“Two decades ago, if you wanted to go from here to, let's say, the Moscone Center in San Francisco, you would print out a map on MapQuest and it would give you turn-by-turn directions. And if you missed it, it sucks for you. You're lost. Nowadays… you put in your address. And as you twist and turn, it constantly updates for you. And it's iterating and it's personalized to your journey. Software needs to take that exact same evolution… Right now, when you and I log into Salesforce, we're going to see the same thing. And that's ridiculous.”
The Growth Podcast · Product & Design · November 2026
Context
Asked whether Salesforce's move to a 'headless' model, opening its data to agents through MCP, is right, she said they nailed it. She argues today's dense, feature-heavy SaaS screens belong to the MapQuest era.
Transcript
…can hold them steady and actually create operating profit and be able to turn them in the coming years. And so I think even those acquisitions are a sign that a market that is arguably one of the most prudent markets are now acquiring these companies because they see opportunity on the horizon.
So let's take those two examples a little deeper, Salesforce and Adobe. What are they doing right that's starting to allow them to recover? For example, Salesforce kind of went for this like headless model on top of their system of record. Is that a good move for companies to take?
…people about this, is think about maps. Two decades ago, if you wanted to go from here to, let's say, The Moscone Center in San Francisco, you would print out a map on MapQuest and it would give you turn-by-turn directions. And you'd follow those directions to a T. And if you missed it, it sucks for you. You're lost. Nowadays, you just get in a car, you use your phone or GPS or whatever, and you put in your address. And as you twist and turn, it constantly updates for you. And it's iterating and it's personalized to your journey. Software needs to take that exact same evolution. And I think what's been unlocked now with AI is This concept, people are talking about things like malleable software. I think of it as hyper-personalized software. And right now, when you and I log into Salesforce, we're going to see the same thing, or relatively the same thing. And the way we navigate is the same. We're going to have sort of the same headings. We're going to have the same…
How do you avoid just becoming a database with rules? If people are just accessing you with MCP and Claude UI...
It's the context. We actually just posted about this today. So internally, our team does a lot with how are we leveraging our own data to drive Decisions and both on like features we build, how to run the business, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like every team has been like, oh, I can use AI and…
So you're the CEO, so I can ask you these tough questions. You guys are raised at a $4 billion valuation at that same time period. I know, we're in the peak. With the $17 billion Miro, the $11 billion Airtable. So- What has happened to your valuation since then, your growth? What can you tell us…
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