Parker Harris - Dreamforce 2013

It’s been a decade and a half since Parker Harris co-founded salesforce.com, along with CEO Marc Benioff, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. Harris has served in senior technical position from the beginning and currently oversees product strategy for the organization, from design, to development, to service delivery.

As we celebrate salesforce.com’s 15th birthday this week, Harris not only looks back, but also eyes the future of our company and the technology industry as a whole.

What was it about the idea of Salesforce that made you want to be a part of it?

“When we first met Marc, we had already been doing sales force automation for many years. And we had been doing early SaaS work, when Java was just starting. What was compelling was I could visualize it all in my head. We could see how we would build sales force automation and we knew how to do early web services. Even though I didn’t know Marc [Benioff] at all, and didn’t know his reputation, I could just kind of tell from learning a little bit more about him that he would be a good person to tie myself to. I think it’s more important who you tie yourself to for success than the idea.”

There are some very successful companies that didn’t survive for the long haul. What is the key to continually innovating so a company stays relevant over many years?

“It starts with people. We care a lot about the people we have. We care a lot about the people we choose to join us. Second to that is flexibility, collaboration, iteration. Just being able to move. We move quickly. There’s always this sense of urgency. And that’s what keeps the desire. Culturally we’re very hard on ourselves. We do not celebrate. Even though we’ll have a 15th birthday party, we’re always looking for what’s wrong and what we need to do. And that’s that sense of urgency, and that’s what keeps it energetic and fun to be here. But it takes a lot of feeding and care. We could end up having the wrong people. We could have complacency about pace. And that would unwind a lot of what we have here.”

At Dreamforce, you came back from the “future” and brought with you the Salesforce1 Mobile App. If you were to go even farther into the future, what would you bring back? 

“I think there'll be all kinds of amazing things that will happen; mobility, wearable computing, intelligent machines that help us with many things in our lives. For salesforce.com, hopefully I could bring back a view of who we are now, only bigger and better. We’ve done great things to help businesses, to help individuals, and to help the world through our Foundation. To be able to say, ‘look, you think it’s good now, but look at what we’ve done in the future,’ to inspire the people today that there’s a lot more to do, because there is. There are many, many years to go of what we want to get done.”

How long do you think until wearable computing really takes off?

Parker Harris in the early days of salesforce.com

“When I was doing sales force automation in 1994, I had a friend who was at one of the cell companies and he said, ‘CDMA technology is here. Mobile, you won’t believe it, you’ve got to build your sales force automation to work on these phones, it’s going to be unbelievable.’ And that was ‘94. And the iPhone didn’t come out until 2007. So some things take a while. I think it’s early. Technology can be great, and it can be super useful, but it can also be over-hyped, misused. That’s why when we started the company, Dave Moellenhoff and I had a technical model that was “fast, simple, and right the first time,” and it was not about how cool we could make this. We did not set out to build a platform. We did not over engineer things. That’s why we always come back to the customer. Why are we doing this? Because the customer wants to or not. I think that’s how you create really good innovation. So wearable computing is kind of the same thing. How will it help us?”

The Salesforce1 Mobile App makes it possible to run business from a smartphones. Why is this such a big deal? 

“It’s not so much for businesses. It’s for the business people. You think about your phone and how often are you doing something on your phone. And you’re doing it in a variety of locations. If you can do something within context quickly, you can capture more value. Logging a call, for a salesperson, or just quick work in context where you are: remember to do this, delegate something, approve something. It’s the connective tissue..”

What’s your take on the Salesforce1 Mobile App ?

“I think we did something spectacular to move a lot of 14-year-old technology forward to product the first version of Salesforce1 and have it be for both iOS and Android. And the reception’s been great. I think we’ve seeded the ground with a baseline that really takes us many, many years in the future. The core technology is phenomenal. But it’s still not enough, and it’s never enough. If I said, ‘Oh yeah, it’s great, it’s awesome, we’re just kicking back in our chair and saying wasn’t that awesome? Dreamforce was awesome, Salesforce1, isn’t it just fantastic,’ then we wouldn’t be the company that we are today.”

Learn more about salesforce.com's 15th anniversary at salesforce.com/salesforce15.

To see the Salesforce1 Platform in action, click the button below.