Getting SaaSy

SaaS is not just a massive business, it is the future of business

What if you had a complete book of the history of all sports results, and then went back in time? If you knew the winner of every Super Bowl, World Cup, Grand Prix, and every other game, all you would need to do is place a few strategic bets to become an instant billionaire.

If you are familiar with the movie Back to the Future, you might remember that this was the plot for the sequel. The antagonist, Biff Tannen, grabs an almanac of sports results left behind by the hero of the story Marty McFly, then steals the time machine to give the book to his younger self.

I think about this from my time at Siebel Systems. No company had reached a billion dollars in revenue as fast as Siebel or had as dominant a market position. Siebel was synonymous with CRM (customer relationship management). In 2003, it did not seem that anyone could dethrone Siebel from their lofty position on the upper right hand side of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.

Then three years later, Siebel was acquired by their fierce competitor Oracle, and a small upstart was starting to make waves in the CRM industry. This company was born in the cloud. They said heretical things like companies should not buy software. Their CEO even made grand proclamations about the end of software. Instead, you would rent the features you need from a server that lived outside of the corporate firewall.