Trends And Opportunities In Cloud Computing: Jim Burleigh, CEO Of Cloud9 (Part 3)

Sramana: What were some of your key takeaways from your time at salesforce.com?

Jim Burleigh: First, you really have to find that core value for the audience you are pursuing and know what is different about it compared to others. CRM existed and ones like Siebel kept track of contacts as well as salesforce.com did. We were able to succeed because we found the key pain point in the industry and we addressed it. We did that by eliminating the need for software and by having good messaging. We put sales people in control of their own destiny. That is what they wanted, not another feature. We met their business need directly with the SaaS model.

Sramana: When you left salesforce.com what was your plan?

Jim Burleigh: Very early on at salesforce.com we brought in John Dillon to be our CEO. John ended up leaving a little bit before me to join another company in the supply chain business. He gave me a call and asked me to go work for him. I ended up accepting that offer and joining Navis.

Sramana: Why was that more attractive than staying with salesforce.com which was clearly a hot breaking company?

Jim Burleigh: At that point Marc and I were definitely ready to take different paths. He pushed me out.

Sramana: Is he difficult to work for?

Jim Burleigh: There are a lot of opinions out there about that.

Sramana: A lot of very talented people are very difficult to work for.

Jim Burleigh: Very true. I have experienced that many times in my career and it is not necessarily a bad thing. You have a certain period during which people can get the most out of each other. At that point and time it is time to move on.

Sramana: I have noticed that to be the case, especially if you have entrepreneurial instincts. Another very large personality who fills up the room is not a person you can work with for the long term.

Jim Burleigh: Marc has been tremendously successful. The company has chewed up a lot of really talented, good people because they only mesh for a while. That is OK. You evolve and you move on.

Sramana: I think most great companies have had that experience. Look at Apple. That is not a place where entrepreneurs really like to work. They typically tend to work there for a short amount of time and then leave.

Jim Burleigh: One of the things that I find is very common is that you get to a point in any business theory, process or idea where there is a decision to be made. There are 100 potential directions to go in and 90 of them don’t make sense. Once you narrow it down to the top choices there is no way to prove which one is the best. If you have two entrepreneurial minded people in there and they decided to pick choices 2 and 4, there is no way to prove which was is the best one.

Things line up well for a while and agree on number 2 and then things go good for a while. Once a bump in the road comes along people start talking about option number 4 again, and that is when problems arise and it is time to move on.

Sramana: What happened at Navis?

Jim Burleigh: That was an interesting comparison to salesforce.com because Navis was a very old software company that was in the corner of the supply chain industry that had tremendous opportunity and it was not being capitalized on. That was more of a restructuring. We rebuilt the entire management team, we expanded the product line, and we pulled customers back from the brink to being raving fans. We went from being one of three competitors to being the complete dominant player.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Trends And Opportunities In Cloud Computing: Jim Burleigh, CEO Of Cloud9
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