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 10, 2024 ▶ 4:11 Fundraising from VCs and Hiring VPs in 2025: AMA with Jason Lemkin SaaStr CEO
Sep 19, 2024 negative
Insight
Lemkin: Founders Should Pass on Sales Leaders Who Avoid Customer Meetings
“Salesforce is coming up on thirty billion, and Mark Benioff's still out there hustling and meeting with customers. If you're a VP of sales and gunner or CRO, pass. Don't matter what else you like them.”
Jason Lemkin Sep 19, 2024 ▶ 14:45 How to Hire a Great VP of Sales Today with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
Oct 8, 2024 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Padelford: Early Shopify won $50K deals against $900K Salesforce enterprise contracts
“The average enterprise deal in e-com at that time in history, you had Salesforce doing deals at eight, 900,000 dollars a year that we could do at 50.”
Loren Padelford Oct 8, 2024 ▶ 19:19 The Secrets to Selling and Scaling in Vertical SaaS with Slice's CRO
Oct 15, 2024 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Salesforce's Support Cloud Is Bigger Than Core CRM
“You might not realize that Salesforce The support post sales is actually bigger than CRM. It's actually a bigger cloud than CRM.”
Jason Lemkin Oct 15, 2024 ▶ 15:38 The Era of HyperFunctional SaaS is Here l SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Oct 15, 2024 bearish
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Salesforce growth has dropped to single digits for first time
“Salesforce is, is profoundly struggling for the first it's fallen to single digit growth for the first time.”
Jason Lemkin Oct 15, 2024 ▶ 6:28 The Era of HyperFunctional SaaS is Here l SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Oct 15, 2024 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: SaaS vendors promise AI can cut 30% to 50% of staff
“Everyone in post sales, Salesforce, Intercom, Zendesk, Gorgeous, on and on. They are promising you can eliminate. 30 to 50% of your humans in support with AI. They're promising it today.”
Jason Lemkin Oct 15, 2024 ▶ 17:28 The Era of HyperFunctional SaaS is Here l SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Oct 24, 2024 bearish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Tunguz: Software usage is compressing as companies cut major SaaS vendors
“What we've seen in the last six or seven months, most notably with Klarna announced cutting Salesforce and other major software products as a way of reducing costs is in fact the opposite. There's been a real compression in the use of overall software.”
Tomasz Tunguz Oct 24, 2024 ▶ 2:53 The State of SaaS Go-to-Market l Theory Ventures General Partner Tomasz Tunguz #saas #b2bsaas
Nov 7, 2024 neutral
Insight
Blond: Salesforce and Outreach Are Merely Reactive Data Repositories
“My experience with these systems is I would describe them as like reactive data repositories where when you buy Salesforce or when you buy Golong or when you buy outreach, it really requires the user to input data and instruct the system what to do. And much o…”
Sam Blond Nov 7, 2024 ▶ 9:05 Moving Beyond Traditional Sales, Clay CEO & Co-Founder Kareem Amin on the Future of AI-Driven Growth
Dec 27, 2024 bullish
Insight
Halligan: Enterprise SaaS incumbents demonstrate exceptional durability over decades
“These SaaS companies They last. You look at Adobe and Salesforce, both were, I don't know, I haven't looked recently, but three, I call it three or fifty billion. Oracle, you gotta take your hat off to them. It was like, oh, they're gonna die. They're gonna sl…”
Brian Halligan Dec 27, 2024 ▶ 2:26 HubSpot Co-Founder and Chair Brian Halligan on AI and SaaS, Board Meetings, and When Incumbents Win
Jan 3, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Halligan: Salesforce Never Made a Serious Acquisition Offer for HubSpot
“Salesforce never made it serious. Acquisition offer. No. And there was all this rumors. Google was acquiring HubSpot.”
Brian Halligan Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 25:43 HubSpot Co-Founder Brian Halligan on How to Hire Great VPs and How M&A Really Works
Jan 3, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Halligan Sent Salesforce Quarterly Decks for Years to Nurture Strategic Ties
“After we met Denny Off and everybody in there once a quarter, I put together a backbed, a PowerPoint deck of It was going on HubSpot, four or five slides, you know, economics, hockey stick, and I'd send it to him. Just keep in touch. Things are going well. Her…”
Brian Halligan Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 31:14 HubSpot Co-Founder Brian Halligan on How to Hire Great VPs and How M&A Really Works
Jan 3, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Halligan: Salesforce Buying ExactTarget Slowed HubSpot's Growth
“Salesforce went from being like our best friend to, we, they were a formidable competitor in the part of the software space. It slowed our growth down.”
Brian Halligan Jan 3, 2025 ▶ 27:23 HubSpot Co-Founder Brian Halligan on How to Hire Great VPs and How M&A Really Works
Jan 24, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Marc Benioff attends Davos to meet 100 enterprise customers in person
“Mark Benioff has been going for 15 years. And, you know, he, I didn't understand why for a while. He's like, I sit at the top of this one. He said, Mark Benioff said, I sit at the top of this one staircase. And I just meet a hundred customers in person. It's t…”
Jason Lemkin Jan 24, 2025 ▶ 22:19 9 Things You Can Do to Grow Faster This Year with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Jan 31, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Per-seat pricing was under 50% of SaaS revenue historically
“And it turns out going back to the beginning per seat was less than 50% of the SaaS revenue. When you add in API pricing, other pricing, just because we think everyone talks about blah, blah, blah, Salesforce, it doesn't mean it's most of software. And so it's…”
Jason Lemkin Jan 31, 2025 ▶ 20:22 The Future of AI in B2B SaaS: Insights from Synthesia and Theory Ventures. Hosted by Jason Lemkin
Feb 19, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: EchoSign's first VP of sales hired 9 reps who closed zero deals
“And then I hired my first VP of sales from Salesforce. He hired 10 people, all of them, except Sam Blonde, who had done a lot with them, became Brex. All of them, all the other nine closed nothing. And with 10 people, that VP of sales closed less than me and J…”
Jason Lemkin Feb 19, 2025 ▶ 31:27 The 2025 SaaS Vibe Check: What Founders Need to Know Right Now with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin
Feb 28, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Zinman: HubSpot captured the SMB market because Salesforce moved upmarket
“Eventually you abandon the mid-market SMB segment, and then you have this huge vacuum. You leave a huge vacuum in the market. I think to some extent, I'm not an expert, but that will happen with Salesforce and HubSpot. Salesforce moved up market in a way. HubS…”
Eran Zinman Feb 28, 2025 ▶ 10:43 AI at Scale: 8 Learnings from monday.com Co-Founder and Co-Ceo Eran Zinman
Mar 7, 2025 negative
Insight
Lemkin: SaaS Startups Should Not Add Sales Friction Before Massive Scale
“I'm going to argue until you're at mass scale, until you're at the Salesforce scale, don't add any friction to the sales process. There is an argument when you're at hundreds of millions of revenue to add friction. There is an argument that friction itself is …”
Jason Lemkin Mar 7, 2025 ▶ 19:21 Why I’m Scared to Buy New SaaS Apps Now with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Mar 26, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Kennedy confirms Google Cloud's Salesforce partnership is worth multi-billions
“In the big B's. Yes.”
Sarah Kennedy Mar 26, 2025 ▶ 11:20 The Secrets Inside Google Cloud’s Growth with Sarah Kennedy, Vice President Google Cloud Marketing
May 2, 2025 negative
Opinion
Benioff: Microsoft Used 'Dark' and 'Horrible' Tactics to Attack Slack
“You can see the horrible things that Microsoft did to Slack before we bought it. And yeah, that was pretty bad and they were running their playbook and did a lot of dark stuff. And it's all got in a written up in an EU complaint, but Slack made before we bough…”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 7:55 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 positive
Insight
Benioff: Meaningful Enterprise Brands Trade Only Once, Forcing Decisive M&A
“There's only certain brands that really are meaningful in our industry. And that's one. And look, it's going to trade once. So you have to decide, is this going to be part of your solution?”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 3:35 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 positive
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Benioff: Homebuilder Lennar Deployed Salesforce AI Agents in Six Months
“And that whole cycle from idea to innovation to actually delivery with Lennar, because they're live now, was about six months.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 19:11 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 bullish
Prediction Held up
Benioff: Salesforce Will Demonstrate AI Agents Integrating Into Physical Robots
“And that fourth layer is going to be the robotic layer, but it needs the other three layers to operate because the agents are going to get manifested into these robots. So that will be a keep next step. And we'll see that by dream force. I'm sure.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 25:33 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce Holds 230 Petabytes of Customer Data
“And at that data later, it's not just about the Salesforce data, which is 230 petabytes of data.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 35:58 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce is Japan's second-largest software company
“We're the second largest software company in Japan.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 12:12 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 bullish
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Data Cloud is Salesforce's fastest-growing product ever
“Don't underestimate data cloud. It's been our fastest growing product ever.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 42:34 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce Completed Over 500,000 Support Interactions Using AI Agents
“Salesforce has helped at salesforce.com. We have 9000 support agents. We've already done more than a half a million Of these interactions with customers and agents.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 15:31 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 negative
Insight
Benioff: Establishing a Standalone Enterprise AI Budget Is a Mistake
“I think that where there was an AI budget, that was a mistake. And that where it should be is like, you should be holding, at least this is what I do. I should be holding our service team accountable. Our sales team should be held accountable for that. And tha…”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 30:18 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff: About 5,000 companies are implementing Agentforce
“There's about 5000 companies who are implementing AgentForce”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 14:06 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 bullish
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce Vision Integrates Slack, Tableau, and CRM Without Barriers
“And my vision is if you're in Slack, you are in Tableau and you are in Salesforce.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 5:42 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Benioff: Salesforce Guided to Around $40.9 Billion for the Year
“I think we did give guidance at about 40.9 billion for this year.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 1:29 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Benioff Uses an AI Agent to Author Salesforce's Strategy Documents
“And now for almost three years, when I write a V-to-mom, one, I always have a Salesforce executive with me. And two, I now have an agent with me as well.”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 20:04 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 2, 2025 positive
Disclosure
Benioff Accelerated Slack by Giving Quota Credit to Entire Sales Force
“We changed our distribution model for Slack last year. Nobody really saw that, which is that we allow all of our sales force to sell it, get quota credit for it, to basically made a peer product with the rest of our products. And it was A huge supercharge for …”
Marc Benioff May 2, 2025 ▶ 6:55 AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
May 28, 2025 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Norton: Owner increased rep selling time by 25% to 30% via automation
“We've, we're probably up 25 to 30% in terms of the revenue generating activity time because they don't have to fill out CRM after. They don't have to update the notes for the launch team. It's all done.”
Kyle Norton May 28, 2025 ▶ 11:10 AI, Sales + GTM in 2026: This Changes Everything with Jason Lemkin and Owner CRO Kyle Norton
Sep 12, 2025 negative
Opinion
Lemkin: Vibe coding apps like Salesforce in 10 minutes is dangerous bologna
“There's a lot of stuff on social media about, Hey, you can just vibe code your own HubSpot or Salesforce. You can vibe code your own notion. It will take. 10 minutes. That's Sony baloney. And it is almost dangerous Sony baloney because it's not just startups t…”
Jason Lemkin Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 2:55 The Complete Guide to Vibe Coding without a Developer with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Sep 12, 2025 negative
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Drift security breach leaked Salesforce data from Cloudflare and Zscaler
“Poor drift, which sales off bot and Clary bot had a massive security breach and leaked cloudflare security data Z scalers, I mean, Salesforce data, cloudflare, Salesforce data, Z scalers, Salesforce data, tons of the cloud leader Salesforce data was all leaked…”
Jason Lemkin Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 13:32 The Complete Guide to Vibe Coding without a Developer with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Sep 23, 2025 neutral
Insight
Lemkin: Vibe-coding cannot replace complex SaaS platforms like Salesforce
“There's no way you're going to build an artisan, a Salesforce, a gamma. You could build the little bits of it. I mean, there's just no way there's too many man hours”
Jason Lemkin Sep 23, 2025 ▶ 53:09 SaaStr's Top 10+ AI Agents: AI SDR, AI BDR, AI RevOps + More: The How, The Who, The Why
Sep 23, 2025 neutral
Disclosure
Lerutte: SaaStr had almost no Salesforce call notes before implementing AI
“We didn't have any call notes in our Salesforce prior to this. Like we just had like loose information. Like if there was a close one deal, it was in Salesforce. Otherwise it was pretty much not in there, which means it did not exist.”
Amelia Lerutte Sep 23, 2025 ▶ 48:00 SaaStr's Top 10+ AI Agents: AI SDR, AI BDR, AI RevOps + More: The How, The Who, The Why
Oct 22, 2025 positive
Assertion Supported
Marc Benioff Is Envious of Palantir's Forward Deployed Engineering Model
“He said, this is the number one thing he was jealous of Palantir was one of it was how, how, how, how well they charge their customers, but he was most jealous of what they've done in forward deployed engineers. He said, what I would love at Salesforce is that…”
Jason Lemkin Oct 22, 2025 ▶ 21:10 The State of AI + Software: Where It’s Going - Fast
Oct 31, 2025 positive
Insight
Queener: Customers make great PMs for agentic software solving pure pain points
“What is interesting now in a world, which you're not building screens, but you're solving problems, as long as you're smarter customers, at least they're actually very good product managers. They're giving you use cases or pain points that I want you to solve …”
Brett Queener Oct 31, 2025 ▶ 26:01 Why Only “WTF” Products Can Survive Today with Brett Queener Partner at Bonfire Ventures
Dec 17, 2025 bullish
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: Sierra grew from $1M to $100M revenue in a year
“Sierra just said they went from one to a hundred million in a year. Brett Taylor, ex, you know, ex CTO of Facebook, co-CO of Salesforce, just going out to people and saying, you can replace a lot of your support teams with AI.”
Jason Lemkin Dec 17, 2025 ▶ 13:45 AI and the Death of the 2021 Sales Playbook with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Dec 17, 2025 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: AI is shrinking software competitive advantages from years to months
“It's not that we're going to rebuild workday in Salesforce and Oracle, but our competitive edges are going to be measured in months. And when they used to be years and that compounds that compounds. And if you can't run at that pace, I don't see how you're goi…”
Jason Lemkin Dec 17, 2025 ▶ 34:12 AI and the Death of the 2021 Sales Playbook with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Jan 2, 2026 positive
Assertion Contradicted
Lemkin: Revenue Per Employee Up 2.6x at HubSpot Since 2021
“Since 2021, this is their efficiency ratio, their revenue per employee. HubSpot up 2.6 X, even Salesforce up 2.2 X.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 2, 2026 ▶ 53:25 AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin
Jan 2, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Lemkin: Enterprise Demand for Salesforce's Agentforce is Just Getting Started
“I'm not telling you to go buy public stocks, but I'd be long on Salesforce, even if the market wasn't true this year, because it's just getting going with the spike. The demand is just getting going.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 2, 2026 ▶ 47:56 AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin
Jan 2, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Salesforce Replaced Up to 4,000 Support Staff With Internal AI
“You know, Mark Benioff said, even at Salesforce, they're growing, they're adding more headcount in sales and marketing, but I think he's, I know the numbers, I think three or 4000 folks in support, they already replaced with AI and their own AI and support Cog…”
Jason Lemkin Jan 2, 2026 ▶ 34:57 AI + B2B in 2026: Find the Tailwinds or Get Left Behind | Jason Lemkin
Jan 7, 2026 neutral
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lacour: One-Third of Personio's Salesforce Records Were Duplicates
“So we deduped all our Salesforce data, because initially, one third of our data in Salesforce were duplicates, so we had a lot. So we installed, like, automatic deduping.”
Philippe Lacour Jan 7, 2026 ▶ 16:45 The Step-By-Step Playbook for Building AI-Powered GTM Teams with Personio's CRO
Jan 7, 2026 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lacour: 30% of Personio's Salesforce Win-Loss Reasons Were Just 'Other'
“Our reps would fill out a Salesforce after they had won like a deal or lost a deal. And when you look at them, a lot of data points were great, but there was always like, 30% was due to other.”
Philippe Lacour Jan 7, 2026 ▶ 19:24 The Step-By-Step Playbook for Building AI-Powered GTM Teams with Personio's CRO
Jan 7, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Personio Loaded 5,000 Gong Calls Into Snowflake to Context-Enrich AI
“On our customer conversations, we loaded sort of 5000 Gong calls in Snowflake. We added a lot of emails. We added, we connected to Salesforce, brought that all together.”
Philippe Lacour Jan 7, 2026 ▶ 17:31 The Step-By-Step Playbook for Building AI-Powered GTM Teams with Personio's CRO
Jan 21, 2026 positive
Opinion
Lemkin: Agentforce takes more setup work but outperforms in production
“Asian force is more work to set up than the rest of the agents, but it is good or better in production. It is as good because they're all good. Okay. All the good ones are good. They're all kind of the same. The emails are pretty similar, right? It is better b…”
Jason Lemkin Jan 21, 2026 ▶ 45:50 The Present and Future of AI in Sales and GTM with SaaStr's CEO and Owner's CRO
Jan 21, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr segments Salesforce database across three outbound AI tools
“We are using, for example, for outbound, we use Asian force artisan and qualified. We use three and we may add more. We're just basically taking our Salesforce database and giving each of them a portion of it.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 21, 2026 ▶ 4:56 The Present and Future of AI in Sales and GTM with SaaStr's CEO and Owner's CRO
Jan 21, 2026 positive
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Marc Benioff has 2,000 Salesforce employees building Agentforce
“That's why Asian force has to win. That's why Mark has 2000 people working on it.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 21, 2026 ▶ 45:43 The Present and Future of AI in Sales and GTM with SaaStr's CEO and Owner's CRO
Jan 21, 2026 negative
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr pays more for AI agents than for Salesforce itself
“The tough part is we pay more for those agents than we pay for Salesforce, which is an existential question that Mark and his team are thinking about because yes, Salesforce is more valuable, but the agents are even more valuable than Salesforce. So Salesforce…”
Jason Lemkin Jan 21, 2026 ▶ 45:25 The Present and Future of AI in Sales and GTM with SaaStr's CEO and Owner's CRO
Feb 15, 2026 bearish
Insight
Lemkin: Vibe coding cannot build Salesforce, only demo-day prototypes
“You're not going to VibeCode Salesforce for real, but you know what you can VibeCode? Something for demo day that looks really good.”
Jason Lemkin Feb 15, 2026 ▶ 11:59 Software Stocks Have Massively Crashed. Here's What Founders Need to Know.
Feb 18, 2026 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Mediocre Vertical SaaS Apps Risk Losing Customers Permanently to Vibe Coding
“I think there is a risk for folks building vertical apps, building niche apps. You should not build an agent if you can buy it or an app, but if you fall behind too far folks may build it out of frustration. And that's more what we did rather than try to cance…”
Jason Lemkin Feb 18, 2026 ▶ 7:30 The 90/10 Rule for AI Agents: What to Vibe Code, and What To Just Buy
Mar 4, 2026 positive
Prediction Open · timeframe Oct 2026
Ibarra: Salesforce will integrate Qualified and Momentum by Dreamforce
“I will say the benefit of Salesforce. Buying qualified momentum is like eventually by probably Dreamforce, right? Those two things will be integrated into one. So we have like two less dashboards and I'll probably have one centralized one by October”
Amelia Ibarra Mar 4, 2026 ▶ 14:08 The Top 5 Issues Managing Multiple AI Agents in Production
Mar 4, 2026 bearish
Opinion
Lemkin: All third-party AI agents are less secure than Salesforce
“The honest truth is no agents, no third party agents are more secure than Salesforce. They're all less secure is the reality of it.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 4, 2026 ▶ 35:32 The Top 5 Issues Managing Multiple AI Agents in Production
Mar 18, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Ibarra: SaaStr sent roughly 340,000 messages across Artisan, Qualified, and Salesforce
“I will tell you, we've sent this is just artisan, but it's sent 40,000 messages. Okay, I think our qualified is later on this deck that's sent like a 100,000 messages because that's an inbound. And then with Salesforce, we're probably close to like 200,000 mes…”
Amelia Ibarra Mar 18, 2026 ▶ 21:25 10 Things to Know Before You Deploy Your First AI SDR
Mar 18, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr uses Agentforce, Qualified, Artisan, and Monaco for AI SDRs
“For the most part, we are using the current four third-party agents that we use, right? We are using Agent Force from Salesforce, Qualified, which Salesforce is buying. We're using Artisan, which we use all the time as a core outbound agent. And recently we've…”
Jason Lemkin Mar 18, 2026 ▶ 15:06 10 Things to Know Before You Deploy Your First AI SDR
Mar 18, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Salesforce is acquiring pipeline generation platform Qualified
“Qualified, which Salesforce is buying.”
Jason Lemkin Mar 18, 2026 ▶ 15:12 10 Things to Know Before You Deploy Your First AI SDR
Mar 25, 2026 negative
Disclosure
Mooney: Mangomint shuns Salesforce opportunities for account-level custom workflows
“You know, we could go into many paths here, but to the point where in Salesforce, I don't even use opportunities. I said that to a RevOps leader last night, and he just about keeled over. But you know, I realized for an organization like mine, our sales cycle …”
Marchelle Mooney Mar 25, 2026 ▶ 19:09 How MangoMint Increased Win Rates with an AI-Powered Stack
Apr 22, 2026 positive
Opinion
Lemkin: Salesforce Agentforce is hard to deploy but wins on data integration
“It's probably the hardest to deploy are the ones we've deployed successfully. And we were not positive because we use it for every possible use case. We are positive because it has one thing that crosses the 60% level, which is native integration with Salesfor…”
Jason Lemkin Apr 22, 2026 ▶ 13:59 Managing 20+ AI Agents: Lazy Agents, Our $500K AI Bill, Stealth Churn & the Death of 60% Solutions
Apr 22, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Lemkin: Benioff Stated Envy of Palantir's Deal Size and FDE Model
“When Mark Benioff came on the TwentyVC with me and Maureen Harry, he said, my number one wish, my number one thing I'm jealous of Palantir's is one, their deal size. But two, I wish I could give everyone an FDE before I had to charge them.”
Jason Lemkin Apr 22, 2026 ▶ 48:03 Managing 20+ AI Agents: Lazy Agents, Our $500K AI Bill, Stealth Churn & the Death of 60% Solutions
May 12, 2026 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Platforms managing hybrid human-agent teams will win; Marketo will lose
“I think Marketo is the loser here, but I think in a lot of cases, the leaders that are, that can manage a human agent interface are going to win because we need apps to manage hybrid teams.”
Jason Lemkin May 12, 2026 ▶ 1:00:14 Our AI is Hiring! Would You Work for One? And Are Autonomous Agents ... Safe? The Agents #005
May 12, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Lemkin: 99% of successful GTM agents are optimized around Salesforce
“In GTM, I think, 99% of the agents that are working today, that are successfully are optimized around Salesforce.”
Jason Lemkin May 12, 2026 ▶ 56:08 Our AI is Hiring! Would You Work for One? And Are Autonomous Agents ... Safe? The Agents #005
May 12, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Lemkin: Salesforce serves as the connective glue across SaaStr's AI agents
“Right now, Salesforce is our connective glue, right? We've talked about this many times, but it'd be even better since they're all built on Replit, if Replit could be the glue for the agents, right?”
Jason Lemkin May 12, 2026 ▶ 47:15 Our AI is Hiring! Would You Work for One? And Are Autonomous Agents ... Safe? The Agents #005
May 20, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Dorfman details the exact tech stack behind Anthropic's sales operations
“We use lean data for routing. We use clay for enrichment. Salesforce is our system of record and source of truth. We use Jira for tickets intercoms fin product. We use for Custer's customer support, as well as for sales support. I joke with the ironclad team t…”
Eleanor Dorfman May 20, 2026 ▶ 3:02 How Anthropic's Head of Industries Built an AI-Native Sales Org from Scratch
May 20, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Anthropic uses Claude via Slack to triage internal sales support tickets
“So we made Slack the front door. Slack comes in, tick it out. Claude does the triaging. So Claude actually co-work now does a lot of this. And that's changed for us probably in the last week since I made these slides, but co-work can check your emails and can …”
Eleanor Dorfman May 20, 2026 ▶ 18:49 How Anthropic's Head of Industries Built an AI-Native Sales Org from Scratch
Jun 16, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Salesforce Migrated SaaStr in Weeks via LLMs vs. HubSpot's One-Year Quote
“As we're trying to figure out what to do when we leave our worst at Marketo, you know, Salesforce migrated us in a matter of weeks too. It was very simple, right? Versus, you know, a couple, you know, a year and a half ago, we got a quote from HubSpot. It woul…”
Jason Lemkin Jun 16, 2026 ▶ 38:47 Our Agent Negotiated a Vendor Renewal, Became a CFO and a Better SDR .. but has too many guardrails
Jun 18, 2026 positive
Insight
Persson: Soft skills and adaptability now outweigh tool certifications in marketing hiring
“Now more and more, the soft skills are becoming more important. Are you, things are changing so fast. So are you someone who can really adapt with the speed? Do you have that kind of sense of fire within from a curiosity standpoint, adaptability, you know, sel…”
Denise Persson Jun 18, 2026 ▶ 27:14 The Dashboard Is Dead: What Snowflake's CMO Does Instead
Jul 1, 2026 bullish
Opinion
Blond: GTM Agent Market Will Consolidate Into Single All-in-One Platforms
“Philosophically we believe that the like direction of the market is that you just want one vendor in one vendor is your inbound agent, your outbound agent, your insights. And it is all of your agents living on one data plane with full access to all of the info…”
Sam Blond Jul 1, 2026 ▶ 1:02:20 The Agents #008: Agents Are Merging, Not Multiplying. Plus, Sam Blond on Why Outbound Isn't Dead.
Jul 8, 2026
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: It took Adobe five years to fully go live on Salesforce
“Like when I was at Adobe, it took them five years to go live in Salesforce.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 8, 2026 ▶ 15:55 Agents Didn't Kill Sales. They Just Exposed It with SaaStrAI CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Jul 8, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Qualified's AI inbound agent booked 682 meetings for SaaStr, outperforming human BDRs
“I didn't know until Amelia presented the data this morning. I think it set up like 682 meetings. That is better than any BDR I've ever worked with could do.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 8, 2026 ▶ 25:38 Agents Didn't Kill Sales. They Just Exposed It with SaaStrAI CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Jul 8, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Marc Benioff told Lemkin he wished Salesforce customers only paid after deployment
“And I said to Mark, what do you think about FTEs? And he stopped and he said, I can't do this, but I wish every single customer at Salesforce had an FTE and did not have to pay me. Until they were deployed. That's what he wanted in the authentic age.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 8, 2026 ▶ 15:39 Agents Didn't Kill Sales. They Just Exposed It with SaaStrAI CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Jul 17, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Salyers: SaaStr AI Agent Migrated 300 Campaigns in One Hour
“It literally took him an hour to move, like, 300 campaigns 10 years of data in those campaigns, right, of, like, who attended Sass Randall back in 2016. He moved them all into Salesforce on his own.”
Amelia Salyers Jul 17, 2026 ▶ 27:48 How Agents Will Steal Your Customers. Plus: The $10K App Our Agent Replaced and the $14 Migration
Jul 17, 2026 bullish
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Salyers: SaaStr Marketing Data Migration Cost Only $14.28 in AI Compute
“And then I looked at the cost and it was like, 14 dollars and 28 cents or whatever it was. And I was like, that's literally less than California minimum wage.”
Amelia Salyers Jul 17, 2026 ▶ 28:13 How Agents Will Steal Your Customers. Plus: The $10K App Our Agent Replaced and the $14 Migration
Aug 5, 2026 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: SaaStr Automates Entire Quote-to-Cash Pipeline via AI Agent 10k
“And 10 K now does it end to end, right? We generate the contract in Panda doc, sends it out to the customer, get it signed, push the sign contract into Salesforce, changes it to close one, generates the invoice, invoices the customer, right? All this brutal th…”
Jason Lemkin Aug 5, 2026 ▶ 56:31 The Agents #12 - Our AI Agent Rewrote Our App Without Telling Us
Aug 28, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Ibarra: SaaStr built an AI renewal agent using Salesforce and Gamma
“We created a mini renewal agent. So let me scroll down. I'll show you guys this. So we've got this mini renewal agent now going where, you know, we had our AI day, I think last month or something. And previously it'd be a manual thing where we have a digital e…”
Amelia Ibarra Aug 28, 2026 ▶ 18:50 Who Owns Your Data Now? Agents vs. Systems of Record on The Agents #013
Aug 28, 2026 positive
Disclosure
Ibarra: SaaStr runs its revenue cycle through headless Salesforce
“It shows you what he's hooked up to headless within Salesforce too, because there's multiple things running into this. So he's got class. I call it classic Salesforce for sales, right? So Salesforce CRM that our sales team has always used for like 10 years. He…”
Amelia Ibarra Aug 28, 2026 ▶ 15:45 Who Owns Your Data Now? Agents vs. Systems of Record on The Agents #013
Aug 28, 2026 neutral
Disclosure
Lemkin: SaaStr migrated off two of its three primary systems of record
“In fact, until recently at Sastr, we basically had two and a half, three systems of record. We had Salesforce, we had Marketo, and we had Notion. We left two.”
Jason Lemkin Aug 28, 2026 ▶ 1:52 Who Owns Your Data Now? Agents vs. Systems of Record on The Agents #013
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