Woodstock, Dreamforce, and SalesForce.com: Tripping on the State of the CRM Market

About two Dreamforces ago, stumbling around the Moscone Center fighting my way through the morass of swarming attendees, listening to low-fidelity music being blasted across the expanse of a blocked-off Howard Street to an indifferent crowd, waiting for Tony Robbins to start haranguing the audience about whatever fallen gurus like him sell after too many burned soles (and souls), and it suddenly dawned on me:

Dreamforce is Marc Benioff’s Woodstock.

It’s true. Dreamforce has everything – a sea of people camping out in the faint hope that something important will happen, fighting to find sustenance and relief in long bathroom lines, a main-act stage where the hopes and dreams of a generation play out in the ineffable cultural currency of the day – the executive keynote. Act after act after act, endless sideshows, and there’s a medical crew for people who overdose on whatever drug of choice – Trailhead, Einstein, cute woodland creatures, IoT – they’ve chosen to ingest. There’s even lunch in bed for 170,000 – okay not in bed, but you get what I mean.

So, with this in mind, and with sincere apologies to Dame Joni Mitchell, Max Yasgur, CSN&Y, and music lovers everywhere (and with a dubious thanks to ME for encouraging me in this equally dubious undertaking), I present the following, to be sung under the influence of anything but sobriety, to the tune of “Woodstock.”

SalesForcestock  
 
 Well, I came upon a rival of Marc
 He was trying to tell the Street
 Why his numbers he wouldn’t meet. 
 This he told me. 
 
 We were selling CRM at cost
 And we gave it all we got
 Throwing in a free chat bot
 And a BI tool
 
 We were roadkill, we were losers,
 And the VCs slammed us down, back to the garage….
 
 Well, then can we try to beat him
 Maybe go the platform route
 Sell some services, ML, and IoT?
 
 Well maybe it’ll work for Larry
 And maybe it’ll work for Bill
 But this Marc-guy, he’s on fire
 And it’s me that’s burning
 
 We were roadkill, we were losers,
 And the VCs slammed us down, back to the garage….  
 
 We were roadkill, we were losers,
 And the VCs slammed us down, back to the garage….
 
 
 By the time I got to Wall Street
 He was 20 billion strong
 And everywhere there were sales and activations
 And I dreamed I saw the global SIs 
 Overselling in the cloud, 
 And their budgets overran
 As they reached go live. 
 
 We were roadkill, we were losers,
 And the VCs slammed us down, back to the garage… 

Thanks, you’ve been a great audience (I think…..)