Just finished reading “Behind the Cloud” by Marc Benioff. It was a fast read and I like the way he broke up the story into lots of little “acts”, focusing each one on a lesson from Salesforce.com’s history.

I was amazed by some of the tactics he and his team employed (and often still do) to grow the company; some of the gonzo marketing tactics sound almost too crazy to have worked, like when they held fake protests outside of competitors’ conventions in San Francisco.

His lessons on how SF expanded internationally and the challenges they faced were particularly interesting, as was how intertwined the idea of corporate philanthropy is with Salesforce.com’s DNA. Their 1-1-1 concept reminds me a lot of what Microsoft does, and I hope that as we grow Contactive we can think about how to make social good a part of our business plan too.