Book: Behind the Cloud
October 10, 2010
Now that Do More Faster is out and I appreciate how hard it is to write and publish a book, I read every book through a different (more appreciative) lens. This morning, I spent three hours on the coach and plowed through Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry. It was excellent.
Marc Benioff, the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, tells the story of Salesforce.com in 111 short stories. He mixes each story with clear advice, from his perspective, about creating, building, and scaling a business. I loved the format that Benioff used to organize these stories into clear themes, while still marching linearly through the story of Salesforce.com.
This is a book aimed at entrepreneurial CEO’s but scales nicely to any founder of a company. It also reminds us of the actual evolution of Cloud Computing, which several very large technology companies continue to try to claim credit for. When reading this book, you realize how deep and clear Benioff’s vision was from the beginning.
It was well worth the time to read and gave me some structural ideas for some writing that I’m working on.