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

8.10. Play #99: Allow for Change as Your Company Grows

There was a lot to get used to in our new status as a publicly traded company. The Sarbanes-Oxley filings required an army of experts and doubled the amount we had to spend on outside advisers. The New York Times article-IPO fiasco taught us an important lesson, and we had to become even more mindful of what we said publicly and when we said it. There were strict rules around releasing quarterly financial results, shareholder meetings, and discussions with investors and analysts. (I was accustomed to speaking with journalists individually and informally, but communicating with Wall Street required speaking with all the analysts at one time, giving them each a chance to bombard me with questions.) ...