The startup guy at Salesforce talks growth, tools, and building culture

The article resulted from a sponsored trip to Dreamforce 2015 in San Francisco paid for by Salesforce.

Crowds at Dreamforce 2015 in September. Salesforce’s Ludovic Ulrich describes the conference that takes over downtown San Francisco as “the Super Bowl of technology.” Photo credit: Lars Ploughmann.

“It’s easier than ever to start up,” enthuses Salesforce’s Ludovic Ulrich. And while a growing ecosystem of accelerators and tech luminaries help startups to get going and begin to grow, he believes a lot of startups forget about something crucial.

“Vision without execution is hallucination,” he quotes. “It’s not mine, but I use it all the time,” Ludovic says of the line that’s often bandied around tech circles after serial entrepreneur Steve Case popularized the Thomas Edison maxim.

He likes that quote, he goes on, because “it really means everyone can have […] the vision and the key elements, but the execution is going to require the right technology. And we can provide some of that.”

For him, a big part of getting business execution right is having the right tools.

Ludovic’s job at Salesforce as the director of startup relations is to talk with startups and guide them in three things – build, grow, and give back.

Ludovich Ulrich.

“Those are the three components of the program,” he adds.

The scheme he runs, called Salesforce For Startups, is open to any startup that wants to talk – not just ones that are already customers of the Californian web giant’s many enterprise services. There are now more than 3,500 members across 85 countries, and it has partnerships with around 20 accelerators across the globe.

Mentoring

Originally from France, Ludovic’s been at Salesforce for nearly two years, based at the HQ in San Francisco. The program itself launched in the fall of 2014.

“For me, I’m agnostic of the stage, I’m agnostic of the country,” he says, when it comes time to offer some advice to startups. He wants to talk about startups getting execution right, with a particular focus on doing customer service the correct way.

Yes, there’s a bit of the soft sell in there as well. Startups can get Salesforce’s Desk.com service free for a year, giving a fast-rising startup a taster of one way to deal with a growing base of customers. Entrepreneurs hunting for freebies is fine, he smiles, as the goal for the company and its program is inspiring startups to do customer service well.

Building culture