Parker Harris prepared Salesforce for AI. Now he’s focused on Slack [Video]

Each year, Salesforce updates its V2MOM, a planning document laying out vision, values, methods, obstacles and measures. CEO Marc Benioff has said it’s “been used to guide every decision at Salesforce” since the software company’s founding 25 years ago this week.

But in early 2023, there was a problem. ChatGPT was going viral, and Salesforce’s strategy didn’t account for it.

“The V2MOM had nothing about generative AI,” Parker Harris, who co-founded the company with Benioff, told CNBC in an interview.

It was a first for Salesforce, which had never been caught so off-guard about an emerging technology trend. If Salesforce was to become a leader in generative artificial intelligence, the company would need to quickly revise its guiding document to redirect the company — and its 73,000 employees — toward …