Benioff Discusses Customer Concerns, Equality, and Schools

Speaking at the Gartner Symposium this morning time, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff responded to questions relating to client concerns near the platform, told the story of how he built the company, and explained its unusual approach to philanthropy. He urged attendees to have a beginner's mind and to get more involved in their larger communities.

Gartner Fellow Yefim Natis said Gartner hears iii big concerns from Salesforce customers: price, lock-in, and integration. Benioff joked about that, and said, "nosotros must be in the engineering science industry, and so. Is that the iPhone you're talking about?"

On price, he said that if people have concerns, "they should telephone call me; I will get them the price they want."

Benioff thought the lock-in discussion involved an "unfair characterization," and said it was the nature of the technology industry that when yous get involved in a platform and ecosystem, it'due south very difficult to modify course. He noted how hard it was to movement from an iPhone to Android, or from Android to an iPhone. "Yous have to choose," he said, noting that the industry is full of platforms, and that the idea of completely avoiding lock-in was a "nirvana that does not exist."

On integration, Benioff said Salesforce built its ecosystem differently than many other companies which typically use APIs, every bit information technology was the start to have an app store in the form of AppExchange. (He said the original concept came from Steve Jobs in 2002 or 2003, and that he had actually bought the appstore.com name and trademark, which he later returned to Apple). He said Salesforce has a groovy human relationship with companies like Mulesoft and Boomi for integration, merely didn't give whatsoever hints of anything new from Salesforce itself in this area.

Much of the interview, which was conducted past Gartner Analyst Michael Maoz (heart) as well as Natis (correct), focused on Benioff's own journeying, from getting his showtime Radio Shack TRS-fourscore Model 1 and writing and selling a 'how to juggle' plan in 1979, to working for Apple in 1984, before later on working at Oracle. In 1994-95, he said, he saw the Mosaic browser and early Internet companies such as Amazon and eBay, and knew that "everything was going to modify, and everything was going to exist services." In March 1998, he and co-founder Parker Harris started Salesforce, with three basic concepts: what would come to exist known as the cloud model, selling subscriptions rather than licenses, and what became the house'due south one/one/1 philanthropy model—or how the company sets aside 1 percentage of its disinterestedness, 1 percent of its profits, and i pct of employee fourth dimension.

Benioff said he raised $62 million over a couple of years, generally from friends, because "every single VC in Silicon Valley turned me downward." He said the experience taught him that y'all must believe in yourself and "soldier on."

Every bit the company was introducing itself to customers in the early 2000s, information technology came upwards with its iconic "No Software" logo and ads that talked about the end of software. Benioff said this vision was the new epitome of computing, simply he learned that the visitor "needed a new way to communicate what we were doing." Since that time, the company has grown tremendously. Benioff said it's the "fastest growing enterprise software visitor over all time," and will practise $10.4 billion in revenue in this twelvemonth. Salesforce now has 30,000 employees, and the 1/1/one model has provided ii one thousand thousand hours of employee volunteer time, runs services for free for 30,000 nonprofits and NGOs, and donated $150 million in grants.

Benioff credited two specific mentors. Steve Jobs helped him empathize building products and edifice a platform, equally well every bit teaching him to exist mindful and protect the future. Colin Powell helped him sympathize that a company can be a "platform for change," and that "information technology'due south not just about shareholders; it's about stakeholders," including partners, employees, customers, the customs and the environment. Benioff said that our traditional political leaders are not going to take care of usa, and he urged the audition to get more involved: "The world is changing fast and all of us have responsibility to pick out the one matter we're going to do that will make the world better."

Asked about disruption, Benioff would promise that ane 24-hour interval Salesforce would be disrupted, and added that it would be a sad world if technology did not proceed to lower cost and grow easier to use. "Everything that we wrote in our software 18 years agone is obsolete," he said, as is everything written 10 or even 5 years agone. "I don't think annihilation can protect usa from disruption. This is the tech industry."

Benioff said the company relied on 4 primary core values: trust in its partners, customers, and employees; growth; innovation, both organic and through acquisition; and equality.

He pushed the concept of mindfulness, and said, "if yous want to exist a great innovator, you have to cultivate a beginner's mind." Every floor in a Salesforce office has a mindfulness room, and he urged the audition to "heed and receive." Every solar day he focuses on gratitude and forgiveness, and hopes that maybe i day he will be able to "hear the future."

Benioff said everything is changing "actually fast," and pointed to the tremendous advancements in artificial intelligence in the concluding 36 to 48 months. "This is a big bargain for the earth" he said, and will lead to "navies without sailors, air forces without pilots, armies without militias."

In this surface area, he said that technology is neither adept nor bad, merely he tin come across a world where tech creates more than inequality. "AI volition make me wiser, smarter, healthier—if I don't have those things, I'thousand at disadvantage," he noted. To combat this, he pushed the audience to become more than involved in K-12 public didactics, and talked almost how he is participating in schools, also equally how the visitor has "adopted" a couple schools. "If our kids are not set for the time to come, we're not going to have the equality we desire," Benioff concluded, "we have to bring our kids along for this incredible journey."