Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company—and Revolutionized an Industry

8.5. Play #94: Measure a Fast-Growing Company on Revenue, Not Profitability

In a fast-growing business like salesforce.com, we needed to focus on revenue growth and capturing market share. To do so, everyone had to be measured on finding new customers and expanding sales with existing customers. We determined to measure everyone on revenue—not profitability. Most accountants would disagree with this philosophy: "Revenue is vanity; profit is sanity," they often say. I'm not suggesting that profits aren't necessary, pivotal, and even beautiful. It's just not appropriate to stress profits over revenue in the beginning when you are starting out and building a company.

Here's why: if you turn to measuring people on profit too soon and during high-growth ...