Inside Salesforce’s Acquisition Strategy for the AI Era
Salesforce's John Somorjai talks with a16z's Alex about how the company decides what to buy in the AI era, from Fin and Listen Labs to Slack, and why he thinks startup valuations face a reckoning.
The gist
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Piloting Fin internally took 14 days, and it now handles over 40% of help.salesforce.com traffic with 65% resolved without a human, Somorjai says.
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His team sent out a Listen Labs survey within 10 minutes with no training, and used it to survey the startup's own customers during diligence.
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Somorjai says Slack revenue has nearly tripled since the 2020 purchase, and Slackbot gives rich answers because Slack holds all your work context.
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Somorjai warns many startups valued above $10 billion have few possible buyers, and calls today's high valuations irresponsible and headed for a reckoning.
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He says deals die over weak financial controls, churn hidden behind ARR, and poor security, the one of 14 diligence functions able to veto.
"We actually decided, okay, well, why don't we just pilot Fin internally and see what it does for Salesforce. And we found that we had it up and running actually in 14 days. And on our help.salesforce.com website, it's now handling over 40% of the traffic. And it is delivering ..."
▶ Play at 8:45"Not only was the technology outstanding, but the interface was so easy. It was so easy that my team started using it with, you know, no enablement whatsoever. Within 10 minutes, we had a survey out... It just could not have been easier."
▶ Play at 19:28
a16z uses it
"We're happy Listen Labs customers ourselves and use it as a diligence tool as well."
▶ Play at 20:192 creators recommend it.
See all on the Listen Labs page"We had been using Slack. It was clearly a beloved product among its users... It is the perfect conversational interface for AI... basically negotiated the deal, did everything, all the diligence through Slack."
▶ Play at 23:56
a16z uses it
"Another product that, you know, I use every day, certainly you do, is Slack."
▶ Play at 22:5755 creators recommend it, including Riley Brown, Jason Calacanis, and Guillermo Rauch.
See all on the Slack page"Because it has all the context from all of your work, if you use Slackbot ever, like you can just get the richest answers that you've ever seen from AI right there within your interface."
▶ Play at 25:583 creators recommend it, including Brian Armstrong and This Week in Startups.
See all on the Slackbot pageWhat they recommend · 6 picks
"We actually decided, okay, well, why don't we just pilot Fin internally and see what it does for Salesforce. And we found that we had it up and running actually in 14 days. And ..."
"Not only was the technology outstanding, but the interface was so easy. It was so easy that my team started using it with, you know, no enablement whatsoever. Within 10 minutes,..."
"We had been using Slack. It was clearly a beloved product among its users... It is the perfect conversational interface for AI... basically negotiated the deal, did everything, ..."
John Somorjai
4 picks · guest
"We actually decided, okay, well, why don't we just pilot Fin internally and see what it does for Salesforce. And we found that we had it up and running actually in 14 days. And ..."
"Not only was the technology outstanding, but the interface was so easy. It was so easy that my team started using it with, you know, no enablement whatsoever. Within 10 minutes,..."
"We had been using Slack. It was clearly a beloved product among its users... It is the perfect conversational interface for AI... basically negotiated the deal, did everything, ..."
a16z
2 picks · host
"We're happy Listen Labs customers ourselves and use it as a diligence tool as well."
"Another product that, you know, I use every day, certainly you do, is Slack."
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