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Back to Inside Salesforce’s $100 Billion M&A Playbook | John Somorjai, with John Somorjai & Alex Immerman.

What Happened When a Salesforce Security Test Reached the CEO's Laptop?

John Somorjai says one Salesforce penetration test reached all of a company's source code, got into the CEO's laptop, and pulled information about employees, and the problems were unrecoverable. The failure usually comes after the term sheet, not at the eleventh hour. Price and the major terms are already set, and then deep diligence starts.

Salesforce shares those findings and tries to help the company fix them. This case was among the worst he had seen. Other security findings can be fixed. The team sorts them into P0, P1, and P2 problems. Some must be fixed before signing. Others must be fixed before close. How bad the findings are sets that condition, and a company has to have its house in order before the process starts.

Transcript

Inside Salesforce’s $100 Billion M&A Playbook | John Somorjai ·

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More from this episode

  1. How Does Salesforce Decide Which Companies to Buy?John Somorjai says Salesforce follows an internal framework and stays pretty disciplined about following it. The framework looks at three elements.
  2. Why Is Salesforce Moving From Seats to Outcome-based Pricing?John Somorjai says the technology industry is moving toward outcome-based pricing, where a customer pays for resolutions instead of paying for a seat.
  3. How Do Acquisitions Put a Startup in Front of Salesforce's Sales Force?Alex Immerman says an acquisition can put a startup in front of Salesforce's 15,000 sales reps, and that in the case of Listen Labs a handful of those reps…
  4. What Makes a Startup Worth Acquiring at Salesforce?John Somorjai says a startup is worth acquiring when Salesforce's product teams cannot build the next three years of the roadmap with the people they have…
  5. Why Is Salesforce Ventures Investing in Robotics?John Somorjai says Salesforce Ventures is investing in robotics because dexterity and mobility are improving, and he expects a huge future for that industry.
  6. Why Does John Somorjai Say Many Venture Valuations Will Not Last?John Somorjai says many venture valuations will not last because they are way too high, the set of buyers is small, and the companies will not be able to grow…
  7. What Can Kill a Salesforce Deal?John Somorjai says security is the one function that can hold up the red flag and kill a deal.

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