Who says that chats about enterprise software have to be boring? They don’t, we learned during our conversation earlier this week with Sapphire’s Jai Das, a pleasant time that touched on a host of topics including startup sectors, his investing group’s capital base and, of course, the Slack-Salesforce deal.
Our conversation took place about an hour before the deal was formally announced, but the tea leaves had been read by the market far in advance, so we were able to chat about it as if it was already consummated. Which it became a little while later.
Our conversation with Das was part of our Extra Crunch Live series, which you can learn more about here. If you’re not a member, head here to get started. Extra Crunch Live has previously hosted Bessemer’s Byron Deeter and Sequoia’s Roelof Botha, among others.
The whole chat with Das was interesting and good, but his comments explaining why Slack’s sale to the larger CRM giant stuck with me all week. Using Salesforce’s acquisition of MuleSoft (a company in which Das invested) as a prism, here’s how the venture capitalist discussed the plusses and minuses of selling to a bigger company.
After noting that MuleSoft might have been able to earn a larger revenue multiple as an independent company in today’s markets than it managed by selling to Salesforce, Das then detailed the sort of boost that a huge company can bring to one that is merely big (quote has been edited and condensed):
Going into your question about Salesforce and Slack, Salesforce, like any large company, does add a lot of value. When I talked to [former MuleSoft CEOs] Simon [Parmett] and Greg [Schott], they were astonished how much account control these large companies have with CIOs and CMOs.
MulesSoft would be beating on the door to get a meeting with the CIO and it wouldn’t happen. And you know, the Salesforce management team would just make one phone call, and Simon and Greg would be presenting to the CEO on down.
So I think that is the thing that people forget, that these large companies have so much ability to increase your sales velocity with large accounts, [so] it makes a lot of sense for some of these [smaller] companies to end up in Salesforce or SAP or Oracle, or WorkDay.
So perhaps Slack will find more oomph under Salesforce’s auspices than it could as a solo project. We spent the majority of our time talking about startups and smaller companies, so hit the jump for the full video and a few more quotes I transcribed for you.
Have fun!
Jai Das
Rising expectations, re: Slack-Salesforce
I think our expectations have really changed tremendously. If even two years ago, if you said a company is worth, I don’t know — Slack is worth $18 to $20 billion, maybe it will be worth more — that is a huge, huge, huge exit in enterprise software. We have been so spoiled now by seeing all these $70 billion market caps, and $150 million market caps of Shopify and Zoom, that we have forgotten that five years ago, there were not that many enterprise software companies worth over $10 billion.
“I think there are some companies that have a lot of COVID tailwind”
So first and foremost, I think there are some companies that have a lot of COVID tailwind. So they are doing really, really well because of that, either helping remote workers, focus[ing] on employee productivity, all of that stuff.
I think the sales models of companies are starting to [have] an effect. Companies that have a much more bottoms-up, product-lead growth sales model, they seem to be doing a little bit better than people who have a much more top-down CIO, large-ticket item sales model.
You can do a lot of your work over Zoom, but that initial connection that you have with the buyer, and then once the buyer agrees with that, that you could run around in the halls and meet with the procurement person? [The loss of that] has really, really caused a lot of friction in companies that sell large deals.
Now, it’s not like you can’t get over that. But for newer companies [it’s harder]. If you’re like a larger company like an SAP or Salesforce, you know the big companies, you know the procurement people, you probably have this relation[ship]. But if you’re a smaller company that is making that first sale into a large entity, and the procurement team doesn’t know you, and especially if you’re private, it is really hard to get the procurement folks to kind of go work with you.
Hit the video for more, the whole chat was great.