Why I Left Salesforce

So here it is… my first day not having to go to work.

Crazy to think it’s been nearly three years since I arrived at Salesforce. I can’t imagine having been anywhere but here — I’ve learned so much about digital and marketing, dealing with press and analysts, as well as playing the politics needed to navigate a big company.

The beginning

When I started, “The Enterprise Cloud Computing Company” only had three main solutions and about three thousand employees.

It was a big company by most standards, to which my startup friends would roll their eyes and/or outright express their distaste for enterprise by asking, “Why would you go to Salesforce?”

They didn’t understand what you could learn from one of the best marketing teams around. And learn I did, for which I will always be grateful for the opportunity.

I created my own role.

Social Media was largely unattended by the company. As a former startup guy, we had capitalized upon this absence, but now as an employee I felt the need to shore up this area and my boss gave me plenty of room to make things happen.

I ended up helping with product launches, PR, events, customer support, troubleshooting, an Oracle protest, and even a Super Bowl commercial — in so doing I got to know the teams who headed up these various areas. The process exposed me to so many amazing people who I would never have had the opportunity to know otherwise.

In Feb of 2011, Marc Benioff had written “The Facebook Imperative,” and our company was suddenly thrown into Social. A few months later, we acquired Radian6 and suddenly we were “Born Cloud, Reborn Social.” Suddenly, we were hiring and training new recruits and things went at break-neck speed till we were living this new “Social Enterprise.”

Living the new Social Enterprise

The faster we grew, the more social media management challenges arose. Things like training, audits, compliance, and reducing risk… even finding ways to encourage more employees to participate!

From speaking with industry peers, it didn’t take long to realize this was not a unique scenario, but many companies were experiencing these same challenges:

• Why can’t social be made drop-dead simple to manage across an organization?
• How do you scale social across departments?
• Is there a way to make an inherently non-social company into a social business?
• How would one identify their most effective social employees and give them better visibility?

Why I’m leaving Salesforce

At some point I realized I could build a solution for many of these issues. Why not create a product to make life easier for companies making the leap to social?

So that’s what I’m doing. I’ve assembled a small team to bring a solution to market, and in the next few weeks you’ll start to see glimpses of what’s to come.

That’s why I’m leaving Salesforce.

To build.

Wanna help?

Let me know.