At Salesforce, our core value of Innovation drives our work each day — along with our values of Trust, Growth and Equality. That's why we're thrilled to announce that Forbes has once again named Salesforce the World's #1 Most Innovative Company in 2017. 

When we started Salesforce in 1999 in an apartment in San Francisco, our goal was to transform an industry. Over the last 18 years, we've been successful by keeping innovation at the center of everything we do. Thanks to this focus, Salesforce has democratized enterprise technology — making the Cloud, Mobile, Social, IoT and now Artificial Intelligence available to all companies, regardless of their size. By consistently delivering powerful, innovative technology tools to all of our customers, we've empowered them to work smarter, make decisions faster, and connect with their customers in entirely new ways. 

It's been incredible being a part of Salesforce's growth from a small startup in an apartment to a Fortune 500 company with 28,000 employees around the world. What continues to impress me is that despite our rapid growth, we still innovate like that small startup in the Telegraph Hill apartment. Here are some of the ways we've kept up this pace of innovation after 18 years: 

• Listen to our customers: Our customers are telling us that they want to transform their businesses. We're continually inspired by our customers and by listening to where they want to take their companies. These conversations help influence our innovation and bring Salesforce to new heights.
• Keep a beginner's mind: By keeping a beginner's mind, we're constantly looking at new ideas and technologies to see where we should go next. This beginner's mind has helped us embrace new trends and harness these trends to deliver incredible new tools to our customers — like Salesforce Einstein.
• Do it simple, fast, and right the first time: This was a motto our team came up with in the Telegraph Hill apartment, and it still drives us today. By building software with this in mind, we've been able to deliver technology to our customers that's flexible, efficient and simple to use.

Keeping these lessons in mind, I'm thrilled to celebrate our seventh consecutive year on the Forbes Most Innovative List, and our fifth time in the top spot. Since Forbes started the list, Salesforce has placed in the top two spots every year. I couldn't be prouder of our incredible Ohana that made this possible. 

Come to Dreamforce to hear about innovative new products we're creating on November 6-9, 2017 — you can register here. And if you'd like to join our team to help us continue building innovative technology, we're hiring!