Hero banner

categories

HOT TOPICS

ondemand

Salesforce.com’s Incubator: René Bonvanie (Part 11)

Posted on Saturday, Jun 16th

To conclude the interview, I bring up the topic of branding. It seems obvious that Salesforce is moving beyond what it’s name suggests it offers clients. At this point, their brand is vastly less ambitious than the company. SM: My final question is regarding AppExchange. Salesforce seems to be moving beyond CRM. RB: We are

Read Full Article »

Salesforce.com’s Incubator: René Bonvanie (Part 10)

Posted on Friday, Jun 15th

Here we continue to discuss potential locations for future Incubator sites. Salesforce is attempting to locate in areas which have high supply, meaning an abundance of talented software engineers with entrepreneurial spirit, along with areas with high demand for on-demand software. India would have to be considered one of the highest supply markets. Israel could

Read Full Article »

Salesforce.com’s Incubator: René Bonvanie (Part 9)

Posted on Thursday, Jun 14th

René shares some recent Incubator success stories. As the Incubator matures, the number of these stories is undoubtedly going to increase. SM: I know you have only been going for five months so far, but do you have any success stories you can share with us? RB: In the past few months a number of

Read Full Article »

Salesforce.com’s Incubator: René Bonvanie (Part 8)

Posted on Wednesday, Jun 13th

Here we finally see how the Incubator does indeed assist companies with obtaining their original customer base, and they do so in a very effective manner. SM: There is nothing wrong in that motivation to try to expand the pie. It is absolutely the right motivation to have. RB: I think the most difficult skill

Read Full Article »

Salesforce.com’s Incubator: René Bonvanie (Part 7)

Posted on Tuesday, Jun 12th

I continue my discussion regarding the need for Incubator companies to receive assistance in their initial customer acquisition phase. I push Rene a fair bit. I think he is getting slightly annoyed and defensive 🙂 SM: If you go back to the beginnings of Salesforce.com, and you ask Mark Benioff, I am sure he will

Read Full Article »

Salesforce.com’s Incubator: René Bonvanie (Part 6)

Posted on Monday, Jun 11th

Among the most significant challenges a company faces is obtaining its initial reference customers. Salesforce has a core competency revolving around telemarketing and sales, so I inquire about the type of support they provide to companies in the Incubator in order to address this challenge. SM: How do you handle the go-to-market phase with Incubator

Read Full Article »

Salesforce.com Playing VC

Posted on Wednesday, Apr 11th

I wrote a piece earlier called Is Bootstrapping Becoming Sexy Again? In that, I made the point that given where the Internet is today, bootstrapping companies has suddenly become very easy, and gobs of venture capital are no longer required to build the vast majority of businesses. Now, many of the larger companies are actually

Read Full Article »

eProject: Dynamic Applications

Posted on Wednesday, Apr 11th

I have been writing about eProject, an on-demand Project Management company. More than 100,000 users at 650 companies currently use eProject’s solutions. They run the gamut from Fortune 500 companies to medium-sized fast growing organizations. The product is used across industries, but has some sweet spots of adoption in highly regulated industries such as insurance

Read Full Article »