17 years after debut, $8 billion in annual revenue was generated. This tale relates to SalesForce.
Why did they succeed?
1999: 1. Marc Benioff resigned from his position as Oracle Vice President.
- Businesses were being sold heavy, intricate CRM software that required on-premise installation and upkeep by companies like Oracle and SAP.
Marc therefore made the decision to be the first to develop a cloud-based, simple, and user-friendly programme (SaaS).
Hint: Want to defeat formidable rivals? Make a product that is simpler and easier.
Marc employed actors to carry “anti-software” signs between 2000 and 2002. They protested in front of a Siebel Systems user convention where CRM was being sold.
- At a party with a military theme that Benioff gave, visitors dropped “bits of software” into garbage cans.
- The publicity came from the stunts and the ground-breaking product. Profit of $5.9 million as a result.
2003 saw the first 100,000 users of SalesForce.
- Organized the inaugural yearly Dreamforce user conference.
- They built a potent viral distribution channel when they created the free trial and later the freemium (first 5 users are free) models.
$49.9 million in income.
In 2004, Salesforce made an IPO announcement.
In the years 2005 to 2006, they created the AppExchange, a marketplace for third-party developers to offer their apps to a community of Salesforce customers.com users.
Between 2008 and 2016, Salesforce purchased a number of businesses, including: + a company that crowdsources data; + a social customer support tool; + a social media monitoring platform; + a platform that tracks relationships, which eventually evolved into a CRM for small enterprises.
+ A provider of productivity software + A provider of artificial intelligence.
Source: Product Habits, Inc