Marc Benioff, Founder, Chairman & Co-CEO, Salesforce

[Music] we're very pleased today to have Marc Benioff who's the founder and chairman and co-ceo now he was the CEO for a long time now the co-ceo I never know how to sit in these chairs by the way well you're doing a pretty good job like this or do I go like the Trump more like I don't know whatever most should be almost like this like that what am I supposed to do well whatever makes you feel most common you can change to alright well I notice you're more forward well I'm not as you know all right young and I'm all right okay just want to make sure I know I don't want to disappoint you because I know you're an expert at this I'm not it's right how do I supposed to sit well you're sitting pretty well all right everybody think his posture is behind there I think yeah all right thank you and nice talking everybody that'll be it for today okay so you recently with your wife bought Time magazine yes Molly is here Molly stand up our local award-winning journalist covering Washington DC amazing now that you own Time magazine do you get to pick who's the person of the year or two friends call you up and telling you I can't do it I know you want to be I get it we shouldn't bring it up here well maybe Navin you're very look I realize you are a good candidate I get it but look there's advertising and I'm not involved in editorial you know go talk to Molly alright you don't pick I can't look you're a Perry I'm sure you're worthwhile candidate well I get it yeah so you got that book coming out I gotta go it's also I'm gonna sell as many as this book but well I don't know it looks pretty good alright well maybe it'll be on the cover of Time show you never know well though no so what about tamale now why did you buy time by the way that's a very good question you know we actually are looking for ways to have impact and really to add more trust and impact in the world and one of the things that I've always loved about Time magazine really there's four things you know one is that it's it's always been about trust it is an incredibly impactful business the the stories that not only Molly but also her peers are writing have dramatic impact in the world for the good it's a fantastic magazine and it's also all about equality in fact that idea that it's about trust impact it's a magazine about equality but that's why we call it time T IME that's where you got it from yeah Wow okay I can do the same for say that didn't go over very well actually it's a tough crowd Washington DC that was actually my better material all right well let me ask you about salesforce.com for those people who are not that familiar with it there may be a few you've started the company in 1999 yes and today it has a market value of about a hundred and thirty billion dollars yes if you had bought the stock at the beginning you'd be up about seven thousand percent thirty five hundred percent but who's counting your but you're more on those kind of things than I am well thirty five a much better investor well I don't know about that but okay so yeah pretty 3500 M yeah we have had a very good shareholder return and we've had a very good shareholder return that when we since we went public in you know two thousand four thirty five hundred percent but the thing is we've also had what we call a very good stakeholder return so you know we've also been able to give away three hundred million dollars we've done four million hours of volunteerism we have run 40 thousand nonprofits for NGO on our service for free we're a NetZero company fully renewable by 2025 so that's very important like whenever I'm thinking about what is our return for our shareholders which have been very good right we also have a very good stakeholder turn fact it's one of the reasons that I wrote this book Trailblazer well let me ask you for those who aren't knowledgeable about what salesforce.com main business is what does it actually do well Salesforce is a business software company and actually are there any customers here who run their business on Salesforce raise your hand all right well one of the people who really raised their hand is in the front row here is Arne sørensen and he is a tremendous executive and he is the CEO of a company called Marriott anybody heard of Marriott right okay a couple ago an amazing company Marriott and you know he has a fantastic opportunity which is he has a lot of customers they are amazing and the whole question there is how can he come and bring and connect with his customers in a whole new way how do we can bring companies and customers together so you know my vision or my dream for Marriott if there was a dream is that you know when I go into my Marriott hotel room like I did last night and I opened the door that I say oh hi Marriott please set my temperature to actually a little warmer like it's usually at 68 set it to 75 and can you call and order me of some french onion soup and also can you put the TV on my favorite station and boom boom boom it happens and typically what happens when I get into a hotel room is you know I have to adjust the thermostat and I never know exactly why I've ever had that experience every day I don't know exactly the TVs to every remote is different you know I got to look through the menu got to find the menu it's in a drawer I don't know where the drawer and that but they know me really well because I'm traveling all over the world with Marriott I know them so well they knew when I landed they have my travel itinerary so I want to get a text on my phone Oh Marriott thank you oh do I want my sandwich waiting in my room yes oh this is my digital key fantastic so I get to the hotel I have my key I unlocked the door I get in there they know me on my way out I get an email from them hope everything was okay here's the survey maybe I get an email from them a week later it says hope you had a good time by the way have you checked out our new place you know in this fabulous location and off I go and what he's do connecting with me in a new way having a great relationship with me having a one-on-one it's the new loyalty you know they're the one of the biggest loyalty points and when we grew up it was all about loyalty points right it's not about loyalty points anymore customer relations is all about having a one-on-one relationship another example is like adidas if you go to adidas comm and you buy some Adidas shoes you know some easy easy is from you know Kanye West and you like the like the shoe and then you get an email from adidas and the new but the shoe comes and there's something wrong with it you have to call customer service and send it back and all of those things the sales the service the marketing the email the commerce is all a hundred percent sales force on adidas so whether you're on Marriott or you're on adidas or you know even some great government agencies that we have here like the Veterans Administration it's really you know about connecting with our customers in a new way so for a non-technical person which everybody would agree I am was that a to technical them no but actually for a non-technical person who might be here as I understand it your company really did two things in terms of it okay good what was what you've discussed yeah CRM customer relations management and your point was that the most important thing in business is to make sure your customers okay is that right I think that's generally a good idea yeah and second was your novelty as I understand it was that you said let's do this through the cloud yes and when you started the company in 1999 people thought clouds were white things in the sky and you've kind of told people it's there's more to that is that right well you're a hundred percent right there's really three things we said we were gonna do when we started our business one was oh you're right focus on the customer and say that every customer is going to go through a digital transformation and these digital transformations are gonna start and end with the customer and they're all gonna build these customer 360s so number one what we're gonna do is we're gonna build this cloud - we're gonna have a subscription model so you're gonna subscribe not buy a license so you know we're gonna have a deeper relationship with you and that became a recurring a new stream and that was a whole different type of business model for software and three we said you know we're gonna put 1% of our equity 1% of our profit 1% of all of our employees time into this 501 C 3 charity it was very easy because we had no equity we had no profit we had no time with nobody but it turned in now we have 45,000 employees 130 billion market cap so we've been able to have that stakeholder impact and so yeah we've you know that that's why Salesforce is maybe a little different in that right from the beginning who said we want to do these three things this is really important to us well you also from the beginning as I understand it from reading this book which I highly recommend Trailblazer I'm thinking us reading it they all have one so it's ready to go well okay and you're gonna autograph one for everybody I will not leave between everyone who's autograph okay so as long as I get it all done within 30 seconds of finishing this speech the premise was that you wanted to build a company that was actually one that employees felt they were having a culture that they were to be proud of is that essentially right well you know really how it all started was you know I was working in another software company for a decade from 80 this is Oracle Oracle from 1980s starting in 1986 and in 1996 I walked into my boss's office Larry Ellison everybody knows who he is he's been a tremendous mentor to me and I said to him I really don't feel good I haven't having trouble getting up in the morning I just am NOT enjoying my job I don't really know what's going on and he goes you know what you need to do you need to take a sabbatical I didn't really know what sabbatical meant you know I thought it's some French word or something but he wanted me to take some time off so I did I went to Hawaii you know near where Steve Case lives went to Mau my bay rented a house and kind of started to deal with myself and then I came back and he's like you still don't seem exactly right this was after 90 days take another three months office I said fine so I went to India right so went to India kept the stock vesting everything's fine I went to India and I was touring India with a friend of mine who had just quit working for a George Soros and was gonna start his own venture capital company called tellus off partners name is Arjun Gupta and were touring we're going to every city in India New Delhi and Bombay and Bangalore and put the partay and we end up in Trivandrum which is the Kerala region you've ever been to Kerala not there okay well if you like a good masala dosa this is the where you go and we're in the Kerala region right in the backwaters of the Arabian Sea and all of a sudden we're invited into this ashram which is like a you know it's both free you know it's like a synagogue anyway okay so just help bring you along on it and the story helping you come along with me on it but anyway that's where they lost tribal words right no I know I'm helping you okay and so we're in the ashram and you know it's getting a little deeper in there the back room there's incense wave in a way we're talking to the Guru now in this part of India all the Guru's are women and this woman is now lecturing us on spirituality and so forth and all of a sudden Arjun takes out his business plan oh well let me tell you about what I'm gonna do tell us off Partners and he starts giving her and she's like really interested Wireless is coming and we're gonna connect the world and mobile devices are coming and this is you know we're there this is 19 this is 1996 so then she is listening really clearly and I'm like I think she's going to invest okay and then all of a sudden she says this is a really powerful thing which is she's saying it to him but she's looking right at me in my eyes and she goes in your quest to change the world don't forget to do something for other people and at that point my life kind of went like from this to this and what happened was I realized that when I was at Oracle I was working on the software and writing the software and marketing the software and doing all of these things during the day but I was working in schools I was doing philanthropy I was giving back and I had this desire to give back but I felt I was kind of to people business person mark over here and spiritual you know philanthropist mark over here and all of a sudden I'm like you know what why is that I want to be one person I am gonna be the same mark everywhere I am and I want to be totally integrated and that was a moment in time when I said wow when I start a company I'm gonna make sure that philanthropy and giving and generosity and these values are in the culture of the company from day one and that was very powerful moment so then I went back to work and I am feeling better i kN dedup coming here very near here to Philadelphia there was something called the president at Summit for America's future that ray chambers had put on with : powell and the five living presidents having lectures on how businesses can be the greatest platform for change and : powell got up on stage and he said and he's been a huge mentor of mine and he looked right out in the audience at I mean he didn't know who I was and I was you know this is 1997 so I am 33 years old and it was as if he was looking right in my eyes and he said CEOs of America and your quest to you know make money don't forget to help other people and he also talked about the importance of working on the Boys and Girls Clubs and safe places and only and I was like wow I'm kind of hearing the same message and I actually kept hearing the same message and it felt like we had created businesses that were too much Milton Friedman ISM over here the business of business of business is businesses business that it's just about money it's just about Sheryl to return and then over here we weren't really measuring and managing and looking at our stakeholder return and that's where I was said I'm like wow I guess we could maybe do something and when I went to business school which was from 1982 to 1986 at the USC Marshall School there were no classes on that we took very basic classes at county marketing and organizational behavior so I'm like whoa this could be something that would make me really motivated to be in business and then when I started the company which was March 8th of 1999 I rented the apartment next door to me in San Francisco hired a few people moved in and I said all them at that moment we're gonna do these three things and one of them was to make sure that we made a business that we felt great at being there every single day okay that's pretty impressive so did you think when you started do whatever David did you ever think when you started it that it would it would get anywhere I mean you you were starting in an apartment you didn't have did you have a lot of capital where'd you get your capital I thought we'd go right to 130 billion the market cap no I you don't really know what is gonna happen and we have a lot of amazing executives and entrepreneurs in this room I mean some that I'm looking at right here you don't really know what it's gonna happen I mean I remember the day very well I wrote down a bunch of notes that you know one of my co-founders capped and we had a vision for the end of software we had a vision for CRM that I kind of articulated we had a vision for the one-one-one model we wrote all of those things down it certainly helps when you write things down like I wrote down the following things what do I really want what was my outcome I wrote down what's really important to me what are our values you know and prioritize them and Trust was our highest value you know it was trust and customer success and innovation and the quality and giving back that those weren't gonna be our values and those orders and then I looked at how am I gonna operationalize those values so I said how do I get trust and I wrote down the three things to get trust I said now how am I gonna get customer success and I wrote down those three things how am I gonna get innovation and I wrote down those three things and how am I gonna get equality and we wrote down those things and then I was like what's gonna prevent me from having this like what are my big obstacles terrible things that are gonna happen to us so I was like well what's gonna prevent us from having trust and there were nightmare things what's gonna prevent us from having customer success what's going to prevent us from having you know innovation and and what's gonna prevent us from having equality and then finally I did Deming so if you remember Demyan and World War two did basically measurements so it's the same thing I said how will I know that I have trust what are the measurements how will I know that I have customer success what are the measurements how do I know I'm going to have innovation equality and then I have this model and I'm like okay well this is now the model so let's go and then we start to hire people into the model and it just got going twenty one years ago exactly like that that's all we did your background was you grew up in San Francisco is that right I am a fourth generation San Franciscan my mother has told me I'm supposed to say fifth generation okay but I am fourth generation as far as I can figure out and your ancestors came over from Ukraine they were part of my family came from I'm not part of this I would just want to say right now no Ukrainian can I know where I am not know all right seriously yes my great grandfather came from Kiev okay in the late 1800s and he had seven kids some he brought with him some he had here in the United States and then you probably know like David Benioff who's Steven Friedman's son who you know David Friedman who wrote the Game of Thrones he's you know one of the he's one of the great grandchildren of Isaac Benioff and Paul Benioff who invented quantum computers and Hughes at Hugo Victor Benioff we did the seismograph they're all related back to to Isaac Benioff okay so you went to high school you were you an athlete where you're a star student I was into computers what really what happened was is my dad was a small business man and his family had a business in San Francisco clothing stores and he had a major disagreement and falling-out with his family and ended up partnering with someone in the South Bay and as part of that on Saturdays he had a Buick station wagon and he used to load the clothes and we used to drive around the bay area delivering clothes to all the different stores and I'd have to do the repricing remarket margaery marketing you know take the clothes out take the thing off move them around talk to all the employees and I really did not like that actually it was fun to be with my dad but I'm like this is not for me probably let him down he probably thought I'm gonna take over his women's clothing stores and all of a sudden I found computers you know I was in RadioShack in 1979 I found probably he was there next to me doing the TRS a model one and I went and talked to my grandmother and she I said you know I really like to buy one of these and she's like well how much is it I'm like this was like $400 she's like I'll give you 200 if you can make 200 so I got a job at currents jewelry store across the street and after school in high school I was cleaning the jewelry cases I got fired I did a terrible job but I did make the $200 and I got the computer from her I learned how to program and when I was basically 15 years old I wrote my first piece of software how to juggle and sold it into a software company in Santa Barbara called C load magazine and I was in business and that's when I went whoa I don't have to work in the drew clothing stores this is amazing when I was 16 my grandmother's the my birthday present from my grandmother was she gave me her 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass 4 door and she repainted it and it was totally great and what let me do is I used I could drive to Morgan Hill do a software company where I got a deal with them to write software for them and I wrote a bunch of software for them and then for another software company called epics and I'm by the time I got to college I had written 10 software titles and I was making maybe $1,500 a month which were in high school it's really good so then I'm like this is amazing and then something crazy happened to me which is I'm in college at USC I'm writing my software whatever and the Super Bowl comes on in 1984 enjoy the Super Bowl and there's this crazy add that 1984 won't be like 1984 in this Apple and I had used apples but I was never really that into the Apple in fact a friend of mine I was kind of running my Apple programming division I did Atari and I'm like maybe I'm gonna have to do this Macintosh so I bought the Macintosh computer and set it up just like they did as a software developer actually ended up having to you know make a big financial commitment and it didn't work and I called them and talked to the head of evangelism at Apple's name was Guy Kawasaki is that kind of turned into a famous person and I said you know I'm 19 years old I just put all my life savings into your computer to write software and it doesn't work so why don't you explain to me why that is this was in May of 1984 at that point and he's like why don't you come to work here this summer and help us fix it because we're having some problems and I was like what was that and he's like we're gonna hire you as an intern into Apple and I'm like okay where are you well he's in Cupertino like it's a 15-minute drive it's actually right next to my father's store so so I go there I show up for work there's a motorcycle in the lobby there is a pirate flag on the roof there are people running around frenetically they show me a cube there's a refrigerator full of Iguala juices Steve Jobs is running around I'm like this is really cool and then I sit down and I'm like whoa none of this actually works so I'm like working on some things I go wow I don't know how to get this to work you know this is actually I'm now writing and what we call 68000 assembly language which is I'm not doing basic I'm doing very deep machine language code on the metal of the computer and it is not working and I do not have a computer science degree I am a business guy I was have business come in Business School self-taught in high school so I go to this executive named Steve Capps is very highly regarded and I'm saying can't figure out how to make this work he's like oh you just forgot this one thing and I'm like well thank you and then I went back to my cube and all of a sudden I got my games running and my example code and I ended up started being able to teach others how to work on this Macintosh and then what happened was my phone rang and I said hello and I said yes oh this is Henry singleton I'm the chairman of Teledyne I said okay and I've got your sample code okay I'm on the board of Apple actually so you need to pay attention to what I'm saying all right I'm paying attention now you need to help me get this running I'm writing a chess program and I'm like okay whatever and then he starts saying well what are you doing there exactly I'm like I'm an intern I don't really know what I'm doing and I go to USC it's like you go to USC I live in bel-air come over and see me you know and so then I went down there I got very inspired and he really inspired me about building a big business and that was like a real awakening for me that here was this kind of mogul Henry singleton had built this you probably knew him or met him I mean and I'm not trying to classify you actually in any way but you know he was amazing and he like all of a sudden got a Businessweek cover and it's like he was on it and it was like a strategy linked to cash flow is failing in whoa Henry singleton and I'm like wow this is like big he's like on the Forbes 400 list and I'm like really learned a lot from him and then I kind of got back up in college again and then getting ready for my internship for my senior year and I decided I had to stay in LA cuz I had missed some classes and I was doing some work but I still worked at Apple and in Los Angeles for a group called PC ma and during that time Steve Jobs got fired that was very traumatic for me I went down to a sales conference in San Diego and the CEO of Apple John Sculley was on stage crying another guy who is a huge leader there bill Campbell's very famous in my industry got up on stage was hugging that each other and I'm like wow this is really powerful what's going on and it started to influence how I thought about business and then as I got ready to leave USC I went to my manager and said what do you think I should do with my career and he said you shouldn't stay here you should go to work for Oracle it just went public and my friend is running sales and you should go learn how to sell and then I'm like are you sure and he's like yeah and then I went to back to college and I'm at USC and I'm finishing up my entrepreneurship program and one of my main teachers dick Bhaskar came to up to me and said you need to leave the software business thing and I had written this business plan on online networks and some things like you know you know this was the time when 1986 when you could see online networks are really gonna happen it's like no no you don't have it so you need to go work on your skills but did you meet Steve Jobs have any relationship with him I did I met Steve Jobs and then Steve Jobs ended up having a huge impact on my life especially when I started Salesforce it was a very very meaningful and powerful relationship and I wouldn't be the person I am and Salesforce would not be the company it is without Steve now when Salesforce was started you started a system of having people develop applications apps and you had the name of the app store mm-hm and then can you tell how that revolved well this was a really weird situation so in 2001 Salesforce was like a 18 months old or something and I got an invitation to fund something called college track was starting which was being put together by Steve Jobs wife Laurene Powell Jobs and it looked really great helping kids get into college and they were gonna have a movie night featuring a Pixar movie and we could sponsor it for some small amount of money of Salesforce and I'm like well this is gonna be great for us to have this exposure and we're we're doing other things so said great and so we ended up doing it and then there was a dinner afterwards and I was like oh this is gonna be some incredible huge dinner and I go to the dinner and I'm at the restaurant called Evia in in Palo Alto and I walk in and you know it's just a normal restaurant and then Steve walks in Laraine walks in and then another friend of mine actually walks in Dean Ornish's I don't turn to medicine doctor and then one other person walks in and I'm like what's happening in there we're having dinner you're joining us right and I guess and I had my girlfriend at the time was now my wife with me and I'm like well I guess I am and Lorene had forgotten to make a reservation and it was packed so Steve's like I'm not leaving until the table opens now I won't go into the aspects of his personality but just know we weren't leaving so he is like you want to see something cool I'm like well yeah so he back pocket goes why I just introduced this last week it's the iPod and he had an iPod and I'm like well that's pretty cool he said yeah I got a thousand songs in my pocket what do you think about that I'm like I like it it's like yeah you can't win his turn it like this and all the laws you click this did it like that it's really cool and then I he I got said to him you know it's kind of like a computer you could probably build a little application there and that screen could be color you could probably even have movies and it probably wouldn't be that hard and you know it'd be really awesome and he goes we'll never do that that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard and that's kind of an insight into his personality as he never actually told you what he was thinking in fact he would even kind of kind of feign you off or kind of say no that's not exactly but of course he was thinking that way he's brilliant and so he was at the beginning of the would be the iPod and the iPhone so then at the end we have this nice long dinner it goes on for hours and and at the end then he says well mark do you need some help running Salesforce and I go well maybe and he goes well if you really need help you better come and see me in my office and I will help you and that was very scary because being around him for me was scary it's like you know it's like a guru type figure and I'm really like even being able to say something like what I said to him was like took everything to say that so then I kind of got my courage up and we went down there and I took my coat two co-founders with me and before we walked in the room I said to them let me tell you what this is gonna be like don't say anything do not open your mouth do you understand me yes what are we gonna do take notes write down every single thing that he says we're gonna meet somebody who's truly pathetic visionary and we're just gonna listen that's the only thing to do in the situation all right fine so then we walk in and he's like well you know I'd really like to see a demo of this demo in Salesforce he goes well this is and I'm like well it's the best I can do is like because you're building an it HTML and you shouldn't be doing that he's building it this way and whatever I'm like but we have to like this because it's gonna run on the Internet no you have to build it natively and I'm like alright and then it's like you know what mark there's three things you better do and you better do it right now and I'm like okay what are they number one you better go get the biggest customer you possibly can get somebody like Avon I'm like Avon yes so at the time the CEO of Avon was on on his board she's an amazing CEO and Avon was really on his mind so for him that was the ultimate enterprise account Avon it was too said now I want you to really understand this you are gonna be 10 times larger in 24 months or it is over for you do you understand what I'm saying yes sir 10 times larger in 24 months and one last thing yes you need to go build an application economy what does that mean I don't know but you better go figure it out and I said thank you very much and we walked out of the building and got in our car and drove home and my co-founders mouths were open we were all like we had had like a it was like being in that ashram but it was that type of experience because we had been with the Guru and it I took the notes all the notes back we all did and I read them every day for maybe 18 months and I could not figure out that last the first one first two are easy though I could not figure it out then I kind of had a dream where I saw that we could have in our application a market place where other developers could maybe build on our platform and then insert things in it and then we could you know have a catalogue of things and I'm like this is like an app store and I called up our lawyer at the time and I registered the trademark app store I got bought App Store calm and we built it we released it in 2005 three years before even the iPhone really kind of got going with everything in the store and all and then what happened was is we got a call Steve Jobs wants us to come down for a major announcement on the Apple Campus now all my employees know this story and we didn't end up choosing App Store app stores our name because when we tested and in focus groups all the customers said this is not an app store you've built an app exchange so you should call it an app exchange cuz you're exchanging apps fine so we called it app exchange so you go to app exchange calm you'll see what we built so then we are down there and we're in this Big Apple auditorium and it's a big production the videos are going and Steve walks out and his jeans and the black t-shirt and whole thing and he says ladies and gentlemen I'm here to announce my greatest invention of all time app store and my employees who are sitting around me you could hear them have an audible gasp they were like they it was like a moment and time stopped and then we the production went on and at the end the whole auditorium ended and emptied out and Steve wasn't down at this stage at the bottom and the whole room was empty and Steve was down there and I walked down and I said great to see you and thanks for inviting me great to see you did you like it yes I said I'm gonna give you a gift as well what gift can you give me I said I'm gonna give you the trademark for app store and the URL for no charge because thank you for everything you've done for me and he goes well it's not gonna be anything you know the App Store is never really gonna work out right it's not gonna be that big and I'm like I know but just in case you know you should have this worked out and so and that was a very powerful story like it was a close that gave me closure on that thing where I really realized like working with somebody like a Steve Jobs that's very much the process that don't a kind of a continual epiphany recently you've been very involved in things other than running salesforce.com salesforce.com has done very very well companies market cap is quite high as we mentioned so forth but you've been a leader in certain issues for example when Indiana decided to change its laws relating to Hill lesbians bisexuals gays and so forth you lose all those LGBTQ right yeah I know all right and you did something about that what did you do and why were you so concerned about it okay what was it you know look I'm in San Francisco okay and what has happened is we actually acquired a company in Indiana and we're not just the largest employer in San Francisco and largest tech company in San Francisco but we're actually the largest tech company in Indiana and Indianapolis and if you go to Indianapolis you'll see a gorgeous Salesforce tower - call me ahead of time unbelievable view and I love Indiana Hoosiers you know it's a great place and I know Mike Pence because I had already been there is the governor of the state and I know the mayor's I know everybody there because we're doing economic development we're you know rescaling we're retraining we're growing a huge company and in the end of this is very important to us and my employees call me and they go well we have a problem and I said well what's the problem they're like well there's this law that's about to get signed by Mike Pence you know Mike I said yes great guy and well it's they're gonna discriminate against our gay employees and everyone here is having a freakout what are you gonna do about it I'm like what am I gonna do about it I don't know what am I gonna do about it and they said well you know you'd have to do something about it and I'm like I do yes you do and I'm kind of listen to them and it just feels inside that they're right so I'm like don't worry Mike Pence's never gonna sign a law discriminating against gays I met him he's great well he did and I was reading on the internet I was driving home on 280 I actually was late at night and actually it I was driver and I'm on my Twitter or whatever and all of a sudden it says Mike Pence signs this law and I had already sent him a couple letters and talked to him and I was really surprised and maybe a little upset and I tweeted well this is gonna force us if Indiana is gonna discriminate against our LGBTQ employees then we are going to disinvest in Indiana because how am I going to bring my customers there and my employees there and how am I gonna hire and make a great tech company there if they're discriminating against LGBTQ employees and customers and everybody else and that opened a door and by the next day every other company like Cummins and Eli Lilly in Indiana and hundreds of other companies even companies all over the world said we agree with mark we're also gonna dis invest and Mike Pence called me and said well what are we gonna do and I'm like I think we're gonna have to issue rolling economic sanctions against the state of Indiana and he's like well what does that mean I'm like I don't know but I think it's got to be bad and he's like well what should we do I'm like why don't we just resolve this you know we know each other this is not that hard and in fact I sent two of my employees to his office and within within a couple days it was worked out he changed the law and it was all behind us all right and by the way I think that's how it should work anyway you know it's very easy now you did a similar thing you get a similar thing not long ago when in San Francisco there was a tax that was proposed to help pay for homelessness which is a big problem in San Francisco most CEOs in the tech world said this is crazy we're against it you said you're supporting it and you lobbied for it and it actually passed why did you get so involved well when I was in business school it's very simple you know it's like a Pavlovian reaction you probably have it yourself if you're a CEO and you hear the word tax you're supposed to say no someone says do you want this tax you say no do you want lower taxes yes how much zero you know it's like zero zero we want zero taxes and the lowest possible well anyway where I live in Sanford it's a bit of a nightmare right now because our safety net is kind of fallen out of the bottom as we have had massive economic success kind of those who need things like extremely low income housing high levels of social services and and and and the ability to stay alive they're not getting the services that they need so when I walk to my office which we have this gorgeous new tower in San Francisco called Salesforce tower building west of the masalas building west of the Mississippi it's a Blackwater a building which means that not that kind of Blackwater it's a it means the water is recycled you know it's right environmentally friendly it's a great build gorgeous come visit our office is on the very top floor right I don't have an office oh I don't have an office anywhere I just had that question yesterday that's so interesting what did you do with the top floor somebody asked me if I have an office in the new time offices and I'm like I don't have an office anywhere should I have an office I just think that wherever I am is my office right this is my office right but you did something unusual with the top floor that usually people don't do at the top floor the top floor really we said this is so gorgeous that we did this also in Indianapolis this is so gorgeous that everybody should have access to this and we're gonna work here during the day but at night nonprofits and NGOs can use this for free they all need amazing event space and they never can get it especially in San Francisco even Indianapolis and so we've been able to to give back its scale and millions and millions of dollars because they just come and use our facilities when we're not using them and that just seems so easy so we call it the Ohana floor Ohana is the Hawaiian word Steve will tell you four family so they come to the Ohana floor that means that it's a community service we're giving back of course at during the day we need it for medians and so forth but at night you know they can have it in on the weekends and during the now in the tech world you're a little different than some tech SEOs you're a little more outgoing I think you oh we didn't finish our prophecy story okay well I'm finished yeah so I'm on my way to this gorgeous building right and you know when I'm walking there and I'm looking into the eyes and hearts of all these homeless people I feel really bad you know like very like what are we going do I'm not the mayor of the city or anything but like what are we gonna do to help these people so we've been working for years to do homeless services and private philanthropy and some have been very successful we've been able to move hundreds of families off the streets especially mother led families where we figured out a program called you know heading home where these families basically get scholarships where they get a place to live and they get services to get back in society and hundreds of families have moved off the streets but we have 8,000 homeless people on the streets in San Francisco so I can see we need a lot more money and so all of a sudden a group of people who are the top homeless advocates and most brilliant people in homelessness including the University California San Francisco and scientists medical doctors come up with something called prop C and that is to direct a certain amount of money to the homeless but it is a tax on business 1/2 of 1% of revenue but only for the top 50 companies and the top three you may have heard of Salesforce Facebook and Google we can afford it so all of a sudden I'm like you know what this probably makes sense it's probably about ten million dollars a year for us but it's gonna be a negative factor on our business if this gets worse so I just said let's support it and when I did that that was like hearsay that people could not believe that a CEO would support a tax and in fact some CEOs of other tech companies got really upset with me they very upset with me and it became a kind of a nightmare for me we're all of a sudden I've got on the front page of the New York Times where it's Benioff versus this CEO and so forth and I'm like this is a very small amount of money and we are making billions like you mentioned a hundred and thirty billion we can take a tiny amount and help clean up our city this is what we're doing in business we can have a great shareholder return and we can have a great stakeholder turn we can do both we have a lot of economic power we have a lot of resources in our company and if we're constantly maximising you know shareholder return then we may actually impact our business quite negatively because what happens if the homeless situation goes awry what happens if our public schools go awry what happens if the environment goes awry what happens if there's massive discrimination against different classes of people or even you know another key stakeholder are female employees you know they came to us and said you know you pay female employees less than male employees here at Salesforce I'm like well that's not possible and then we did the audit and it was true and then we said you know what alright we'll pay men and women the same for the same work that men and women should be paid the same for the same work and we have a regular audit but all of these things are female employees the homeless the public schools the planet the LGBTQ employees there are all our key stakeholders so it all has to work together it has to be a beautiful fabric businesses you know you're like a knitter you're knitting a beautiful fabric and a beautiful quilt and if you can bring it all together you can have a fabulous shareholder return and a fabulous stakeholder return now most CEOs in the tech world are not probably as outgoing as you are we think that's fair to say or I'm not outgoing I am a super computer nerd okay well recently you said Facebook is cigarettes hmm what do you mean by that well it is Facebook is the new cigarettes it is bad for you it is addictive they run they do advertising that's not true there is you know they should be regulated very aggressively there's a lot of bad stuff that has happened on Facebook it's been a lot of stories have been written about by the very people in this room about their view what is happening to the world you can also see social media how it's impacting you know mental health issues with especially with teens you saw suicide rates or think up 56% it's all linked back to social media there is a lot of bad stuff associated with that company have you heard from Mark Zuckerberg you're sure I've talked to him I've talked to his management team and what I say is Trust has to be your highest priority if Trust is not your highest priority and if you're not thinking about all your stakeholders and you're only focused on money then what kind of business are you building you have to actually articulate like when you do a speech like he did yesterday he said that the highest value of their company is just free speech that's all they care about people should be able to say whatever they want well is that the highest value or is it trust you know it's a very subtle thing now they agree for example that pornography should not be on their site so they have built the technology and it cleanses their site of pornography they're very careful about that they have AI it's advanced but if there's other things that they allow and where they could look for truth where they could actually work to have great integrity you know and make sure that everything is accurate and clear they don't do that and that I think you know is a problem and that it needs to be directly addressed so as a result by the way the people who should directly address it are all of us were we have to all be mindful of where by the way Steve Jobs is the one who always said this to me be mindful and project the future that you want we should all be mindful now even these things about social media we can see what's going on we should be mindful and we should make sure that the things that are in place you know that it's it's kind of like Time magazine Time magazine I'm held responsible for the content on the site so hopefully Molly is doing a great job in writing true stories and everything you know and then also that their publisher Facebook as a publisher - they should be held to the same standards as NBC CBS CNN MSNBC The New York Times The Wall Street Journal and every other media organization we have of the plan no different as a result of your success at Salesforce and other things you've obviously made a fair amount of money is your goal in the future to make more money to give it away - would you consider running for office I am would never be a politician I will never run for office I wouldn't know how to run for office I don't think I I could not see how I could do that I like to go to Hawaii like where Steve is enjoy myself that doesn't really work with that model you know I think that business is the greatest platform for change I think that what I'm doing actually have more impact doing what I'm doing with 45,000 employees and all my partners and my Trailblazers all over the world and inspiring them and other CEOs you know like Arne and I are on the Business Council and Business Roundtable and say we can do it we can change the world oh because by the way if you and I don't change the world no one else is going to you know we all have to repair the world we have to improve the world that you know we're on the board of the world economic forum together we're trustees of the World Economic Forum you know our tagline is committed to improving this day of the world isn't that everyone's tagline that's why we're here that's why we're on this planet is to improve the state of the world we're not here just to make money we're not just here to manipulate other people or to get our way we're here to prove the world and to love each other and that that's what it's all about well I would say seem like a pretty happy person though for all the things that burdens you have you're pretty happy outgoing person would you say I'm happy and so we don't happy enough you know we don't have enough time to go through everything that's covered in this book but I would highly recommend it because it's very well done it goes through your life and your philosophy of running the company and I think you congratulate you on your success and well thank you David thank you for having me I really yeah this is a great Thank You Puryear knives of Washington DC

Channel: The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.

Views: 96,913

Rating: 4.7902098 out of 5

Keywords: Marc Benioff, Salesforce, David M. Rubenstein

Id: ohZP0zJxnG0

Length: 51min 47sec (3107 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 18 2019