Parker Harris Quotes

"If you want a database, you don't go out and say you're going to write it. I see platforms as going in that direction."

"All business leaders need to be technologists, as every industry now has a Netflix or an Uber on the horizon, threatening to upend business as usual. Apps are driving this disruption, and every enterprise needs to become an app company."

"Social computing is doing what agile methodology is doing to our process - it's breaking down our visibility."

"I grew up loving computers and math, actually. I also loved English literature and French, but I became obsessed with computers when the Apple II was coming out."

"We're a very iterative company, so we jump on basically all new technology."

"I think the legacy is really the company that we built. That's what makes me happy. I'm a very simple person, so that's all I really need."

"Looking at the trends that we have gone through as a company, where we started the company, it's all about cloud computing, and we're still cloud computing. And then we went through this space on social. When Facebook came out, that was amazing."

"What I'll take credit for is finding visionary people in the company, or bringing them in, and then empowering them to help me."

"I took a detour to France in my senior year in high school. So that's part of what ended up sending me, actually, to Middlebury because I went to school with people who were more from the Northeast."

"I grew up in North Carolina. My father was a salesperson; he sold textiles."

"I remember my school had some of the first Apple IIs in North Carolina. I remember, when I first started using them, we were using a cassette tape to store programs because we didn't have floppy disk drives."

"By flattening time and space, social computing and business is unlocking credible potential within business. For example, individuals and organizations that weren't connected before are now connected together."

"Those trying to get support for their iPhones don't necessary trust their carriers, so they ask their friends for help."

"We are building technology to keep up with what's happening in the world. It's transforming the way people are working. We're bringing the enterprise to the world."

"One of our first jobs was at Saba Software. We were helping them build their products for the cloud. We wanted to build our own product and move away from consulting. We were looking for a change. The CEO of Saba introduced me to Marc Benioff."

"When you come to San Francisco, we want you to know where Salesforce is."

"Where I'm focused now is how I get more women leaders. We decided not to just look outside the company for great women to hire, but to help women rise up through the ranks internally."

"My favourite moments at Dreamforce are when people come up and thank me randomly. It's a selfish time for me, as I get lots of positive feedback."

"When we started, we thought about the scale of the Internet - if everyone was using the service at the same time, what would that look like?"

"I still believe heavily that we have to be careful about having this ego and hubris as a successful corporation, that we should do it all. Because then I think we start to fail our customers and we're too focused on taking over the world."

"Businesses can't afford to react to what their customers want; they need to anticipate their needs."

"Diving into data has never been more critical for businesses in order to make fast, accurate decisions about customer behaviors and needs and drive holistic business knowledge."

"Wearable technology is not just for consumers. It creates a tremendous opportunity for businesses, too."

"I've used the term 'Facebook for the enterprise,' and everyone goes, 'We don't want Facebook in the enterprise,' because it conjures up that it's not secure, and it's going to be a waste of time. All these things are true, which is why Facebook is not in the enterprise."

"What I see now is the consumerisation of IT. I don't want my company to tell me that I have to use a BlackBerry or I have to use a Windows phone. I just want to use the phone I want and have it all work."

"After the dotcom boom blew up, it increased the focus on questions like, 'Why should I trust you to help run my business? How do I know you're not going to go away like every other company?' That was hard. We had to keep proving ourselves."

"We actually went public partly because we wanted companies to realise we were not going away."

"People think floating should be the easiest and happiest time for a company, but it's actually really hard. We were meant to think we'd won - we'd gone public and could go on to new things. But we were only just getting started."

"Our output and continued success is all about our culture. Ours has to be highly collaborative, and we have company-wide events and processes to make sure everyone stays aligned."

"Phones are a big deal, but tablets are an even bigger deal. So we're doing a lot of design work and experimentation around the tablet experience."