#195 CEO Salesforce AI, Clara Shih: Above the Clouds
Guest: Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI
In 2020, Clara Shih quit Hearsay, the company she founded and ran for 11 years; in hindsight, she says “I probably should have quit a little bit sooner.” But at the time, she cared a lot — too much — about what everyone else thought. “There's a lot of guilt around leaving initially and feeling bad for feeling bad,” Clara says. But her worries subsided when her replacement and former COO, Mike Boese, guided the company with “class and grace” to an exit: A $125 million+ acquisition just this week by Yext.
In this episode, Clara meets Joubin on the top level of Salesforce Tower to discuss Sarah Friar, AI “frenemies,” practice and discipline, quantifying hard work, burnout, turning off, Intercom, elite operators, “Serviceforce,” ChatGPT, hiring for hunger, kids and achivement, Thomas “TK” Kurian, Slack, David Schmeier, Juan Perez, Nvidia GPUs, Silvio Savarese and Frontier AI, Starbucks, and Sheryl Sandberg.
Chapters:
(01:04) - Apple’s OpenAI partnership
(03:18) - Organizing your life
(04:45) - Working smarter
(07:49) - Hindsight
(08:58) - Hearsay’s acquisition by Yext
(11:23) - What everyone else thinks
(14:25) - Productive worry
(17:27) - Coming (back) to Salesforce
(20:47) - Paranoia and immigrant hustle
(25:42) - Quitting
(26:39) - Meetings and infusing AI
(29:38) - Internal time savings
(31:48) - The Matthew McConaughey ads
(33:48) - Different horizons
(37:35) - France and sovereign AI
(38:46) - How Clara uses AI to keep up
(40:33) - Dis-intermediating Netflix
(41:27) - Who Salesforce AI is hiring
(42:05) - Advice from Howard Schultz and Marc Benioff
Links:
Connect with ClaraTwitter
LinkedIn
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
Transforming Data into Business Solutions with Salesforce AI CEO, Clara Shih
🚀 In this episode of Gradient Dissent, we explore the revolutionary impact of AI across industries with Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI and Founder of Hearsay Systems.
Dive into Salesforce AI's cutting-edge approach to customer service through AI, the importance of a trust-first strategy, and the future of AI policies and education. Learn how Salesforce empowers businesses and shapes the future with AI innovations like Prompt Builder and Copilot Studio. Whether you're an AI enthusiast, a business leader, or someone curious about the future of technology, this discussion offers valuable insights into navigating the rapidly evolving world of AI.
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AI is the new enterprise UI with Clara Shih, CEO Salesforce AI
AI is the new UI for enterprise customers, according to Clara Shih, the CEO of Salesforce AI. Salesforce released Einstein, now called Einstein GPT, in 2016, making it an early example of how beneficial AI can be when embedded in enterprise software. This week on No Priors, Sarah and Elad talked with Clara about what the evolution of AI in enterprise looks like, how Salesforce is adoption AI across the organization, and the onboarding process for companies looking to integrate AI into their workflow, plus the challenges of pricing for AI services.
Clara Shih is the Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce AI where she leads the AI efforts across Salesforce including AI co-pilot and agent platform, model development, go-to-market growth, adoption, partnerships, ecosystems, and secure responsible AI. Before that was the CEO of Salesforce Service Cloud She is also the co-founder and previous CEO of Hearsay Systems. She is also on the Board of Directors at Starbucks.
Show Links:
Clara’s Linkedin
Ask more of AI podcast
Salesforce AI
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Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @clarashih
Show Notes:
(0:00) Clara’s Background
(0:50) From cloud services to AI
(3:25) Internal Model Development vs Open Source
(5:20) The Co-Pilot Approach
(8:50) Enterprise AI Adoption
(10:54) The future of Enterprise AI
(13:23) Cross-team collaboration
(14:40) AI is the new UI
(19:11) Structuring the Dataset
(21:25) What’s next for generative AI in Enterprise
(23:18) Pricing challenges in AI
(26:30) Startups and AI
(28:22) Collaboration in AI Industry
SaaStr 462: Salesforce Service Cloud CEO, Clara Shih on How Customer Service Became Strategic Overnight
At her last startup, which she founded and scaled from $0 to $50M ARR, Clara Shih experienced first-hand the pain of a customer support issue costing her business one of their largest customers. Now as the CEO of Salesforce Service Cloud, she has vowed to help other organizations avoid these same mistakes.
Be a painkiller AND a vitamin, w/Clara Shih (Hearsay Systems)
Some products are vitamins and some are painkillers – the best, though, are both. This is what Clara Shih, founder and CEO of Hearsay Systems, learned in the early years of her software startup. To survive, she needed to shift her platform from a nice-to-have into a can’t-live-without. And in doing so, she learned a secret to scale: Solve your customers’ urgent needs now ... while looking ahead to their future wishlists. Cameo appearances: Shellye Archambeau (MetricStream), Gary Alexander (MyImprov driving school).
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SaaStr 081: Why It Is Wrong To Have A Sales Led Culture, Why There Should Be Tension Between Your Sales and Finance Orgs & Why Everyone Needs An Executive Coach with Steve Garrity, Co-Founder @ HearSay
Steve Garrity is COO and founder of Hearsay Systems the leading advisor-client engagement solution for the financial services industry. Hearsay have backing from the likes of Sequoia, NEA, Kleiner Perkins Partner, Mike Abbott and Path Founder, Dave Morin. Before founding Hearsay, Steve worked as an engineer at Microsoft Corporation in Seattle is a graduate of Stanford University with a BS and MS in Computer Science. While at Stanford, he was selected as a Mayfield Fellow in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. During which, he joined Fortify Software as a product manager. Steve is also an investor in, and advisor to a number of Silicon Valley start-ups.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
How did Steve made his way into the world of SaaS from the world of Microsoft?
How does Steve approach the management around his engineering team? How does Steve balance management of engineers while still allowing creativity? Are there dangers of giving engineers freedom?
Is it possible to have both a happy engineering and sales? How does Steve look to harmonise the team? Is it not contra popular theory to have different cultures for different segments of the team?
Why does Steve believe that executive coaching is an almost universal requirement? How does Steve justify that to the board?
60 Second SaaStr
Steve's Biggest Productivity tools?
What does Steve now know that he wishes he had known at the start?
The biggest mistake SaaS companies are enacting with their social media strategies?
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Steve Garrity
