Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com Acquires Social Performance Company Rypple

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:54:58 +0000

Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) has acquired social performance company Rypple. Rypple has raised a total of $13 million in funding. The financial details of this acquisition was undisclosed.

Rypple is a web-based social performance company that uses a results-driven culture and makes reviews meaningful. Rypple’s software has game mechanics such as badges. Employees can receive badges related to “skills earned.”

Rypple recently launched a mobile application that allows manages to give real-time feedback to their staff. They can also use the app to provide coaching, tracking goals, and for giving props to colleagues. Some of Rypple’s clients includes Spotify, Facebook, and Gilt Groupe.

Salesforce will be relaunching Rypple as a service called Successforce. Successforce will be led by Salesforce.com’s EVP of advanced applications John Wookey. Rypple will also be integrated into Salesforce.com’s existing products like Salesforce Chatter.

[TechCrunch]

Box.net Raises $81 Million With Valuation That Is Over $600 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 16:37:25 +0000

Cloud storage company Box.net has raised $81 million in Series D funding from Salesforce.com, SAP Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Andreessen Horowitz, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Box.net has now raised a total of $162 million. This puts Box.net’s valuation at over $600 million.

Box.net has 7 million users and stores about 300 million documents. Box.net was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith from their dorm rooms in 2005. Box.net currently provides cloud storage to 77% of the Fortune 500. About 100,000 businesses are using Box.net’s services and 250,000 new users are joining every month.

Box.net has even received several acquisition offers that was roughly worth about $500 million. The company eventually plans on going public.

[TechCrunch]

Cloud Storage Company Box.net Raises $50 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:54:29 +0000

Box.net has raised a new round of $50 million in funding. Investors in this round include Salesforce.com, Andreessen Horowitz, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners. Box.net has now raised a total of $128 million. Box.net has 7 million users and 300 million documents are stored on their service. Box.net was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith in 2005. About 77% of the Fortune 500 uses Box.net’s cloud storage solutions service. [TechCrunch]

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff Gave Up App Store Trademark In Exchange For Advice From Steve Jobs

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 19:03:22 +0000

Bloomberg has released an interview with Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) CEO Marc Benioff. Benioff shared an anecdote of how Apple chairman Steve Jobs gave him advice about Enterprise Software.

He has probably given me more help and more advice than just about anybody. And when I get in trouble and I kinda get lost in my own vision, I’ve been fortunate to be able to go and see him and he’s been willing to show me the future a couple times.
He then goes on to explain how in 2003 Jobs praised Salesforce’s “fantastic enterprise application” and advised him to dream bigger and think about the wider “ecosystem”. Salesforce took it at face value and built an app store of sorts dubbed App Exchange. However, they loved the app store term so much that they bought a URL and trademarked it. Benioff was later in the audience when Jobs announced the App Store. Where more than a few sue-happy companies would see a lawsuit opportunity, Benioff went up to Jobs and said, “I’m gonna give you the trademark and the URL because of the help you gave me in 2003.”

What makes this news interesting is that Apple is suing Amazon.com over the name “Appstore.” Amazon.com’s virtual goods application store is called Amazon.com: Appstore for Android. Below is the video interview:

[Bloomberg]

Judge Says Former Microsoft GM Matthew Miszewski Cannot Join Marketing Role In Salesforce.com

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 05:34:03 +0000

Judge Kimberley Prochnau in the King County Superior Court has filed a preliminary injunction against Matthew Miszewski. Miszewski attempted to join Salesforce.com, but this was in violation of his non-compete agreement. Miszewki is prohibited from “working in a marketing role in salesforce.com’s public or commercial sector anywhere in the world.”

However Judge Prochnau said that she still envisions Miszewski having a role at Salesforce.com that would not violate the non-compete agreement. “He was a major evangelist for Microsoft — he was not a low-level salesperson,” said Judge Prochnau. She added “thrust of the order is to preclude him from being the evangelist for Salesforce.com that he was for Microsoft.”

[GeekWire via BusinessInsider]

Salesforce Acquires Social Media Company Radian6 For $326 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:40:21 +0000

Salesforce.com, Inc. (Public, NYSE:CRM) has bought social media monitoring company Radian6 for $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock. The company will also be given $10 million in stock and $4 million in cash to Radian6′s founders subject to vesting conditions over the next 2 years. Radian6′s software helps clients like Dell, GE, Kodak, etc. monitor hundreds of millions of social media conversations. Salesforce plans on enhancing their software products like Sales Cloud, Chatter, etc.

Salesforce.com CEO and chairman Marc Benioff stated;

With Radian6, salesforce.com is gaining the technology and market leader in social media monitoring. We see this as a huge opportunity. Not only will this acquisition accelerate our growth, it will extend the value of all of our offerings.

Radian6 was founded in 2006 and helps monitor social media conversations on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs.

[TechCrunch]

HubSpot Raises $32 Million In Series D

Amit Chowdhry — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 22:41:28 +0000

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah founded HubSpot Inc. in 2006 and they have recently raised $32 million in Series D. The funding was provided by new investors Google Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Salesforce.com. Existing investors General Catalyst, Matrix Partners, and Scale Venture Partners also participated in this round. HubSpot has raised a total of $65 million thus far.

Halligan and Shah met while they were Sloan Fellows at MIT’s School of Management in 2004. HubSpot is a service that helps small businesses set up blogs, SEO, lead management, marketing analytics, e-mail marketing, landing pages, etc. About 4,000 companies in 31 countries use their services.

“We agree with HubSpot’s belief that search engines, social media and mobile devices have fundamentally changed how businesses should market themselves,” stated Google Ventures partner Rich Miner. “We’re thrilled to support their efforts to help thousands of small and medium businesses reach potential customers.”

Salesforce.com Acquires Manymoon For Over $25 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:20:42 +0000

Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE:CRM) has acquired social productivity company Manymoon for over $25 million. Manymoon’s productivity application is one of the most popular on Google’s application platform. Manymoon had raised a little bit of seed funding in a round by Harrison Metal. Manymoon’s application enables users and businesses to collaborate, organize group projects, and work on tasks/documents through e-mail and other software. About 50,000 businesses use Manymoon’s app. [AllThingsD]

Yammer Pokes Fun At Salesforce.com For Being A Copycat [VIDEO]

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 21:08:46 +0000

Yammer is a company that has developed internal social media applications for companies. It is like a “Facebook for business.” However Salesforce.com built a similar service called Chatter and they even bought a Super Bowl commercial for it. Interestingly Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff praised Yammer at the TechCrunch50 conference before launching Chatter. Check out the video above. [BusinessInsider]

Seesmic Raises $4 Million, Bringing Them To A Total Of $16 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:28:45 +0000

Seesmic is a social media application company based in San Francisco that enables people to send out mass updates on Twitter and other services. Seesmic competes directly with TweetDeck. Earlier this month Seesmic has raised $4 million in a new round of funding from Salesforce.com, Softbank Group, Atomico, Omidyar Network, and Wellington Partners. Seesmic has raised a total of $16 million thus far.