David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . Let me ask you about salesforce. Com for those people who are not that familiar with it. There may be a few. You started the company in 1999 . Marc yes. David and today it has a market value of 130 billion . Marc yes. David if you bought the stock at the beginning, you would be up about 7000 . Marc 3500 . But whos counting . You are more on those things than i am. You are a much better investor. David i dont know about that. But ok. Marc we had a good shareholder return, but the thing is we have also had what we call a very good stakeholder return. We have also been able to give away 300 million. Weve done 4 million hours of volunteerism. David for those not knowledgeable about what salesforce. Coms Main Business is, what does it actually do . Marc salesforce is a Business Software company. If you go to adidas. Com and buy shoes, you know, some yeezys from kanye west, then you get an email from adidas, but the shoe comes and there is something wrong with that and you have to Call Customer Service and send it back. All of those things, sales, service, marketing, email, the commerce is 100 salesforce on adidas. David as i understand it, your company did two things. Marc oh, ok, good. What was it . David one of the things you discussed crm, Customer Relations management and your point was that the most important thing in business is to make sure your customer is ok. Is that right . Marc i think that is generally a good idea, yes. David ok. [laughter] second, your novelty was that you said lets do this through the cloud. Marc yes. David and when you started the company in 1999, people thought clouds were white things in the sky and you told people there is more to that, right . Marc you are 100 right. There is really three things we said we were going to do when we started our business. Number one, we are going to build this cloud. Two, have a subscription model, so youre going to subscribe, not buy a license. So we are going to have a deeper relationship with you, and that became a recurring revenue stream, and that was a whole different type of Business Model for software. Three, we said we will put 1 of our equity, 1 of profits, 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, no time, we had nobody. [laughter] now we have 45,000 employees, 130 billion market cap, so we have been able to have that stakeholder impact. David the premise was that you wanted to build a company that was actually one that employees thought they had a culture they were proud of, is that right . Marc i was working in another Software Company for a decade. David oracle . Marc oracle. Starting in 1986, and in 1996, i walked into my boss office, larry ellison. Everybody knows who he is. Hes been a tremendous mentor to me. And i said, i dont feel good. I am having trouble getting up in the morning. I am not enjoying my job. I dont really know whats going on. He goes, you know what you need to do . You need to take a sabbatical. So i did. I went to hawaii, and then i came back. He is like, you still dont seem exactly right. Take another three months off. This was after 90 days. I said fine. I went to india. [laughter] i was touring india with a friend of mine who just quit working for george soros and was going to start his own Venture Capital company. Pta. Name was arjun gu we are in the backwaters of the arabian sea, and all of a sudden we are invited into this ashram, which is like a synagogue. Anyway. David right, ok. [laughter] marc just to help bring you along. David i got it. Marc helping you come along with me. David got it. Marc so we are in the ashram. In this part of india, all the gurus are women. This woman is now lecturing us on spirituality and so forth, and all of a sudden he takes out his business plan, and goes , well, let me tell you about what im going to do. He starts giving her she is really interested. Wireless is coming, and we are going to connect the world, and mobile devices are coming. We are there. This is 1996. So then she is listening really clearly, and im like, i think shes going to invest. [laughter] thishen all, she says really powerful thing, which is she saying it to him, but she is looking right at me in my eyes and goes, in your quest to change the world, dont forget to do something for other people. And that was a moment in time when i said, wow, when i start a company, im going to make sure that philanthropy and giving and generosity and these values are in the culture of the company from day one. Then when i started the company in march 8, 1999, i rented the apartment next door to me in san francisco, hired a few people, moved in, and said were going to do these three things, and one of them was to make sure we made a business we felt great at being there every single day. David ok. Thats pretty impressive. Did you think when you started [applause] marc thank you, david. David did you think when you started it that it would get anywhere . You were starting in an apartment. Did you have any capital . Where did you get your capital . Marc i thought we would go right to 130 billion market cap. [laughter] no. You dont really know whats going to happen. We have a lot of amazing executives and entrepreneurs in this room. Some of whom i am looking at right here. You dont really know whats going to happen. I remember the day very well. I wrote down a bunch of notes that one of my cofounders kept. We had a vision for software, we had a vision for crm that i articulated, the 111 model. We wrote all those things down, and then we started to hire people into the model, and it just got going, 21 years ago. Exactly like that. And thats all we did. David you recently, with your wife, bought time magazine. Do you get to pick the person of the year, or do friends call you up . Marc im telling you, i cant do it. I know you want to be. I get it. We shouldnt bring it up here. David maybe next year. Marc david, look, i realize you are a good candidate. I get it. But look, im not involved in editorial. David why did you buy time, by the way . Marc that is a very good question. You know, we actually are looking for ways to have impact and add more trust and impact in the world. One of the things i have always loved about time magazine, really there are four things. One is that it has always been about trust. It is an incredibly impactful business. Theries that are stories that molly and her peers are writing have dramatic impact in the world for good. It is a fantastic magazine, and it is also all about equality. In fact, that idea is it is about trust, impact, equality, thats why we call it time. Time. David that is where you got it from. Wow. Ok. Could you do the same for salesforce. Com . Marc that wouldnt go over very well. It is a tough crowd in washington, d. C. That was actually my better material. [laughter] david did you meet steve jobs and have a relationship with him . Marc i would not be the person i am and salesforce would not be the company it is without steve jobs. David your background was you san francisco. Is that right . Marc i am a fourth generation san franciscan. David you went to high school. Are you an athlete, were you a star student . Marc i was into computers. I was in radioshack in 1979. I found the model one. I went and talked to my grandmother and said i would like to buy one of these things. She said, how much is that . Like, 400. She is like, i will give you 200 if you can make 200. I got a job at the Jewelry Store across the street. 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. I got the computer from her, and i learned how to program. When i was basically 15 years old, i wrote my first piece of software, how to juggle. By the time i got to college, i had written 10 Software Titles and i was making maybe 1500 a month, which in high school is really good. Then im like, this is amazing, and then something crazy happened to me. I am in college at usc, writing my software, whatever, and the super bowl comes on in 1984, and im enjoying the super bowl, and there is this crazy add that this crazy ad that 1984 wont be like 1984. Apple. And im like, maybe i 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 make a big financial commitment, and it didnt work. I called them and talked to the head of evangelism at apple. His name is guy kawasaki, kind of turned into a famous person. I said, you know, im 19 years old. I just put all my life savings into your computer to write software, and it doesnt work, so why dont you explain to me why that is . This was in may of 1984. He was like, why dont you come to work here this summer and help us fix it, because we are having some problems . [laughter] i was like, what was that . Hes like, we will hire you as an intern into apple. Im like, ok, where are you . Well, he is in cupertino, a 15 minute drive, actually right next to my fathers store. David did you meet steve jobs and have any relationship with him . Marc i did. I met steve jobs, and 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 would not be the person i am and salesforce would not be the company it is without steve jobs. David now, when salesforce was started, you started a system of having people develop applications, apps, and you had the name of the app store. Can you tell us how that evolved . Marc this was a really weird situation. In 2001, salesforce was 18 months old or something, and i got an invitation to fund something called college track, which was being put together by steve jobs wife. So we ended up doing it. And then there was a dinner afterwards, and i was like, this is going to be some incredible, huge dinner. I go to the dinner, and she had forgotten to make a reservation, and it was packed. So steve is like, im not leaving until a table opens. I wont go into the aspects of his personality, but just know we werent leaving. [laughter] so hes like, you want to see something cool . Im like, yeah. So he takes something out of his back pocket. He said, i just introduced this last week. It is the ipod. And he had an ipod. And im like, that is pretty cool. I have 1000 songs my pocket. What do you think about that . Im like, i like it. [laughter] hes like, you can turn it like this, click this. That is really cool. Then i said to him, you know, kind of like a computer. You can probably build a little application there and that screen could be color. You could probably have movies. It probably wouldnt be that hard. It would be really awesome. He goes, we will never do that. Thats the dumbest idea ive ever heard. [laughter] so then we have this nice, long dinner that goes on for hours. At the end, he says, you need some help running salesforce . I go, well, maybe. He goes, if you really need help, you better come see me in my office and i will help you. So then i kind of got my courage up, and we went down there and i took my two cofounders with me. We were demoing salesforce and he goes, this is [beep]. He is like, you know what . There are three things you better do, and you better do it better do, and you better do it right now. And im like, ok, what are they . Number one, you better get the biggest customer you possibly can get, somebody like avon. Avon it was. I really neednow, you to understand this. You are going to be 10 times larger in 24 months or it is over for you. Do you understand what im saying . Yes, sir. 10 times larger in 24 months. And one last thing. Yes . You need to build an application economy. What does that mean . I dont know. But you better go figure it out. [laughter] and i said, thank you very much, and we walked out of the building and got in our car and drove home, and my cofounders mouths were open. I could not figure out that last one. The first two are easy, but i could not figure it out. Then i had a dream where i saw that we could have an application marketplace where other developers could maybe build on our platform and insert things in it, and we could have a catalog of things, and im like, this is like an app store. I called up our lawyer at the time and i registered the trademark app store. Then what happened was, we got a call. Steve jobs wants us to come down for a major announcement on the apple campus. So then we are down there in a big apple auditorium, and it is a big production. The videos are going, and steve walks out in his jeans and black tshirt and the whole thing, and he says, ladies and gentlemen, im here to announce my greatest invention of all time. App store. [laughter] and my employees who were sitting around me, you could hear them have an audible gasp. The production went on, and at the end, the auditorium emptied out and steve was at the stage at the bottom. He said, im going to give you a gift. Well, what gift can you give me . I said im going to give you the , trademark for app store and the url for no charge, because thank you for everything youve done for me. He goes, well, you know it is not going to be anything. You know that app store is never really gonna work out, right . It is not going to be that big. [laughter] david recently you said facebook is like cigarettes. What do you mean by that . Marc it is. Facebook is the new cigarettes. It is bad for you. It is addictive. They should be regulated very aggressively. David recently, you have been very involved in things other than running salesforce. Com. Salesforce. Com has done very, very well, but you have been a leader in certain issues. For example, when indiana decided to change its laws related to lesbians, bisexuals, gays, and so forth, you did something about that. What did you do, and why were you so concerned about it . Marc we are not just the largest employer and largest tech company in san francisco, we are the largest tech company in indiana and indianapolis. If you go to indianapolis, you will see a gorgeous salesforce tower. Call me ahead of time. Unbelievable view. And my employees call me and go, well, we have a problem. And im kind of listening to them, and it just feels inside they are right. Im like, dont worry. Mike pence is never going to sign a law discriminating against gays. I met him. He is great. Well david he did. Marc he did. And i was really surprised. And maybe a little upset. And i tweeted, well, this is going to force us, if indiana is going to discriminate against our lgbtq employees, then we are going to disinvest in indiana. Because how am i going to bring my customers there, my employees there, and how am i going to hire and make a Great Tech Company there if they are discriminating against lgbtq employees and customers and everybody else . And that opened a door. By the next day, every other company like cummins, eli lilly, in indiana, and hundreds of other companies, Even Companies all over the world said, we agree with marc. We are also going to disinvest. Mike pence called me and said, well, what are we going to do . Im like, i think we are going to have to issue rolling economic sanctions against the state of indiana. [laughter] and he is like, well what does that mean . I am like, i dont know, but i think its going to be bad. Hes like, well, what should we do . Im like why dont we resolve this . We know each other. This is not that hard. And in fact, i sent two of my employees to his office. Within a couple of days it was worked out. He changed the law, and it was all behind us. By the way, i think that is how it should work anyway. It was very easy. [applause] david you did a similar thing not long ago when, in san francisco, there was a tax 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 are against it. You said, we are supporting it, you lobby for it and it actually got passed. Why did you get so involved . Marc we have been working for years to do Homeless Services and private philanthropy. Some have been very successful. We have been able to move hundreds of families off the streets, but we have 8000 Homeless People on the streets of san francisco. So, i can see we need a lot more money. All of a sudden, a group of people who are the top homeless advocates and the most brilliant people in homelessness, including the university of california san francisco, scientists, medical doctors, they come up with something called prop c. That is to direct a certain amount of money to the homeless. But it is a tax on business, 0. 5 of revenue, but only for the top 50 companies. The top three you may have heard of, salesforce, facebook, and google. We can afford it. So i said, lets support it. When i did that, that was like heresy. People could not believe the ceo would support a tax. And fact, some ceos of other Tech Companies got really upset with me, very upset with me, and it became a nightmare for me, where all of a sudden im on the front page of the new york times, where it is benioff versus this ceo and so forth. And im like, this is a very small amount of money and we are making billions, like you mentioned, 130 billion. We can take a tiny amount and help clean up our city. This is what we are doing in business. We can have a great shareholder return, and we can have a great stakeholder return. We can do both. David recently you said facebook is cigarettes. What do you mean by that . Marc well, it is. Facebook is the new cigarettes. It is bad for you. It is addictive. They run they do advertising thats not true. There is, you know, they should be regulated very aggressively. David have you heard from Mark Zuckerberg . Marc sure. Ive talked to him. Ive talked to his management team. What i say is, trust has to be your highest priority. If trust is not your highest priority, and if youre not thinking about your stakeholders and only focused on money, what kind of business are you building . 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 are very careful about that. They have ai. It is advanced. There are other things they allow where they could look for truth, where they could work to have great integrity and make sure everything is accurate and clear. They dont do that. And that, i think, is a problem that needs to be directly addressed. David as a result of your success at salesforce and other things, you have 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 . Marc i will never be a politician. I will never run for office. I wouldnt know how to run for office. I dont think i i could not see how i could do that. I like to go to hawaii, like where steve is, enjoying myself. That doesnt work with that model. [laughter] i think business is the greatest platform for change. I think that what i am doing, i can have more impact doing what im doing with 45,000 employees and all my partners, my trail blazers all over the world and say, we can do it. We can change the world. Because, by the way, if you and i dont change the world, no one else is going to. We have to repair the world. We have to improve the world. We are on the board of the World Economic forum together. We are trustees of the World Economic forum. Our tagline is, committed to improving the state of the world. Isnt that everyones tagline . That is why we are here. Thats why we are on this planet, is to improve the state of the world. We are not here just to make money. We are not just here to manipulate other people or get our way. We are here to improve the world and to love each other. That is what it is all about. David what did you do to make bank of america the Largest Consumer bank in the United States . To pair the company back to what made it great. Marc you had a call david you article amended Warren Buffett . Warren called us. President avid if the of the United States and said the country needs you, you would say brian call mr. Rubenstein. Would you fix your tie . David