11 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Frank Slootman's 2022 book articulating his operating philosophy — the Amp It Up framework — arguing that the CEO's primary lever is to raise the standard, increase pace, and sharpen focus before restructuring or hiring.
Italian-American venture capitalist and former global managing partner at Sequoia Capital, who built Sequoia's enterprise software franchise and appeared on Acquired to explain the firm's decision-making process.
Dutch-American executive who has led three data-focused software companies to massive outcomes — Data Domain (acquired by EMC for $2.4B), ServiceNow (scaled to $10B+ market cap), and Snowflake (largest software IPO in history at $70B) — becoming the most successful serial enterprise software CEO of his era.
Early Netscape employee and subsequent venture capitalist, founder of Costanoa Ventures, credited with coining the Netscape name.
American entrepreneur who founded Trilogy Software in 1990 while at Stanford — a pioneering enterprise software company known for its aggressive sales culture — and who built a reputation for intense recruiting and training programs that influenced Silicon Valley culture.
American software engineer and founder/CEO of Epic Systems, the dominant electronic health records company, who has remained private and personally controlled since founding in 1979.
HP executive who negotiated and executed the $1.6 billion acquisition of Ben Horowitz's Opsware in 2007, providing the exit that validated Horowitz's near-death company turnaround.
American executive who has served as Oracle's co-CEO (with Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd) since 2014 — and who has been Oracle's chief financial and M&A officer since 1999 — overseeing Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft, Siebel, Sun Microsystems, and dozens of others.
Marc Benioff's San Francisco cloud CRM company — the first major cloud-native enterprise software company — creator of the SaaS model and the Salesforce 1-1-1 philanthropy model.
American enterprise software company providing cloud-based workflow automation and IT service management platforms used by most large enterprises globally.
American cloud data warehousing company founded in 2012 — which had the largest software IPO in history at $33B in 2020 — by building a cloud-native data platform that separated storage and compute, enabling truly elastic scaling.