Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your weekly tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

Here’s the plan:

• Tech News Takes — super-short analysis and commentary

• Strategy Tools — strategy nuggets (for business and life)

• F/T Shoutouts — sharing launches, tech events, and other reads

Salesforce's (not so) secret plan

Plus: Amazon RTO, Smartsheet getting bought

⚡ Tech News Takes ⚡

Return to Office

• What’s up: Starting in January 2025, Amazon will ditch its hybrid, 3 days per week model and be back in the office 5 days per week. They’re calling it return to office (RTO).

• So what: Yes, the gazillion posts on LinkedIn made a few good points… (other firms will follow suit, folks might quit, etc.). But zooming-out, we shouldn’t be surprised – it’s that time in the economic cycle. Power is shifting to employers and away from employees (unemployment up, AI replacement up, etc.). I predict fewer perks!

(Not So) Secret Agent Plan

• What’s up: At his Dreamforce conference last week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff dedicated his keynote to describing Salesforce’s new AI product, “Agentforce”. The product allows customers to set-up and deploy autonomous AI agents without code, and their goal is 1B agents in use by the end of 2025.

• So what: Classic Salesforce! They’re late to the AI party, but marketing is their superpower. Here’s what I mean: 1/ Positioning – they mention leap-frogging co-pilots (Benioff even compared Microsoft’s co-pilot to Clippy). 2/ Impact – AI agents sound more self-sufficient and helpful than a co-pilot riding along. 3/ Ease of use – no-code sounds easier than training and optimizing your own models…

Apron is Raising

• What’s up: Apron, a fintech platform for SMBs, raised a $30M Series B. They’re trying to make B2B fintech as easy as consumer fintech (nice UI, frictionless, etc.).

• So what: I like it, but winning will be tough. What’s to like? Consolidated incumbents leave room for newcomers to go after specific segments (for Apron, SMBs with <100 employees). SMBs will appreciate consumer-like experiences more than other segments, and incumbents less willing to fight for smaller $$’s. OK… what’s hard about it? Apron’s biggest customers will push them to “grow-up” and add features, weakening the value prop, and putting them in direct competition with the incumbents… Like I said, tough!

Smartsheet is Getting Bought

• What’s up: Smartsheet plans to sell to Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners for $8.4B. Founded in 2006, the project management software company has had relatively flat stock performance since its 2019 IPO.

• So what: Being bought is a decent outcome, but probably not what they hoped for (especially after an IPO). They compete in a crowded space (against Asana, Monday, Trello, etc.), so I’m not that surprised to see the company with one of the clunkier tools – it almost felt like a Microsoft application, nothing like the other snappier solutions – taking the money and running (away).  

I recently listened to Walter Isaacson’s book about Elon, and I loved it.

But here’s the thing, it was waaay too long. I’m talking 20+ hours, folks!

So I was pumped to discover this company doing mini-summaries for books, podcasts, news articles, you name it (their “Elon” summary is only an hour...).  

If you have a stack of books on your “to read” list, and not enough hours in your day, you should check them out – they’re called Shortform, and they’re this week’s sponsor.

(P.S. They hooked us up! Free trial and 20% off if you use Shortform.com/joey.)

Want to advertise in Forests Over Trees? Contact us.

🛠️ Strategy Tools 🛠️

Hammers vs. Houses

Today’s strategy tip is about knowing the difference between a hammer and a house.

Earlier, we got introduced to Salesforce’s AI strategy, but now we can go deeper. To do that, we’ll use another framework – the Productized Service Spectrum – on our way to understanding hammers vs. houses.

So first, the framework. What is it?

The Productized Service Spectrum categorizes who is taking on effort – you or your customers.

If customers take on all the effort, that’s a “do-it-yourself” model. Customers can act independently and customize everything. If instead, you take on everything, that’s a white glove, done-for-you model. It’s not as flexible, but customers save time and don’t need to roll their own.

And there can be levels between those extremes. Here’s a visual:

So far, most B2B companies are selling DIY AI. They expect customers to hire technical staff, fine-tune models, and re-architect AI into their applications and workflows. It might be cost-efficient and scalable (if you know what you’re doing)… but it’s not convenient. 

But now, Salesforce is saying “f*** that!”

They’re taking complexity and effort away from customers. You don’t need to hire AI experts, because you can use their no-code solution to customize an agent, or you can just grab a standard, pre-built agent from Salesforce.

And it’s good for Salesforce too! By packaging things up, they’re introducing lock-in. The underlying AI models in a DIY set-up are commodities, and swappable. But AI agents connected to existing Salesforce data sources just extend Salesforce’s stickiness. Plus, Salesforce can charge a lot more for a packaged solution than for a set of DIY tools.

If offered the choice, most enterprise customers don’t want toolboxes, they want solutions.  They don’t want hammers, they want houses!

So I love Salesforce’s strategy here.

🌲 F/T Shoutouts 🌲

• Jobs Data Nerd Alert – there’s delicious data in this LinkedIn post about PM job openings (remote options down 35%, 20% of open roles are in SF, etc.). If you’re job hunting, dive-in for good intel.

• Waymo than I bargained for – I posted about robotaxis on Threads and got some wild responses. So now I’m curious what yall think…

Want to suggest a shoutout? Send it here.

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