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Everything is going towards selling agents.
Software will not be about “helping you get things done”
It’ll be about “doing the task for you”
Technology is going towards DOING and not just streamlining your productivity
It’s a fundamental shift in the way we approach knowledge work
Salesforce knows that - and do you think they’re going to WAIT to figure it out?
No, Salesforce want’s to be on the cutting edge. They want to be the pioneers.
Because what happens if they wait for someone else to figure it out? They lose.
You have to be willing to take a few arrows in the back if you’re going to lead from the front.
Yes, that’s 12 zeros. Which means the digital labor market is a 6 trillion dollar market. And it’s just beginning.
AI will create new jobs, new opportunities, and new avenues for us to live our lives.
Which means we have to learn new skills. And anyone who is upset about that should look at other industrial revolutions.
The one thing about life is that there is constant change.
I’ve found myself getting comfortable with my skillset and job, and that’s the most dangerous place to be.
You have to be hungry to be better.
If you’re not hungry, then someone else will go out there and hunt the food and eat before you.
All of a sudden, your complacency will destroy your way of life.
Unless you own your home, your car, have assets that make you money while you sleep, and can pay all of your bills for the rest of your life, you need to stay hungry and keep learning.
Ultimately that’s what we should be learning anyway. If you’re just working to spend your money, then you’ll always be reliant on a company to take care of you.
But that’s a conversation for another day.
In the meantime, stay hungry, keep learning, and adapt to the change.
Don’t worry about a name change. Focus on the opportunity in front of you.
What does this moment in history mean for you? How can you capitalize off of this? What can you learn? Who can you become?
Before AgentExchange, if you wanted to get a Salesforce App, you went to AppExchange.
If you wanted to add something to your Salesforce agent, you went to AgentExchange.
If you wanted to improve your Slack setup, you needed to go to the Slack Marketplace.
The old way to find Salesforce apps/agents/slack solutions, buy them, and install them was way too fragmented.
Apps/agents/Slack solutions were all over the place. You had to go to different platforms, which means:
How you navigated each platform was different.
The buying experience was different.
Installing solutions was different.
Salesforce was like:
“We need to put the Slack Marketplace, AgentExchange, and AppExchange all in one place so the experience is seamless for everyone”.
Searching needs to be seamless, the buying process needs to be seamless, and installing apps needs to be seamless.
And that’s why AppExchange and the Slack Marketplace merged into AgentExchange.
Think of it like a giant store that has:
AppExchange apps
Slack apps
Slack agents
MCP servers
Salesforce consultants
All in one place
Because everything's in one place, it’s easy for Salesforce customers to:
Find what they want
Buy what they’re looking for
And add it into their business
Seamlessly, because everything is in the same store and has the same checkout process.
Salesforce uses Data360 to perform Semantic searches vs the using old school Keyword searches.
This helps you find what you’re looking for based on the context of your situation, which means it shows personalized results rather than generic results.
This might be the most innovative piece of the puzzle.
Say you’re building a Slack workflow or making a Slack agent and it requires 10 different steps to finish a business process.
While you’re building the Slack agent, AgentExchange can show you solutions that already exist so you don’t have to build them from scratch. You can see agents/apps/tools that already solve the problem you’re working on.
Information is only valuable if it’s timely and relevant, and it doesn’t get more timely and relevant than this. That’s why I think this is the most innovative part of the whole AgentExchange experience.
Dynamic pricing will account for the size of the business and how much usage it will require.
In a token based world, private offers matter a lot more than when we were in the SaaS world where usage was based on seats/licenses and usage was virtually unlimited.
I can see the demand for Salesforce Order Management booming in the future because of the AgentExchange Go-to-Market App.
The reason I can see Salesforce Order Management demand increasing is because these five objects are the building blocks of the Go-To-Market App
Products
Offers
Orders
Invoices
Payouts
This means that AgentExchange sellers will need to have a quality order management data model in place.
Go to the AgentExchange Go-To-Market App Guide to learn more about it.
Salesforce is HUGE on trust.
If you have clients like the United States Navy, you have to be focused on security and trust.
Every AgentExchange product/solution goes through a security review process to make sure they are at the enterprise level standard for security, privacy, and compliance.
Salesforce Platform Admins control data permissions, API scopes, integration settings, and who can access the apps/agents.
Salesforce wants partners to be innovative and build new solutions.
That’s the only way a marketplace works.
You need to have the supply side so that when the demand comes from customers, there’s a huge amount of transactions.
That’s why Salesforce launched a $50 million AgentExchange Builders Initiative for support, tools, and programs so partners can build faster.
New Salesforce partners can get investments for their ideas and hands-on guidance through the Forward Deployed Engineering Partner Network.
Companies who continue to grow (without relying only on investor capital), will grow because people keep buying.
Revenue is what drives growth. And companies optimize for growth (and profitability).
Without revenue, a company will not grow. Which means that a company will listen to the users who pay.
And if paying customers say they want something, then Salesforce will listen. I’m not exactly sure of the exact feedback that salesforce has received from their paying customers, but the trend is clear.
Their customers want AI features. Which is why we’re seeing so much AI innovation and conversation from Salesforce. They didn’t randomly change AppExchange name to AgentExchange. These name changes aren’t random.
They are strategic and they are shifts in an industry where change is a constant. You can be mad about a name change, or you can learn the new name and call it what it is.
The name change is the by-product of customer demand and industry changes.
It is what it is. And if you know anything about making decisions in a business, then the goal is to stay in business and remain competitive. And if that means you have to change a few names around and update what you offer to your clients, then that’s what it is.
If you’ve built your career around the salesforce ecosystem, then you should learn from the company that you need to be willing to change as well. Is salesforce perfect? No. No company is.
But that’s not the point here. The point is that in business and in the economic landscape, things get competitive. Just like sports. People got mad when Lebron James went to the Miami Heat.
They got mad when Kevin Durant joined the Warriors. And other people were happy. At the end of the day, they both did what they felt was best for them to win an NBA championship.
If that’s what they felt it took to win, then they were willing to be hated. Don’t be the hater though. Be the person who learns from those lessons.
If you look at the NBA now, you see teams building their roster like that all the time now. Sometimes it works out and other times it doesn’t. But the NBA adapted because of it.
The lesson is that sometimes people will do things you don’t like, but are you going to be bitter about it? Or are you going to adapt to the competitive landscape?
Quit talking so much and get out there and play ball. Keep improving and getting better at your craft.
The wold isn’t going to wait on you to stop your pity party. It’s going to keep going no matter what you think about the change. Either you can be a part of it or get left behind. And that’s okay too.
You can stay in the past. And that could be alright for you. Just don’t be upset if you don’t accomplish the things that the new competitors are accomplishing.
Heck, it may even work out for you. You might win. It doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that you keep focusing on your craft and improving at what you do.
Not worrying about a name change and complaining about the company who is doing what THEY need to do to survive in the competitive landscape.
The whole moral of this letter is that you and I have an obligation to keep improving if we want to compete in the new game that’s being played.
Just like the NBA adapted to the big 3, you and I need to adapt to the AI era we’re already in.
I hope that reading this helps you understand what AgentExchange is and how it's different.
Let me know what you think about this article by leaving a comment or DM'ing me on LinkedIn.
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