Lahini Arunachalam

In the AI era, the toughest investment decisions aren’t what you say yes to—they’re what you say no to. As President and CFO of ServiceNow, I’m accountable for both financial discipline and strategic growth. AI presents extraordinary opportunities, but opportunities without prioritization are just noise. For me, the real work of enterprise leadership means: - Placing big bets ahead of the curve—even when returns don’t show up immediately. - Saying no to good ideas so we can double down on the great ones. - Accepting that not every bet wins, but seeing around corners and connecting dots across the enterprise creates enduring value. Last quarter, we were proud to have seen year-over-year revenue growth of 22.5%. We didn’t get here by chasing hype cycles. We got here by pairing bold investments with financial discipline and an unwavering focus on customers. That balance matters now more than ever, as AI is rewiring how work gets done. Bold bets + operating discipline. That’s the formula for turning AI potential into long-term growth.

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Distribution always wins, and here's another proof point: SFDC's AgentForce grew from 0 to $100M ARR in 8 months = faster than Lovable, Cursor, Wiz. It's great to see innovation from the incumbents, as well as the disruptors! While vibe coding apps are making headlines, Marc Benioff 'quietly' revealed: "AgentForce reached more than $100,000,000 in AOV. It's much faster than any product in our history, and we're not even fully deployed in all geographies, currencies, or languages." To put things in the perspective… SFDC has 150,000 customers AgentForce grew to $100M in 8 months It's 'only' adopted by 8,000 SFDC customers (5.3%) So, even if they just expand to SFDC's current customer base, AgentForce alone has a potential to be a ~$2B ARR product! ------- The takeaway? In the last 2 years, VCs bet (at least) $221.5M on AI SDRs alone. The broader category of AI Agents is obviously much bigger, with at least +150 solutions out there. A lot of them may be an objectively better product than AgentForce, but... The best product doesn’t always win. But a good product with great distribution? Almost always does.

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A counterintuitive truth about scaling enterprise software companies: the most successful founders spend less time fixing weak teams, not more. Frank Slootman's approach at ServiceNow was uncompromising: "The boss is not around to shore up everyone's shortcomings." The math is brutal but simple. Every hour you spend compensating for weak performers is an hour stolen from scaling your company. Every resource invested in "fixing" underperformers is a resource diverted from your strongest players. Your company can't reach $100M ARR if you're playing organizational paramedic... Founders, build your team accordingly.

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One of the hardest parts of running a business that offers both products and services is getting them to work together. The ideal? Your services help clients use your products better �� and your products make your services stronger. Think Workday, SAP, or Qualtrics, where services naturally deepen product adoption. At ELB, we’re working toward that. But it hasn’t always been easy. Early on, a lot of our service work didn’t use our own tools. Old habits and client expectations made it easy to "build the way we always have" – even if that meant reinforcing someone else’s technology. Here’s the truth: Every service you offer should deepen the client’s connection to your tech. If not, you’re building someone else’s pipeline. Now, our teams are thinking more like product owners. They’re building with our tools and connecting solutions back to our ecosystem. Alignment doesn’t happen by accident. You have to design for it. But when you get it right, it makes everything stronger.

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It’s been awesome to hear a lot of my Salesforce colleagues ask this question about their business: If you were going to re-found your company today, what would you change? I feel like bigger companies have become so much smarter about managing the risk of disruption—at least this seems true at Salesforce. Marc Benioff recently quoted Andy Grove: “Only the paranoid survive.” Driving urgency in “re-founding” your company every day seems more important now than ever. As innovation cycles compress even 5-year old startups need to “re-found” themselves.

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Intuit faced a high-stakes GTM challenge: bring IES (Intuit Enterprise Suite) to market—fast—and hit ambitious ARR targets. To accelerate execution, they chose DealHub CPQ for: * Rapid deployment * Seamless Salesforce integration * An intuitive, scalable user experience Everything they needed to move at the speed of their customers. 🔑 Key Outcomes: 👉 Full enterprise rollout in under 8 weeks 👉 100% adoption across 200+ sales reps 👉 Proposal turnaround reduced from 7 days to just 48 hours DealHub.io gave Intuit’s sales team real-time visibility into approvals, eliminating the internal back-and-forth and helping deals move faster—with confidence. But the real story comes straight from the front lines: 💬 “We explored several CPQ tools, including ones already tied to our stack, but none felt market-leading or modern. DealHub was refreshing—fast, flexible, and the only one that could truly support our needs.” — Thomas H., VP of GTM Operations 💬 “Now, sellers can see in their DealRoom exactly where approvals sit. It’s improved SLAs and eliminated friction.” — Lucy Anne Link, Deal Desk Manager 💬 “DealHub has shortened our sales cycles, boosted efficiency, and empowered us to take control of the proposal and contract process.” — Kennedy Kraft, Strategic Account Manager 💬 “It’s consistent and dependable. I don’t need to think about anything but pricing.” — Joseph Peña, Strategic Account Manager 🔗 Read the full Intuit CPQ Success Story here https://lnkd.in/dN_qpudV #CPQsuccess #RevenueAutonomy #SalesTransformation #GTMagility #SalesforceCRM #EnterpriseSales #RevOps #DealHubCPQ

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Salesforce Ventures is proud to invest in Forterra, a company setting the operating standard for autonomy in the most complex, high-stakes environments. At a moment when defense technology is rapidly evolving, Forterra stands out as a pioneer - building systems that can automate vehicles and transform operations for entire fleets and missions, intelligently, flexibly, and without compromise. Our investment reflects a deep conviction: autonomous systems are not just the future of defense and logistics, but a critical capability for managing complexity in high-risk scenarios. Forterra's OASIS platform represents more than technology - it's an architectural approach that enables interoperability and intelligent mission execution. We're excited to partner with Josh Araujo, Scott Sanders, and the entire Forterra team, alongside an exceptional group of investors including Moore Capital Management, 9Yards Capital, Hedosophia, Franklin Templeton, and others who share our vision of transformative technology. https://lnkd.in/gnqkWMrN

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