From a one-bedroom flat in 1999, to a massive company hiring more than 40 thousand people, Salesforce has always been moving forward with their platform. The company is not only a strong leader in its field but also a pioneer in using new technology. Its constant need for improvement has lead to huge success and each year more and more companies decide to trust the platform and grow their business thanks to Salesforce. Alongside impressive cloud-based solutions and innovations, Salesforce has an impressive history.
Here are 15 interesting facts you might not know about Salesforce.
1. Founder Marc Benioff was vice-president of Oracle when he left to start Salesforce. He founded the company in 1999.
2. Salesforce pioneered the 1-1-1 model of company philanthropy. Pledge 1% model focuses on dedicating 1% of equity, product, and employee hours back to the community. The company has successfully followed this model and it has generated more than $280 million, 3.8 million volunteerism employee hours, and technology to 40,000 nonprofit organizations and educational institutions so far.
3. Salesforce Tower (formerly known as the Transbay Tower) is the tallest building in San Francisco (325 meters). The construction began in 2013 and ended in 2018.
4. Salesforce is the world’s #1 CRM platform. It was the first company to offer a cloud-based CRM platform.
5. In 2015, Salesforce spent $3 million to close the gender pay gap across their organization.
6. The Salesforce workspace in San Francisco is designed based on the Ohana (family) concept. What does that mean? Everything, from floor plans, zen-like atmosphere, social lounges, bonuses, and benefits for employees are meant to make everyone feel like home. Salesforce puts a lot of effort into building trusted relationships between both customers, and employees.
7. In 2018, Salesforce acquired Mulesoft. Salesforce has agreed to pay $6.5 billion for this software company, making it the biggest acquisition in its history.
8. In 2018, Salesforce was listed as #1 on the FORTUNE „100 Best Companies to Work For” list. The company got there because of its sense of purpose, management style, benefits, company culture, bonuses, and many more.
9. Salesforce revenues have increased by about 11,000 % since 2004.
10. The company has acquired more than 50 companies since 2006. The first acquired company was Sendia (now known as Salesforce Classic) and the latest was Acumen Solutions (the transaction was worth $570 million).
11. The CEO, Marc Benioff, announced an initiative to house every homeless person in San Francisco.
12. The first Salesforce Classic design was based on Amazon’s easy to use style. Marc Benioff wanted to deliver solutions that were as easy and efficient to use and follow, like Amazon.
13. Salesforce was the original creator of the App Store. Marc Benioff gave it as a gift to Steve Jobs for all of his help and mentoring and focused on implementing the AppExchange instead.
14. In 2018, Salesforce’s Einstein AI system has surpassed over 1 billion predictions per day.
15. Dreamforce is an annual user conference hosted by Salesforce.com. The goal of the event is to bring the leaders and pioneers of the industry, as well as thousands of IT professionals together. The first Dreamforce conference (in 2003) had about 1000 attendees. A lot has changed since then – in 2018, the number of people registered for the event surpassed 170k.
Are you a fan of Games of Thrones? ? Here’s an additional fun fact about the CEO of Salesforce. Marc Benioff and David Benioff, the writer of the show, are actually distant cousins who had the same great-grandfather.
