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, and cannot easily hire the expertise. Hiring AI engineers is very hard, so the right acquisition can speed development when Salesforce can integrate it quickly.

A typical deal, from the first idea until the product is integrated, can take six to nine months. The comparison is whether the team could deliver the same thing on its own faster than that. When the right company shows up, he says the fit is obvious. The founders who demoed Listen Labs to Mark Benioff were brilliant, in his account. The technology was outstanding, and the interface was easy enough that his team had a survey out within 10 minutes with no enablement. Salesforce also surveyed Listen Labs customers, which he says was effective, and Salesforce uses the product itself as a diligence tool.