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There’s a 5 step roadmap to turn your startup vision into a measurable success, used by the Salesforce CEO to grow his business from zero to $35 billion, later used by an extremely successful couple to build a business they sold to him for $745 million – and then used by them in 100 startups that generated another $10 billion. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff speaks during the 2025 Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Oct. 14, 2025 to explain their plans to invest $15 billion in San Francisco over the next five years, "reinforcing the city’s status as the world’s AI capital." Photographer: Michael Short/Bloomberg © 2025 Bloomberg Finance LP To create strategic company alignment, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says it’s important to start with a beginner’s mind and a blank sheet of paper. While he was still at Oracle, he needed a way to identify his objectives and asked himself how he would achieve those objectives and how they would be measured. The framework Benioff created is a process called V2MOM, which he says “boils down to five questions which create a framework for alignment and leadership.” He explains that if you can answer these questions about your business, you will have the roadmap you need to succeed. What Is the V2MOM Framework? V2MOM stands for: Vision: What do you want to achieve? Values: What’s important to you? Methods: How will you get it done? Obstacles: What challenges could prevent success? Metrics: How will you know you’ve succeeded? Benioff first used V2MOM when Salesforce was a four-person startup. It helped align the team around shared goals, priorities, and metrics and it remains the foundation of Salesforce’s management process today. Each year, every team and employee at Salesforce creates their own V2MOM, ensuring complete alignment across the company. It’s a living document that evolves throughout the year, encouraging constant communication, clarity, and adaptability — all key ingredients both for fast-growing organizations and startups. MORE FOR YOU In essence, V2MOM is a one-page roadmap that helps any entrepreneur or team translate vision into action, ensuring everyone knows where they’re going, why it matters, how they’ll get there, what could get in the way, and how success will be measured. How Successful Serial Entrepreneurs Used This Framework Over and Over Kass and Mike Lazerow, Serial entrepreneurs, founders, investors and bestselling authors of Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success. New York City, September 2025. Justin Alive Kass & Mike Lazerow are big fans of V2MOM. They are serial founders who launched multiple ventures, including Golf.com, sold to Time Warner, and Buddy Media, which was acquired by Salesforce for $745 million in 2012. They are also investors who have backed more than 100 startups, including Liquid Death, which have generated more than $10 billion. Their debut book, Shoveling $h!t: A Love Story About the Entrepreneur’s Messy Path to Success, became an instant bestseller for its honest look at what it really takes to build a business. Although they didn’t use a specific planning tool at any of their companies when they first started, they’ve grown to love Marc Benioff’s V2MOM as a simple and effective framework that forces you to make key decisions about your plans and goals. Among the large portfolio of companies they own in venture capital, healthcare, executive recruiting, and sports, they have found that V2MOM easily fits on one piece of paper and is just as powerful for a one-person startup as it is for a 70,000-person organization like Salesforce. Drawing on decades of operational excellence and high-stakes decision-making, they bring strategic insight to every stage of business from team building and capital strategy to scaling operations and competing in the innovation economy. Their philosophy is based on V2MOM, which has five compact sections, and is grounded in disciplined execution, strong leadership, and long-term impact. Why Tools Like V2MOM Work Over time, Kass and Mike learned that the biggest enemy of any planning process is unattainable goals, especially in year one. The key is to help founders break down big, ambitious goals into specific, actionable steps. They explain: Your Vision must have attainable goals which are specific, relevant, and time-bound. To figure out what to attack first, you have to write down in very specific language the two or three big-rock priorities with the actions and steps needed to get the job done in those early days, weeks, and months. Your Values must be aligned with your vision. Kass says you should always ask, “What are the principles that you hold dear?“ She explains that when you’re running a company, how you create and disseminate the values and morals of the company, not just the mission, is key. The Methods you use to build your company include creating the right culture, which is your shared beliefs, customs and behaviors. You must know what you need to do to achieve your vision. And then, what steps do you take to get it? This includes crafting your origin story. Kass and Mike explain that it should show why you’re fired up about your venture and how you plan to shake up the world. They say, "Make it authentic, make it memorable, and most importantly, make it yours. A killer story isn't just a fundraising tool; it's the bedrock of your brand and the secret sauce to building lasting relationships with investors, customers, and partners alike." Obstacles are a key element. Kass and Mike stress the importance of identifying potential obstacles early and planning how to overcome them. Every company faces them.They explain: At Golf.com, their early challenges included limited hiring experience, credit issues, and few connections. At Buddy Media, the obstacle was a competitive market for engineers. Kass and Mike always ask: What could get in the way? What is preventing you from being successful? Metrics define success. They told me that you have to ask: How do you measure success? How do you know you have it? Metrics clarify progress and help determine whether to double down, pivot, or allocate resources differently. They always create measurable metrics for each priority. If sales are the goal, what’s the weekly target? If hiring is the goal, how many people and by when? If marketing is the goal, how will you measure its impact? Key Lessons Your financial model and revenue goals are your initial map for what to focus on once you start your company. Identify your big-rock priorities that will get you to year two and write them down. If you don’t write them down, they don’t exist. Focus, focus, and then focus some more. Don’t let perfection block progress. Ship, learn, and improve. You Too Can Grow Your StartUp By Asking 5 Simple Questions Every entrepreneur starts with a dream, but only those who turn that dream into a plan, and that plan into daily action, create lasting impact. The genius of V2MOM is its simplicity: It turns vision into motion. Answer its five questions honestly and consistently, and you’ll have a roadmap for growth. If you want to scale your startup like Marc Benioff and Kass and Mike Lazerow did, start with a blank page. Define your vision, clarify your values, commit to your methods, anticipate your obstacles, and measure everything. The answers may evolve, but the discipline of asking them never will — and that’s how great companies are built. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
