We’re building a family, not just a programme: Sanket Atal on Salesforce’s start-up strategy

What does Salesforce do as part of its incubator programme? How does it benefit the company?

The Trailblazer community is becoming part of the extended Salesforce family. Once you become a Trailblazer, you benefit by learning the technologies and by leveraging people who are more senior to you in the community to get their guidance, help with finding jobs, and whatnot. And they’ve done some fantastic things. So I was really blown away by that community concept after I joined Salesforce. And I’ve been working with start-ups for a long time. So that’s when I thought to conceptualise a different kind of programme at Salesforce rather than just running the bandwagon of an accelerator or an incubator.

So we came up with a community concept for start-ups. Unlike a typical accelerator, you join a cohort of seven or eight, and then six months later, you graduate. You become part of the family. When you join the community, you stay in it forever and we help you any way we can.

And we keep on updating you on the latest techs, etc. Because it’s not like you’re done in six months. A start-up’s journey sometimes takes years and years just to have the first success.

And then the other part is we have a paid-forward model. So if we have helped you and you have met some semblance of success, then we expect that when other people join the community, you help them as well. And it’s been very successful. It was an experiment to see whether it would work, but it has worked like a charm. So we’ve had many companies who have, prior to joining us, had a difficult time conceptualising and creating applications and getting them on our AppExchange. AppExchange is our app store which is now called AgentForce Exchange.

But then we helped them, and they were able to do that. And then they profited from it by being able to take things to market. So then when others joined, these same companies that benefited from us helping them do that, they helped other companies do the same thing. And this creates a nice upward spiral. So that’s the fundamental concept behind the community. And otherwise, what we do is similar to other programmes. We provide you access to our products, and we have subject-matter experts who are available to give talks, etc.

Do you see any student-led ventures in the mix? Or are there any external collaborators involved in the programme?

As far as external collaborators are concerned, we do have partnerships with some VCs and some angel investors, but most programmes have those. And student-led, we are working with start-ups who have established themselves and registered as companies, and who are developing solutions on top of our platforms. That’s the fundamental thing. Some of these folks started their concepts when they were in college but then took them into market once they graduated.

What does Salesforce’s upskilling programme do?

We have this thing called Trailhead which is an online course developed by us in all kinds of areas for every product completely free. And it’s gamified. So you go there and with each course you complete, you get certain credits which are called badges. With enough badges, then you become a ranger. And, as they’re gamified you can kind of gauge where you’re at with these things. It’s a very powerful concept. Trailblazers have done this multiple times. In fact, in addition to that, they also go through certifications as a developer, an administrator, etc for those you have to pay. But a lot of these guys get tested every year in the latest and greatest technologies. And they benefit because their market value as a developer goes up.