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

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How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world's fastest growing software company in less than a decade? For the first time, Marc Benioff, the visionary founder, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, tells how he and his team created and used new business, technology, and philanthropic models tailored to this time of extraordinary change. Showing how salesforce.com not only survived the dotcom implosion of 2001, but went on to define itself as the leader of the cloud computing revolution and spark a $46-billion dollar industry, Benioff's story will help business leaders and entrepreneurs stand out, innovate better, and grow faster in any economic climate. In Behind the Cloud , Benioff shares the strategies that have inspired employees, turned customers into evangelists, leveraged an ecosystem of partners, and allowed innovation to flourish.

304 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

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About the author

Marc Benioff

26 books127 followers
Marc Benioff is chairman, co-CEO, and founder of Salesforce and a pioneer of cloud computing. Benioff was named the Decade’s Top Innovator by Forbes, one of the World’s Greatest Leaders by Fortune, and one of the 10 Best-Performing CEOs by Harvard Business Review. He has won numerous awards for his leadership on equality.

A Fortune 500 company with more than 45,000 employees, Salesforce has been recognized as the Most Innovative Company by Forbes and the Best Place to Work and 15th Most Admired Company in the World by Fortune. Upon founding Salesforce, Benioff created the 1-1-1 model of philanthropy, giving one percent of the company’s equity and product and employees’ time back to communities around the world. Today, more than 8,500 companies have adopted the 1-1-1 model through the Pledge 1% movement.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 229 reviews
Profile Image for Angelica.
246 reviews27 followers
March 12, 2019
There is a big and growing universe of books about company origin stories. See: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE, Inside Intuit: How the Makers of Quicken Beat Microsoft and Revolutionized an Entire Industry, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, Rework, Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The Home Depot from Nothing to $30 Billion, et. al. They all feel like they've been blessed by the same dashingly accessible prose fairy. They are smart. They are accessible. They are occasionally thought-provoking. They practically beat their chests over the importance of creating value and giving back. And almost without exception they gloss lightly over privilege in favor of an "I was scrappy and tough and almost lost everything" narrative.*

Behind the Cloud is no exception, and it follows a recognizable narrative trope as old as business itself -- that of the upstart, the visionary, the rebel. Benioff identified Salesforce's mission as the "End of Software" and celebrated the Internet's ability to deliver software through the cloud.

Pause for a second.

I genuinely can't believe how antiquated that sounds -- celebrating the Internet's ability to deliver software through the cloud?! Today Amazon and Microsoft reap massive profits from cloud hosting, cloud storage, and other enterprise cloud solutions. Today the cost of servers is orders of magnitude cheaper than they were in the early 2000's, when Salesforce was just getting started. Benioff's vision of the future has arrived with a vengeance. Today SaaS companies are going public every quarter.

And for me, this that's part of the joy of this book. I love SaaS. I love it as a business model, as customer empowerment, as a delivery system, as a product. It's transformed nearly every industry, and has applications everywhere. So reading this book feels like a delicious throwback to when this was all brand-spanking new, and Benioff was working hard to bring the good news and convert the unbelievers.

I absolutely believe everyone who works in SaaS today owes something to Benioff and the Salesforce team, not least for the proving of the model and giving us all some benchmarks for valuation. Salesforce helped invent the industry. They normalized departments like Customer Success, and expanded the pie even further with AppExchange.

And so. Credit to where credit is due. The book does a good job covering a myriad of topics in handy bite-sized "plays." I really appreciate that Benioff effectively covers every aspect of startup-land growth, with a cherry on top of global expansion. I also was not familiar with Salesforce's philanthropic model before reading this book, and found it smart and compelling -- both as a human and as a business owner. Lastly, even on topics that I'm obsessed with, like event marketing, Benioff offered good, actionable tips.

So overall, I have high praise for this book. Enjoyed it a lot. Learned lots of great stuff.

But! But.

What I'm really interested in is Part II. Let's talk about Salesforce today. We'd all be hard pressed to describe Salesforce as anything but an incumbent. The revolution they led has succeeded. If revolutionaries become conservatives the day after the revolution... what's next for Salesforce? And what's next for the tech industry in general? Its rebel, reckless spirit has transformed. How are Salesforce and other tech behemoths coming to grips with their own new monopolistic identities?

Venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz has pointed out that 1% of Salesforce is a Unicorn. That still boggles my mind. But as the industry further matures, and exit via acquisition becomes more popular, and the big tech companies more entrenched, how much harder is it becoming for the next Marc Benioffs and rebel spirits to execute their visions?
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* I say this in no way to belittle these entrepreneurs' accomplishments. But I do hope we are at a point where we can recognize the ways in which privilege and access beget privilege and access, and start speaking frankly and intelligently about this in our collective cultural myths and origins. These company origin books pretty much always fail to acknowledge the networks and resources they had.
Profile Image for Derek.
199 reviews31 followers
January 2, 2015
"Arrogant" is the best 1-word summary I could come up with. He's quick to take credit for himself and even quicker to criticize other companies. The tone was a turnoff.
Profile Image for Aaron.
199 reviews2 followers
December 21, 2010
In a former position, I was the main admin for our company's Customer Relationship Management system. We happened to use salesforce.com, and, while at an event for them, they gave each attendee a free copy of this book.

For the most part, this is a big pat on the back for the author, Marc Benioff. Obviously, they're a billion-dollar company in just 10 years or so, so there haven't been too many lows to touch on. And, those that are mentioned are "brilliantly" dealt with by Benioff and his hand-picked team. It's hard to nitpick too much since he and the company has been so successful, yet, it would have been nice if Benioff dug a little deeper into the challenges he faced and analyzed exactly how we was able to overcome them...or what mistakes he may have made along the way and how he learned from them.

The "plays" that form the structure of the book are for the most part generalizations that don't reveal anything new. Perhaps Benioff helped make some of these as ubiquitous as they are today, but there are plenty of articles, blog posts, and book out there on how to "differentiate yourself," "listening to your customers," and "protecting your brand."

Not a bad book, but pretty basic overall.
Profile Image for Diego.
95 reviews20 followers
April 21, 2017
This is a fairly simple story about Marc's journey creating his company. I can enjoy a story about how companies develop, what issues are experienced and what was done to get through the tough times. Not every company will experience what Salesforce did, but I like how he inputs advice and strategy throughout the book. It's valid advice because I can relate certain points he makes at my company. There is some bragging going on in it, but I would probably do the same in his position. Benioff is a great CEO.
Profile Image for Sebastian Gebski.
1,036 reviews996 followers
September 29, 2021
2-2.5 stars.

Theoretically, there's nothing wrong with this book. It's a history of a fascinating, successful company, gathered up by no one else but its founder. It's decomposed into "plays" that have meaningful, clear titles - all that sounds like a prescription for a decent book.

However, Salesforce is all about ... well, sales. And so is this book - I haven't read such a marketing paean that praises the brand for a long time. Not that there's nothing to praise, but the author (or the ghostwriter) has gone far too far.

If you're a tech person interested in entrepreneurship, you won't find much tech content here really. If you're wondering about cultivating culture, recruitment, effective scaling out - FORGET that all. Yes, they are mentioned, but in a shallow, devoid of detail way ("so we hired Jane Doe as our HR director and she has done a hell of a job, because she worked for Bananasoft before").

Yes, some details are interesting, but these are just the anecdotes from the early days or sales/marketing tactics (e.g. how Salesforce has competed with Siebel in their early days).

Unfortunately, this book was a significant disappointment. A too much b*shit.

P.S. I find it very funny how Benioff has presented switching to yearly up-front payments as a success story. I mean: financially it has saved their asses, but he was striving to present it as a solution that was good for everyone ;)
Profile Image for Craig.
68 reviews2 followers
October 20, 2015
Marc Benioff does an excellent job relaying how an interesting idea can become a transformative tool for millions of professionals. Lots of people like to think that there too many "rich techies" but look at the apps and tools we take for granted today and each company was likely started by someone who took a huge risk to make her/himself successful. The guidance Benioff provides can be a useful template for many of us who are looking to break away from the pack.
Profile Image for Annasnova.
387 reviews
April 17, 2018
This is an ok read if you want to learn the story of Salesforce - especially the first part of the book is fascinating. I picked it on recommendation from my manager as an “excellent book” to help in my evolving role at our scale-up. I hold my manager in high regard so I had high hopes for the read as a more practical manual with tips and advice on attracting and retaining customers. I was disappointed.

This is the case of a business book not ageing well, in my opinion. Had this been one of my first business books, or had I been a complete newcomer to tech and software companies, I would have gotten more out of it. Most of the advice was either something I’ve heard of in my places before or it felt out of touch and very specific to someone coming from a uniquely privileged position.

Marc Benioff used some very smart tactics when starting out his company, he really was a visionary in '99 and it is impressive to build a company from scratch and take it to NYSE within five years. But: he had $6M of personal capital to start the company, over 10 years of experience as a VP in Oracle, and a vast network of high-level executives, investors, and mentors in other successful companies in the Silicon Valley. Yes, they managed to innovate during a dot-com bubble, and they created a whole new industry and gave back to the community in the process. But aside from a handful of tips in the margins, I found it hard to relate to the rest of Benioff's stories.
Profile Image for Thomas Umstattd Jr..
Author 1 book76 followers
September 25, 2012
Good but not great. If would read Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose and The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That is Connecting the World and Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur first. This book read a bit like a long sales letter with the author not going into much detail about their mistakes. I feel the book would have been better if it had been written after the author was no longer the CEO of Salesforce. That said I am much more likely to buy salesforce now.
Profile Image for Justin Murphy.
83 reviews4 followers
January 25, 2021
I picked this up after learning Marc Benioff was a millionaire at age 25. I was curious to learn more about his story and Salesforce's history.

While the book offered some insights into Benioff's life it gave great historical context to the SaaS (software as a service) industry. The text was full of Salesforce kool-aid and a few gold nuggets. One of my favorite line being: "...it was such a good product that users became addicted. They needed it." This is true about every great product.

I would recommend to anyone who is interested in Salesforce or general business practices. While it won't make it the greatest books of all time I am happy I read it. The 111 stories keep it tapping along and make the text easily transferable to your everyday life.
Profile Image for Tathagat Varma.
382 reviews47 followers
April 24, 2017
A most amazing and candid account of how Marc Benioff painstakingly built Salesforce from a fledgeling to a global internet success. I would strongly recommend this book to every entrepreneur and every person who aspires to be a leader - the book is so full of practical insights that it is like acquiring an MBA in starting up and then scaling up the business.

I especially liked the value-driven focus that seems like a strong undercurrent throughout the book. While it is (relatively) very easy to build a tech business, what is not so easy is to create an ethical and value-driven organization.
Profile Image for Sasidhar Yalavarthi.
25 reviews4 followers
September 12, 2016
This is a must read book to all those curious minds out there. I laughed so many times whenever Marc talks about his PR tactics. To every entrepreneur out there, don't start your company before reading this. This book offers a lot of perspectives especially 1-1-1 philosophy. It is really great to know what Salesforce.com contributing to the society. I will definitely read the book once again. The book is full of guiding principles and practices which anyone can reason and agree with
Profile Image for Wasim Khan.
28 reviews8 followers
August 30, 2019
There are only few basic ideas to take away from this book. The tone's arrogant, the sales ideas while (probably) brilliant won't apply anywhere else. The book is stuffed with things you can hear or read anywhere. A book from the CEO does not even cover the challenges - technical or otherwise - that made the company. It's nowhere around books like Amazon: The Everything Store, Steve Jobs biography or even Jack Ma's biography which wasn't stellar either because it lacks the details.
Profile Image for Carl Rannaberg.
118 reviews91 followers
March 22, 2019
It was interesting book from the viewpoint of seeing behind the curtain of Salesforce history. But wow, the subtle arrogance and bragging of Marc Benioff. It was an effort to get through it. It would be totally okay to stop in the middle of the book as it tells the tales of the Salesforce beginnings and second half of the book is mostly bragging and advice that is largely common sense today or in worst case obsolete.
2 reviews3 followers
June 3, 2017
If you want to get started on how to build a great SAAS product company anywhere across the globe and make in internationally available this is a great book to start with and follow step by step. I have been part of organisation which grew exponentially. Almost our story is like what Marc Benioff narrated. Go Global.
Profile Image for Gopal.
22 reviews23 followers
January 31, 2019
In the world of Apples and Microsofts, we tend to sideline Salesforce- the company that by and large sowed the seed that has germinated into a multi-billion industry called SAAS. The chapter on corporate philanthropy aside, this book illustrates what an entrepreneur’s audacity and conviction can do to a business idea.
Profile Image for Alon Gur-arie.
3 reviews4 followers
January 1, 2013
An impressive book about starting startups and about corporate social responsibility
,
Profile Image for Nicola De Coppi.
9 reviews2 followers
July 27, 2018
One of the #best book I've ever read! It is a must read for Startuppers and entrepreneurs; Benioff explains every step which brought Salesforce from a startup to a 1 Billion Company. #Great!
Profile Image for Yevgeniy Brikman.
Author 4 books651 followers
April 28, 2018
This book is efectively a bullet point list of "plays" to build a successful company, based on what Marc Benioff did at Salesforce. Initially, I disliked the book (more on that below), but as I read on, I found quite a few good ideas, such as:

* Salesforce's "no software" campaign was brilliant. In an era where buying software meant spending months and millions of dollars to set it up, Salesforce shows up with a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, where you can access the product instantly via the Internet and all it costs you is $50/user/month. It seems like an obvious idea now, but at the time, it was something new, and I love how that's all captured in a simple, 2-word slogan: "no software."

* Salesforce was one of the first companies to provide an online forum where customers could provide feedback and a platform/marketplace where developers could build their own products on top of Salesforce's APIs. Again, both of these ideas seem "obvious" now, but not so much 10-15 years ago.

* Some of the marketing techniques they used were very clever. For example, finding a competitor's conference, setting up fake protests around them, and paying to show Salesforce ads in all the taxis in that city. They also did a remarkably good job of establishing a rapport with reporters and "leaking" important news to them proactively.

* The ideas around charity and philanthropy are fantastic. They use a "1-1-1 model", where 1% of the company's equity goes into a charity foundation (so as the company becomes more successful, so does the foundation), employees are encouraged to spend 1% of their time (4 hour per month) on philanthropic efforts, and 1% of product efforts go towards philanthropic endevours (e.g., discounts for nonprofits and features for charities, such as a way to accept donations online). Another "1" you could add to the list is to dedicate 1% of profits to charities. This sort of thing is a win all around. First, it's the right thing to do: if you were able to build a successful company, you should give something back. Second, it's great branding: I have a far higher opinion of Salesforce now as a company. Third, it's great for hiring: it makes the company more attractive and, perhaps most importantly, it attracts—and helps retain—the right type of people. I'm considering implementing this same system at my own company.

* There's a great discussion of how to reward employees, not just with bonuses, but with things that will have a much bigger impact on their lives, such as fully-paid vacations to Maui for the employee and their family. This sort of vacation and a bonus may cost the company roughly the same, but whereas the latter will barely be noticed as it quietly gets direct deposited into the employee's account, the former will create memories the employee—and their family—will cherish their whole lives.

* The model they use for planning seems simple and effective. It's called "V2MOM", which stands for: Vision (what do you want), Values (what’s important about it), Methods (how do you get it), Obstacles (what might get in the way), and Measures (how will you know when you have it). I can see a lot of value to writing up a V2MOM one-pager once per year or per quarter, as a quick way to get clarity around the company's goals.

So, there's a lot of goodness in this book. Unfortunately, it's also surrounded by a lot of crap. Some of the "plays" are little more than platitudes: "build the software the right way out of the gate." The writing is stodgy and lacks personality (being a list of somewhat disconnected bullet points doesn't help). And perhaps most problematic at all is that many of the plays won't apply to most founders, because let's face it, we don't all have the advantages that Marc Benioff did when he started Salesforce.

Benioff was a former Oracle exec who was able to seed the company with $6M of his own money, had easy access to loads more money (his personal friends, including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, invested millions), talent (he openly admits to agreeing with Ellison to hire no more than 3 Oracle employees—isn't that collusion?), PR (including personal connections to the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, famous ad agencies, etc), and a network of potential customers. So if you have all that, you too can build a company like Salesforce!

In short, the book is worth a quick skim to learn about the great work Salesforce did with marketing and philanthropy, but be prepared to roll your eyes from time to time.





Quotes

"The most effective selling is done not by a sales team but by people you don't even know who are talking about your products without your being aware of it"

"A market doesn't exist until there is a competitor, and ideally two or three competitors. Competition is good. In the case of Siebel-UpShot, it was very good. The announcement of its on-demand play almost doubled our business virtually overnight because it validated our model. Don't fear competition: welcome it and leverage it."

"Conventional wisdom says that most salespeople are "coin operated," so most companies use monetary incentives to motivate top salespeople. This is essential but insufficient, as material things are not really what brings anyone true happiness. When asked about their best year, salespeople rarely point to the year in which their W-2 was the highest; they point to a year in which they were challenged and recognized, and had fun. That's why we reward any salesperson who makes 100 percent of his or her quota (and a partner or friend) with a fantastic experience—a three-day trip to Maui. Typically, 60 to 65 percent of our account executives qualify for this trip. Most companies reward only the top 10 to 20 percent of their sales reps, but that strategy doesn't yield a very high return. Morale for the top people is sky high, but it is brutally low for the 80 to 90 percent of people who are not recognized. By setting the bar within reach, we've found that morale soars all year—and people still strive to exceed expectations."

"It's important to reward people because it's the right thing to do, but the benefits come back to the company. Involving spouses or partners produces great results! Keeping them happy keeps the employees happy. Free tickets to a ball game only go so far with an employee (or a client). If you really want to make a difference, give something meaningful to an employee's significant other or child. Things that have some emotional value attached to them are what encourage people the most."

"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."
625 reviews2 followers
August 7, 2022
I suspect that how much you get from this book will depend upon how much prior reading you have done on SaaS. Despite working in the sector and loving it, I haven’t previously read much specifically around this topic so found there was a lot of food for thought.

Additionally, the founder of our company cites this book as one of his inspirations and I could identify many of the practices highlighted by Benioff and see how they have translated within our business, which I found fascinating.

There is a lot of interesting history, ideas and insights in this book but if you’re looking for modesty and soul-searching, you won’t find it. Entrepreneurs are not big on self-doubt, it is one of their key differentiators from the rest of us. Love them or hate them, they have a particular kind of charisma and a certainty of vision that persuades others to their way of thinking. I don’t begrudge them their money but I am interested in both how they choose to spend it and how they use their product to benefit others.

I strongly believe that technology can be the great democratiser if it can be made universally available. Whilst some of the more self-congratulatory passages in the book did give me the ‘ick’, Benioff and his peers do represent a model of scaled corporate philanthropy that hasn’t been seen since the Victorians.

Lots of interesting ideas and an approach to corporate responsibility I would like to see replicated in other industries.
Profile Image for Jeremy Schreiber.
Author 1 book7 followers
September 4, 2021
Had it not been required reading for an interview with Salesforce, I wouldn't have picked up this book. Interesting to learn about the birth of a Fortune 500 company. I ended up working for Oracle for a few years competing head to head against Salesforce. The fundamental difference between the two companies - Salesforce created a robust crm and let companies integrate with the main crm. Oracle went on an acquire and kill spree requiring customers to live in the Oracle ecosystems. Think Apple vs. Android.
35 reviews
July 26, 2020
A simple narrative but highly effective, making sense for those who are not so aware of the latest technologies in the world. A must read for those who want to understand B2B sales with huge number of nuggets of wisdom dispersed throughout the book.

I could really relate with the book and inspired me to implement a cloud based software in my company.
Profile Image for Seth Brady.
145 reviews1 follower
May 6, 2019
It was an interesting story, but frankly I was hoping to hear more about what Benioff and his team went through emotionally and financially on their journey to 1B+.

Designed as a series of 100+ playbooks, each covering a different area sequences as the company grows, the lessons were not terribly deep but felt like a more straightforward manual for business success. There are lessons around areas like early startup days crammed in a San Fran rental, sales & marketing guerrilla tactics, partnerships, and more, but I was hoping for more stories about what it was REALLY like behind the scenes.

Other business autobiographies like Phil Knight’s Shoe Dog and Tony Hseih’s Delivering Happiness give a much richer view of the trials and tribulations in building a successful business starting in the early startup days. These types of honest portrayals are lacking in Benioff’s book, leaving you feel a bit disappointed and wishing he didn’t play it so close to the chest.
10 reviews1 follower
September 15, 2021
Awesome history of an awesome company, that created history in the world of Business software space.

Yes, This book is written by the CEO of Salesforce.com and the story about the founding of Salesforce and how it emerged out as a market leader, despite lots of challenges.

A must-read for any entrepreneur or wannabe entrepreneur.
Profile Image for Ary Chest.
Author 5 books45 followers
May 23, 2019
Holy hell, this was the blandest book I've consumed in years.

It was just...I mean...it did nothing but boost Benioff's ego. This book doesn't even deserve to have the word story in the title, because there was no story, just an eager list of facts. The book's structure isn't even set up to be a narrative. It's just a step by step guide.

Self-help / memoir / business guidebooks usually follow the chronology of the company they are based on. The rise, the takeoff, the success, with bits of wisdom interspersed. I think it's great when someone tries to do something different with this kind of wisdom, but Benioff only took an already overhyped genre and made it worse.

There were three major factors that caused Behind the Cloud to be so dull.

1. Salesforce never really had any challenges becoming the giant it is today. (By Benioff's account, everything went peachy.)

2. Benioff did nothing unconventional to help Salesforce get off the ground, minus a few cheeky promotional tactics.

3. Benioff was misleading. He set the book up to act as if it was going to teach how to take big risks. He never took one himself. He admitted he always had his high-profile job at Oracle to return to.

This doesn't mean there isn't anything interesting left to read about. But the best business insight Benioff had to offer was your basic nickel inspirational adages you could find on any motivational Instagram page.

I would've settled for just a little peek into the day by day operations of Salesforce in its various stages of growth. That was the least he could've written.

I got absolutely the bare minimum idea of what Salesforce was like in the early days. All I know is he applied a lot of what he learned at Oracle, he made up corky ways to promote the company, and the early offices were in his apartment. That's about it. There was nothing more on how it felt to be in the offices, past when Salesforce first launched. There's nothing more on what Salesforce did differently to break the glass ceiling, past the crazy events and a few tinkerings here and there. There are large general sweeping descriptions of major plays Salesforce makes, which don't give any idea of what it's like pulling the strings. Everything he says about Salesforce is only helpful / interesting to the people who already use it.

I think the main problem is Benioff wrote this more to relive his ambitious years, when he knew he struck gold, rather than wanting to help aspiring entrepreneurs with their businesses.

I'll hand it to him, the advice on customer service was pretty solid. And the touring events he threw to promote the company were creative. But those were the only valuable tidbits, and they were only a sliver of the book.

I just don't see how this can help anyone, except for people who are already at the top, like him.

This is what I don't like about success stories. Most of them are written by wealthy people who give advice based on how they think people should successful, not how they actually can be. I don't think Benioff believes his way is the right way. The problem with the views he presented was it read as if Salesforce is the only company that can be successful in its game.
Profile Image for Ben Pashkoff.
480 reviews10 followers
April 16, 2019
More than a little hubris, arrogance and an almost, but not quite condescending tone, but useful tidbits here and there nonetheless. Insights int Oracle (for me at least) were interesting to say the least.
Profile Image for Lanre Dahunsi.
177 reviews14 followers
February 8, 2021
Behind the Cloud is a brilliant account of how Marc Benioff revolutionized the software industry and pioneered cloud computing with his company Salesforce.com. He shares 111 strategies, he used to build the company with the help of very talented individuals and partners.

The 111 Playbook used to build Salesforce.com

“Play #1: Allow Yourself Time to Recharge”
“Play #2: Have a Big Dream”
“Play #3: Believe in Yourself
“Play #4: Trust a Select Few with Your Idea and Listen to Their Advice”
“Play #5: Pursue Top Talent as If Your Success Depended on It”
“Play #6: Sell Your Idea to Skeptics and Respond Calmly to Critics”
“Play #7: Define Your Values and Culture Up Front”
“Play #8: Work Only on What Is Important”
“Play #9: Listen to Your Prospective Customers”
“Play #10: Defy Convention
“Play #11: Have—and Listen to—a Trusted Mento
“Play #12: Hire the Best Players You Know
“Play #13: Be Willing to Take a Risk—No Hedging”
“Play #14: Think Bigger”
“Play #15: Position Yourself
“Play #16: Party with a Purpose
“Play #17: Create a Persona
“Play #18: Differentiate, Differentiate, Differentiate”
“Play #19: Make Every Employee a Key Player on the Marketing Team, and Ensure Everyone Is On Message”
“Play #20: Always, Always Go After Goliath
“Play #22: Engage the Market Leader
“Play #23: Reporters Are Writers; Tell Them a Story”
“Play #24: Cultivate Relationships with Select Journalists”
“Play #25: Make Your Own Metaphors
“Play #26: No Sacred Cows”
“Play #27: Feed the Word-of-Mouth Phenomenon”
“Play #28: Build Street Teams and Leverage Testimony”
“Play #29: Sell to the End User”
“Play #30: The Event Is the Message”
“Play #31: Reduce Costs and Increase Impact
“Play #32: Always Stay in the Forefront”
“Play #33: The Truth About Competition (It Is Good for Everyone)”
“Play #34: Be Prepared for Every Scenario . . . and Have Fun
“Play #35: Seize Unlikely Opportunities to Stay Relevant”
“Play #36: Stay Scrappy . . . but Not Too Scrappy”
“Play #37: Give It Away”
“Play #38: Win First Customers by Treating Them Like Partners”
“Play #39: Let Your Web Site Be a Sales Rep
“Play #40: Make Every Customer a Member of Your Sales Team”
“Play #41: Telesales Works (Even Though Everyone Thinks It Doesn’t)”
“Play #42: Don’t Dis Your First Product with a Discount”
“Play #43: Sales Is a Numbers Game”
“Play #44: Segment the Markets
“Play #45: Leverage Times of Change
“Play #46: Your Seeds Are Sown, so Grow, Grow, Grow”
“Play #47: Land and Expand”
“Play #48: Abandon Strategies That No Longer Serve You.
“Play #49: Old Customers Need Love
“Play #50: Add It On and Add It Up”
“Play #51: Success Is the Number One Selling Feature
“Play #52: Have the Courage to Pursue Your Innovation—Before It Is Obvious to the Market”
“Play #53: Invest in the Long Term with a Prototype That Sets a Strong Foundation”
“Play #54: Follow the Lead of Companies That Are Loved by Their Customers”
“Play #55: Don’t Do It All Yourself; Reuse, Don’t Rebuild”
“Play #56: Embrace Transparency and Build Trust”
“Play #58: Make It Easy for Customers to Adopt
“Play #59: Transcend Technical Paradigms
“Play #60: Provide a Marketplace for Solutions”
“Play #61: Harness Customers’ Ideas”
“Play #62: Develop Communities of Collaboration (aka Love Everybody)
“Play #63: Evolve by Intelligent Reaction
“Play #64: The Business of Business Is More Than Business”
“Play #65: Integrate Philanthropy from the Beginning”
“Play #66: Make Your Foundation Part of Your Business Model
“Play #67: Choose a Cause That Makes Sense and Get Experts on Board
“Play #68: Share the Model
“Play #69: Build a Great Program by Listening to the Constituents
“Play #70: Create a Self-Sustaining Model”
“Play #71: Share Your Most Valuable Resources—Your Product and Your People”
“Play #72: Involve Your Partners, Your Vendors, Your Network”
“Play #73: Let Employees Inspire the Foundation
“Play #74: Have Your Foundation Mimic Your Business”
“Play #75: Build Global Capabilities into Your Product”
“Play #76: Inject Local Leaders with Your Corporate DNA”
“Play #77: Choose Your Headquarters and Territories Wisely”
“Play #78: Box Above Yo
“Play #79: Scale Without Overspending”
“Play #80: Understand Sequential Growth”
“Play #81: Uphold a One-Company Attitude Across Borders”
“Play #82: Follow Strategy, Not Opportunity”
“Play #83: Going Far? Take a Partner. Going Fast? Go Alone.”
“Play #84: Fine-Tune Your International Strategy
“Play #85: Send Missionaries to Build New Markets”
“Play #86: Handle Global Disputes with Diplomacy (aka Light and Love)”
“Play #87: Edit an Overarching Outlook”
“Play #88: Bring Old Tricks to New Regions"
“Play #89: Don’t Use a “Seagull Approach”; the Secret to Global Success Is Commitment”
“Play #90: Don’t Underestimate Your Financial Needs”
“Play #91: Consider Fundraising Strategies Other Than Venture Capital”
“Play #92: Use Internet Models to Reduce Start-Up Costs
“Play #93: Set Yourself Up Properly from the Beginning, Then Allow Your Financial Model to Evolve”
“Play #94: Measure a Fast-Growing Company on Revenue, Not Profitability”
“Play #95: Build a First-Class Financial Team
“Play #96: Be Innovative and Edgy in Everything You Do—Except When It Comes to Your Finances”
“Play #97: When It Comes to Compliance, Always Play by the Rules”
“Play #98: Focus on the Future”
“Play #99: Allow for Change as Your Company Grows”
“Play #100: Use V2MOM to Focus Your Goals and Align Your Organization”
“Play #101: Use a Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach”
“Play #102: Build a Recruiting Culture”
“Play #103: Recruiting Is Sales”
“Play #104: Keep Your Standards High as You Grow”
“Play #105: How to Retain Top Talent”
“Play #106: The Importance of Mahalo”
“Play #107: Foster Loyalty by Doing the Right Thing”
“Play #108: Challenge Your Best People with New Opportunities”
“Play #109: Solicit Employee Feedback—and Act On It”
“Play #110: Leverage Everything”
“Play #111: Make Everyone Successful”

1 review
December 10, 2012
Behind the Cloud is a great book to understand more about how things are run at an executive level. Marc Benioff displays his style and attitude in the book, too. While I appreciate the honesty and rawness of his thoughts, he sounds to me like a rich, spoiled brat, and if given the opportunity, you could not pay me to even have dinner with him. He seems to have had such a great life for such a long time, that his whines and complaints in the book are reserved only for aristocracies.

The organization of the book is into "plays", which are more disconnected than I would have preferred. Nevertheless, I still did give it a positive score because I learned so much more about what it is like to be in an executive team, which I have no clue about.

With that being said, its worth a read, but not worth living your life by it.
Profile Image for Joe.
498 reviews
January 7, 2015
A very interesting book that gives a lot of insights to those founding businesses in disruptive areas or looking to compete with much larger players.

Perhaps of less use to people running established businesses in mature markets, or perhaps that is just an excuse.

The book was very easy to read. I learned about Marc because he is a big fan of Tony Robbins and I was disappointed that Tony didn't even get a mention that I could see. I would like to have heard more about how Marc personally overcame challenges and changed his own beliefs rather than simple reading about the company.

Perhaps there is scope for a more autobiographical book to come out later just about Marc, what he learned and how it put it in to action. I would definitely read that and based on this very good book, that could be in the running for five stars.
166 reviews8 followers
June 10, 2013
The book is about a marketing genius who has a good idea in cloud computing and how he builds his billion dollar company from scratch. Throughout the book, Marc Benioff listed 111 points about entrepreneurship, covering from financing, human resources, marketing, visions etc.

The most impressive part is on marketing, especially on how Salesforce won competitions during startup phase, when SaaS had not been accepted by customers yet. There are several dirty but legal strategies Salesforce has adopted to successfully build up their brand. Those strategies are inspiring and deserve merits. However, a weakness here is the author didn't mention anything about competitors' strategies to curb Salesforce's development.
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