The First Customer - Mapping the World's Relationships with CEO and Co-Founder Drew Sechrist

You know, I'm sure there's a bunch of interesting stuff.

What I am interested specifically today is where to connect the dots come from.

How did you start it? Uh, you know, who was the first customer? Give me the, you know, give me the elevator pitch and then tell me how you got it in the door to somebody for somebody to try it.

So the whole idea came from those early days at Salesforce, because we were such a small company, we were all in one room, literally just one room.

And so everybody from, you know, Mark Benioff on down to me, cause that was probably about the lowest man on the totem pole at that point, we're in the same place.

And because of that.

And also because we were a Silicon Valley company where everybody had equity in the company.

I was so excited because I wanted to be in Silicon Valley, but I was also so excited because I wanted a piece of the action.

I wanted equity in a hot startup that was going to go public.

Guess what? I got it.

It all worked out great.

But that made me work incredibly hard.

So I worked my ass off for 10 years at Salesforce.

It also made everyone completely aligned.

so everybody in the company wanted me to succeed it was awesome it was such a great environment to be in because i was surrounded by all these really smart talented ambitious people who all wanted me to succeed we're on the same team and you know just like the redland high school you know state championship baseball team every you know if anybody got a home run you know everybody won right on the team same thing at salesforce if i closed a big deal everybody was like yes we're one step closer to that ipo and so that you know that made a huge impression on me you know growing up on the east coast most people didn't have stock options it wasn't something you even thought of right you just got a paycheck at your job

at the coal mine industrial warehouse yeah

that's right you got a paycheck and you got a lung disease yeah that's what you got from your job

yep

and then san francisco you know we got stock options and we got completely aligned and it was this big magnet that attracted You know, really talented people.

And and so that was one thing, you know, seeing that everybody was aligned, had these aligned incentives made me realize that I could ask anybody for any favor at all if it helps the company.

Right.

And

they would do it because it was in their enlightened best self-interest.

And so I started asking a lot because I was from the east coast.

I literally didn't know anybody west of the Mississippi when I moved out there.