Pat Carroll in conversation with Fergus Gloster, the founding director of European operations at Salesforce. What advice would Gloster have for startups?
As a chapter director of Startup Grind Limerick, I am fortunate to have fireside chats with some inspiring entrepreneurs. These founders share valuable insights at our monthly networking events.
It’s not every day that you have the chance of interviewing a major technology thought leader, who you also happened to go to school with, a few years ago.
Limerick native Fergus Gloster joined Salesforce.com as founding director of European operations when it was a startup with less than 100 employees worldwide. During his nine-year tenure, Fergus played a key role as SVP, corporate sales Europe, and helped shape Salesforce into a billion dollar CRM platform.
After that, Fergus went on to set up leading marketing automation company Marketo’s international business in 2011 and saw the company go from private to public ownership.
Here are some of the key points made by Fergus during our fireside chat (video below).
In the beginning
Fergus excelled at Maths in school and went on to study Applied Maths at the University of Limerick.
His first job was in Silicon Valley writing code for mainframe computers. “With a chisel and hammer – I was a techie,” he says.
He spent the first 15 years of his career writing code and leading various technical teams. These included global leaders in their field, Wang & Oracle, where he ended up as technology director.
In the late 90s, his role gradually moved on from explaining technology to people. The spur for changing from the technical to the marketing/customer-facing side of the business was that Fergus enjoyed presenting to people and interacting with the sales group:
“I started moving more into product marketing role – more in front of people than the ‘clever techie’ in the background”
Two of
