What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that has become a dominant player in enterprise software, though recent commentary highlights both its entrenched position and emerging competitive pressures.

• Jun 2025 - Brad Gerstner noted that Salesforce restricts training on data within its platform.
• Feb 2026 - Jason Lemkin said Salesforce acquired Qualified for nearly $1 billion to expand reach.
• Apr 2026 - Jason Lemkin reported cutting Salesforce seats by 60-70% but paying 80% more due to price increases, and now uses it daily for headless data access.
• Apr 2026 - Aaron Levie observed that Salesforce surprised the market by going fully headless, aiming to be used everywhere.
• May 2026 - Jason Lemkin claimed his company replaced a $600K Salesforce contract with a vibecoded CRM built in three weeks, though he later downplayed such threats.
• May 2026 - Chris Degnan stated Salesforce has a monopoly, noting most enterprises are already customers.
• May 2026 - Mark Ghermezian argued that Salesforce is not at disruption risk.
• Jun 2026 - Vlad Barbalat said that if companies refuse to use Salesforce as part of their ecosystem, it should be a massive headwind to Salesforce’s valuation.
• Jul 2026 - Seema Amble said that nothing actually changed with Salesforce’s 360 product; it was the same APIs rebranded.
• Jul 2026 - Brian Belski said that if growth for a decent number of software companies stabilizes and accelerates into end of 2026 and 2027, Salesforce growth will not accelerate.
• Jul 2026 - Fred Turner said his company canceled a $600K Salesforce contract because an internal vibe-coded CRM worked better and no one was using Salesforce anymore.
• Jul 2026 - Avishai Abrahami argued that you cannot vibe-code for Salesforce because trust is massive.
• Jul 2026 - Harry Stebbings said the next generation may not graduate to Salesforce because they started agentically and may never graduate there.