Salesforce Is 'Innovating Like An $8 Billion Startup'

UBS analysts Brent Thill and John Byun attended the TrailheadDX conference on Tuesday and Wednesday. Salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM)'s rebranded developer event took place in what the experts called "a slightly rougher part" of San Francisco, and was characterized a "youthful developer vibe that indicated CRM is not slowing down as it grows up."

The analysts reiterated a Buy rating and $100 12-month price target on Salesforce. The experts argued that, while the company continues to innovate in a quick and sustained fashion like many tech startups, constantly launching new features, its scale is not that of a common startup.

In fact, Salesforce boasts a market cap of over $56 billion, more than 150,000 clients and 2.8 million developers, and a revenue run rate of $8 billion. This scale “provides a solid foundation to fuel a network effect,” which helps it attract more developers and Tier 1 tech customers like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Slack.

All of these are reasons behind why the App Cloud is Salesforce’s fastest growing Cloud, up 45 percent in the last quarter, boasting a run rate of more than $1 billion and “an important indirect benefit to other major Clouds (Sales, Service, Marketing),” the note concluded.