Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry

by Marc Benioff

We all shared the philosophy that the value of a corporation should be distributed not only to its leadership but also to the communities in which it operates and to the world.

My experience with Oracle’s Promise taught me that goodwill and sincere intentions were not enough to build a strong corporate foundation. It would require the leadership of someone with experience in both the nonprofit and corporate worlds.

“It’s the job of the chairman or CEO to set the ethics of a company. If the leadership truly believes in what it is saying and acts accordingly, that emanates through the entire corporation,”

One of the ways Hasbro empowered its employees was by offering four hours a month of paid time off to perform community service.

The people who worked at Hasbro knew they were contributing something meaningful, which made them feel more invested in the company and inspired them to do their best.

The 1-1-1 Model From its inception, the Salesforce Foundation used a unique model of integrated philanthropy, one designed to grow with the company. Our 1-1-1 model disseminates a portion of the financial and intellectual wealth of the organization to those most in need: • 1 percent equity: using 1 percent of founding stock to offer grants and monetary assistance to those in need, especially to support youth and technology programs • 1 percent time: finding meaningful activities for salesforce.com employees during their six paid days off a year devoted to volunteerism, and promoting a culture of caring • 1 percent product: facilitating the donation of salesforce.com subscriptions to nonprofits, helping them increase their operating effectiveness and focus more resources on their core mission

Remember, though, that simply having a Web site in another language doesn’t mean you have a presence in that market. Translation must permeate throughout the whole organization: several clicks down on the Web site, in the help text, and with the people answering the phones. Also don’t forget to rely on local experts for assistance with idiomatic and colloquial translation.

In thinking like a start-up, abide by these three rules to help save infrastructure costs: 1. Translate the product on day one to the major languages, but only add additional languages as customer demand builds. (In Europe we’ve found merit to the “80-20 rule,” whereby 80 percent of the revenue comes from 20 percent of the languages spoken in the region. Although we considered starting operations all over, we boiled it down to the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, and the Nordic countries—and kept our focus there.) 2. Build a bedrock of small customers in each country before hiring local employees. This proves that the market is ready and the commitment is worth it. 3. Don’t overhire. Employment laws overseas are complicated and largely favor the employee. When hiring sales and customer service people, adhere to the same standards that you would in the home office.

When building a presence overseas, always leverage local resources—especially local experts. Look for a minority-owner joint venture partner that can be a sounding board. A partner can help attract and recruit talent and bring in other partners and vendors. We looked to our partner to help us get started and operate more smoothly, which allowed us to largely avoid the growing pains that many companies (and therefore their customers) experience.

A well-drafted contract with “light and love” is a one-page document that is bulletproof and executed perfectly—with as little legal language as possible. The brilliance of this document is in its brevity.

Stay true to your vision, but do not confuse vision with business methods and processes.

Don’t Use a “Seagull Approach”; the Secret to Global Success Is Commitment

MGM reportedly told Walt Disney that Mickey Mouse would never be a hit because a giant mouse on the screen would terrify women.

if you turn to measuring people on profit too soon and during high-growth stress, then they start to think about how they can cross-charge other functions or divisions (on office space, computers, people) so that they can make a quarterly bonus. They do this instead of focusing outside the company on increasing the revenue line. Further, there is a danger that measuring on profit can prevent managers from sharing their talent with other departments because they feel as if they are “paying for them” and bearing the brunt of the cost. This creates the wrong kind of behavior and culture, and is not a way that allows an organization to thrive.

What you do this year drives success for next year and the year after. You must make investments for the future.

V2MOM, an acronym that stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures.

The vision helped us define what we wanted to do. The values established what was most important about that vision; it set the principles and beliefs that guided it (in priority). The methods illustrated how we would get the job done by outlining the actions and the steps that everyone needed to take. The obstacles identified the challenges, problems, and issues we would have to overcome to achieve our vision. Finally, the measures specified the actual result we aimed to achieve; often this was defined as a numerical outcome. Combined, V2MOM gave us a detailed map of where we were going as well as a compass to direct us there.

The right people and the right number of people set the pace for the entire company.

fit. Just as it is imperative to set the talent bar high from the beginning, it’s essential to keep it just as high.

Getting the right people on board is an utterly useless accomplishment if you can’t keep them for the long term.

integrate mahalo—the Hawaiian spirit of gratitude and praise—into

It’s important to take the high road in the situations you couldn’t have predicted—the situations that haven’t been mapped out by the HR handbook.

The very best and brightest people can quickly overcome challenges and be ready for the next step. It’s imperative to offer them new opportunities to keep them engaged and firmly committed. As much as it’s necessary to define initial job positions, it’s equally imperative to allow the individual to stretch in new directions.

The way to determine if it’s time to let someone go is this: Would you regret it if the person resigned? If you wouldn’t regret it, you should have already let him go.

“You don’t want a survey to have negative energy around it; you have to embrace it,”

Benchmark for Employee Success We use this checklist to measure our success as leaders and managers. We strive to create opportunities so that all our employees are able to check off the following: • I am doing the best work of my professional career. • I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day at work. • In the past six months, I have talked with someone about my progress. • There is someone at work who encourages my development. • I have opportunities to learn and grow at work. • My opinions are sought after and seem to count. • My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person. • I have a support network at work. • My coworkers are committed to doing quality work. • I am recognized and rewarded for my contributions.