Marketing to investors

Marketing to your team and  marketing to yourself have this in common with marketing to investors: tell stories which reveal that your product creates more value than it cost. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has always been great at all three. For example, early on he convinced himself that software should be delivered 24/7 over the Internet when most thought this was crazy. He’s also good at marketing to the team. For example, one story he tells is about an “Ohana” (Hawaiian for family) made up of the Salesforce’s hundreds of thousands of employees, partners, developers, customers, etc – everyone has their role in the family and knows its traditions. This conceit has survived multiple layoff rounds over the years; there’s still a certification in it. Investors are too disinterested to be part of the Salesforce Ohana but Benioff markets well to them anyway. On a recent quarterly earnings call, he announced the release of Einstein GPT and teased the imminent releases of Slack GPT and Tableau GPT. He packaged the product roadmapping with concrete profits and a grandiose “prediction”. The coming wave of generative AI will be more revolutionary than any technology innovation that’s come before in our lifetime, or maybe any lifetime. Like Netscape Navigator, which opened the door to a greater Internet, a new door has opened with generative AI, and it is reshaping our world in ways that we’ve never imagined. Actually, that’s not a prediction; it’s an implication: Salesforce fully grasps, is passionate about, and will capitalize one the newest wave of technology. Whether this is true or not, I have no idea, but it’s a good story altogether – and there’s a similar version for the kitchen-table investor.