Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…That’s exactly right, Ben. Our real estate strategy was to really build around this urban core and build a campus and a work environment that was super appealing really to the millennial, the younger generation and it’s been really fun over the last decade, downtown Indianapolis has had this huge resurgence of housing and amazing restaurants and kind of lots of arts and culture and sports. ExactTarget has been a part of that fabric of downtown Indianapolis and I really felt that to build a high growth category leading company in a market like Indianapolis. We had to be in the urban core to really take advantage of just the energy, the vitality, the ability to recruit topnotch people from all over the country and then even to bring in partners and VCs and customers that could fly in to Indianapolis and take a 15-20 minute cab ride to Downtown Indy and then be able to just enjoy all the benefits that that downtown setting has, and that’s been neat. I’ll tell you one of the neat legacy elements of ExactTarget is for years we’ve worked on getting a nonstop flight in place to Indianapolis to San Francisco and not having – It’s been a real barrier. Our west coast investors have to jump through lots of hoops to make it in Indy for a board meeting and makes just fundraising for all companies here in Indy more difficult. Right around the time of the acquisition, we actually got it done with United Airlines and have had a nonstop flight back and forth to San Francisco, which might seem trivial but it’s actually been a game changer for our tech community and Salesforce has appreciated it as well. I totally believe it. I think a lot of credence is paid to Seattle’s proximity to San Francisco as a competitive advantage in fundraising and starting a company in general. I think that kind of quick direct flight has a tremendous amount to do with it. It’s so true. The same is happening at Salt Lake City. Salt Lake is this amazing tech ecosystem with Omniture and Adobe. Now you've got almost a dozen. It’s kind of unicorn level valuations and so much of that is Salt Lake and Park City are kind of a wonderful place to be but it’s such a short hop away from Silicon Valley that you’re able to raise capital and get those investors really engaged in the business.…

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