Lars' Vision

Are all working people happy at work? Are organizations getting what they want from their employees? Do they know who the real performers and leaders are, and whether they are in the right jobs? Are they getting what they should from their employees? Can they measure it objectively and consistently? Are people engaged and motivated? Are they promoted based on clear indicators of what it takes to be successful? Are they clear on how they get paid for performance? Are they clear on what their goals are and how they tie to company goals? Do they understand their potential, and how to get to the role they want? Could people perform better if those things were made clear and followed through upon? Would organizations perform better if they could do that for their employees?

I founded SuccessFactors to solve an issue everyone in the working world understands, which has never been met consistently, easily and exhaustively. I think there is a tremendous market opportunity, one that will last long after I am gone. After 6 years of approaching it, in the process growing our customer base from 0 users to over 2 million paying customers, across 60 industries, in over 150 countries, I feel confident it has the potential to influence the billions of working people, across the world, potentially increasing performance, productivity and employee engagement significantly. Organizations and management teams I have met across the world, have a rapidly increasing need to reward employees:

objectively, clearly, and consistently on measurable results, but also in confluence
based on engagement, courage, ability to energize and lead their colleagues, anywhere in the organization

In the process getting them to collaborate stronger, based on the right and consistent measures, and content.

This is what we call People Performance. We have built an on-demand, quick-start modular set of applications, and performance dashboards and reports, with baked in content, and best practices, that our customers say help them drive People Performance through the organization, independent of size, and geography.

Before SuccessFactors I had the privilege of working in different management jobs for two of the worlds’ biggest and most global organizations, in different geographies across the planet, and being considered a high potential and high performer, receiving expensive and sometimes effective training, for more than 7 years.

Both organizations believed and invested heavily in people, sometimes with great success. But I thought both were struggling to objectively and consistently reward performance, which sometimes would create inefficiencies, distance from customers, and lack of collaboration that stopped performance. I felt the companies that were both very successful and leaders in their class, could do so much better, and best, I thought their people would want to do more if there was more clarity, visibility and accountability.

SuccessFactors itself is a microcosm of the product we offer,

SuccessFactors is founded first and foremost on a simple principle, we have a long time ago adopted the latin Semper Fi (always faithful) also adopted by the Marines, and many other regiments across the world. To us it represents a requirement to:
1. have a burning passion for People Performance, or leave the company
2. treat each other, customers and partners with respect
3. speak with candor, honesty and integrity, never allow politics and games
4. take responsibility and show accountability
5. courage to lead, sometimes fail and correct
6. constant pursuit of excellence, always improving
We don’t have to rely on our intellectual property, our differentiator is our internal people systems, the way we collaborate, keep each other honest, and execute.
A very important part of the product is the on-demand application suite available over the web, or other devices like mobile, that very quickly allows customers instant gratification on their People Performance initiatives.
Finally we understand that our customers can leave any day, and go somewhere else, therefore every employee at SuccessFactors is paid on customer success. We insist on customer success.

We believe we can create a new world where a new math of humanism develops, where human assets become as strategic and well managed as fixed assets are today, where promotion and reward is truly based on performance, and we are building the applications to do that.

I would like to share our Values, and the Welcome letter, we ask every employee to sign before they join SuccessFactors. The people we have here are something special, they are infinitely responsible and accountable, and love working together for real success. We hope we can provide long term value for you, and in the process, because of how we influence people’s assessment and the values at work, we feel confident we can make the place more productive, but also a more accountable and greater place to be.

Lars Dalgaard, SuccessFactors CEO and Founder