comparemela.com

Alright. Leave it this way. All right. David i do not consider myself a journalist. No one 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 who are not familiar with it. There may be a few. You started the company in 1999 and today it has a market value of 130 billion. If you bought the stock at the beginning, you would be up to 7000 . Marc 3500 , but who is counting . You are better investor. David i dont know about that. Marc we have had a very good shareholder return and a good stakeholder return. We have also been able to give away 300 million. We have done 400 million hours of volunteerism. David for those who are not knowledgeable about what salesforce. Coms Main Business is what does it do . , marc it is a Software Company. If you go to adidas. Com and buy some adidas shoes, some yeezys from kanye west, then you get an email from adidas and something is wrong with the shoe and you have to Call Customer Service and send it back all of those things, is 100 salesforce on adidas. The sales, the service, the marketing, the email, the commerce. David as i understand it, your company did two things one is what you discussed. Crm Customer Relations management. Your point was that the most important thing in business is to make sure your customers are ok. . Is that right . Marc i think that is generally a good idea. [laughter] david second, your novelty is that you said lets do this through the cloud. When you started this company in 1999, people thought the cloud was a white thing in the sky. You told things it was more than that. Marc 100 . There were three things we said we would do when we started the business. Number one, we are going to build this cloud. Number two, we are going to have a subscription model, not buy a license. That becomes a recurring revenue stream. That was a whole different model different Business Model for software. Third, we said we would put 1 of our profit of our employees , time, 1 of our profits into a 501 c 3 nonprofit. It was easy, we had no equity, no profit, no time. Now we have 45,000 employees and a 130 billion market cap so we have been able to have stakeholder impact. David the premise was you wanted to build a company that was one that employees thought they were having a culture they would be proud of. Is that right . Marc i was working at another Software Company for a decade oracle from 1986. In 1996, i walked into my bosss office, larry ellison, and i told him i didnt feel good. Im having trouble getting up in the morning. He has been a tremendous mentor to me. Im not enjoying my job. He said, you know what you need to do . Take a sabbatical. So i did. I went to hawaii, came back, he said i didnt seem quite right, this was after 90 days and he said take another three months , off. So i went to india. [laughter] david right. Marc i was touring india with a friend of mine who just quit working for george soros and was going to start his own capital arjunture capital company, n gupta, we are in the backwaters of the arabian sea and all of a sudden we are invited into this ashram. It is like a synagogue. [laughter] to help bring you along in the story. Helping you come along with me. [laughter] david i got it. Thats where the lost tribes of israelmarc im helping you. We are in the ashram. In this part of india, all the gurus are women. They are lecturing us on spirituality. Suddenly, arjun takes out his business plan. And says let me tell you what im going to do with telesoft partners. He starts getting her and she is really interested. Wireless is coming and we are going to connect the world, mobile devices are coming. This is 1996. And we are there. She is listening really clearly and i think, i think she is going to invest. [laughter] sudden, she of a says this powerful thing which is she says it to him, but she , is looking right at me in my eyes. She says, on your quest to change the world, do not forget to do something for other people. And that was the moment in time when i said wow, when i start a company, i want to make sure philanthropy and giving and generosity and these values are in the culture of the company from day one. And then when i started the company i rented the apartment , march 8, 1999, next door to me in San Francisco, hired a few people, moved in and i said to all of them, we are going to do these three things. One of them was to make sure we made a business where we felt great being there every day. [applause] david ok, that is pretty impressive. Did you ever think when you started it that it would get anywhere . You started in an apartment. Did you have a lot of capital . Where did you get your capital . Marc i thought we would go right to 130 billion in market cap. [laughter] no. We had a vision for the software, for crm that i had articulated. I wrote down a bunch of notes my cofounders cap and we had a vision for software. The 111ision for model. We wrote all of those things down and then we started to hire people into the model and it just got going 21 years ago just exactly like that. That is all we did. David you recently with your wife bought Time Magazine. Do you get to pick who is the person of the year . Or do friends call you up and say, pick me . Marc i i cannot do it. Am telling you i cannot do it. , i know you want to be. We should not bring it up here. David, look, i realize you are a good candidate. I get it. Look i am not involved in editorials. , david why did you buy time by the way . Marc thats a very good question. We actually are looking for ways to have impact and to add more trust and impact in the world. And one of the things i have always loved about Time Magazine there are four things. One is it has always been about trust. It is an incredibly impactful business. The stories that not only molly but her peers are writing have a dramatic impact in the world for good. It is a fantastic magazine. And it is also all about equality. In fact that idea that it is , about trust, impact, equality is a magazine about equality , that is why we call it time. Time. David did you meet steve jobs . Marc that to not go over really well, tough crowd in washington, d. C. Marc salesforce would not be the company that it is without steve jobs. David you grew up in San Francisco, is that right . Marc i am a fourthgeneration san franciscan. David you want to high school. Where you an athlete . Were you a star student . Marc i was into computers. I was in radioshack in 1979. The trs 80 model one. I talked to my grandmother, and i said i would like to buy one of these. She asked how much is it . I told her it was 400. She said she would give me 200 if i could make the other 200. I made the 200 and got the computer from her. I got a job. I was cleaning jewelry cases. I got fired. I did a terrible job. I wrote my first piece of software. When i was 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 1500 an month, which for high school is really good. So then im like, this is amazing. Then, something crazy happened to me. I am in college at usc, the super bowl comes on in 1984, i am enjoying the super bowl and there is this crazy ad. 1984 wont be like 1984. And this apple. And im like, i thought maybe i would have to do this macintosh. So i bought the macintosh computer and set it up just like they did. As a software developer, i ended up having to make a big financial commitment and it did not work. I called them and talked to the head of evangelism, at apple guy kawasaki. He turned into i said i am 19 a famous person. And years old, i put all my life savings into your computer to write software and does not work. Why dont you explain to me why that is . This was in may of 1984. And he said to me, why dont you come to work for us this summer and fix it because we are having some problems. [laughter] i was like what . [laughter] he said we are going to hire you as an intern into apple. Im like ok where are you . Cupertino. Well, he is in it is a 15 minute drive right next to my family , store. David did you meet steve jobs . Marc 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. I would not be the person i am and salesforce would not be the company it is, without steve jobs. David you started a system of having people develop applications and you had the name of the app store can you tell how that evolved . Marc this was a weird situation. In 2001, salesforce was 18 months old. I got an invitation to fund something called college track, which was being put together by steve jobs wife. We did it. There was dinner afterwards and i thought this is going to be an incredible, huge dinner. I go to the dinner and lorene had forgotten to make a reservation and it was packed so steve said, i am not leaving until a table opens. I wont go into the aspects of his personality, but just know we were not leaving. [laughter] so, he said, do you want to see something cool . Well, yeah. He takes something out of his back pocket and says, i just finished this last week. It is an ipod. And im like pretty cool. , i have 1000 songs in my pocket what you think about that . I said, i like it [laughter] and he said you can turn it like this. And you click this. That is really cool. And then, i said to him you know, it is kind of like a computer. You could build an application on the screen could be color and you could probably have movies. It would be probably not that hard. It would be really awesome. And he said that is the dumbest idea ive ever heard. We will never do that. [laughter] we have this nice dinner that goes on for hours. At the end he says, do you need some help running salesforce . I said, maybe. He said, if you need help, see me in my office and i will help you. So then, i got my courage up and we went down there and i cofounders with me. Took my cofounders with me. Two we demod salesforce and he said this is. And he says you know what, there are three things you 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, somebody like avon. Avon it was. Now, i wanthe said you to really understand this. You are going to be 10 times larger in 24 months or it is over for you. You understand what i am do saying . Yes sir. 10 times larger in 24 months and one last thing build an application economy. What does that mean . I dont know. Figure it out. [laughter] and i said thank you very much and we walked out of the building and got in the car and drove home and my cofounders mouths were open. I could not figure out the last. The first two are easy. I cannot figure it out. Then i kind of had a dream where i saw we could have, in our application, a marketplace where , other developers could 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 and time and i registered the trademark app store. And 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 and we , are in this big apple auditorium and it is a big production. Videos are going, steve walks and thevideos are going, steve walks out in his jeans and the black shirt and says ladies and gentlemen, i am here to announce my greatest invention of all time app store. [laughter] and my employees who are sitting around me, you could hear them have an audible gasp. The production went on and the whole auditorium emptied out and ends, the whole auditorium emptied out and steve was down at the stage at the bottom. I said, im going to give you a gift. What gift can you give me . Any goes wellwhat gift can you give me . I will give you the trademark , for app store and the url for free. Because, thank you for everything you have done for me. And he goes well, it is not going to be anything, you know the app store is not really going to work out, right . It is not going to be that big. Said, recently you facebook is cigarettes. Marc 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 well but you have been a leader in certain issues. For example when indiana decided , to change its laws regarding lesbians, bisexuals, gays and so forth, you did something. What to do do and why were you so concerned . Marc we are not the largest employer tech company in san and largest francisco, but we are the largest tech company in indiana and indianapolis. If you go to indianapolis you , will see a gorgeous Salesforce Tower in indianapolis. Call me ahead of time. Gorgeous view. My employees call me and say, we have a problem. I am kind of listening to them and it feels inside they are right. Mike pence will never sign a i said dont worrymike pence will never sign a, law against the gays, ive met him. He is great. [laughter] well, he did. I was surprised and upset. I tweeted. Well, this is going to force of if indiana will discriminate , against our lgbtq employees, we are going to disinvest in indiana. How am i going to bring my because customers there and my , employees there and how am i going to hire and make a Great Tech Company there if they are discriminating against lgbtq customers and employees and everyone else . That opened a door. By the next day, every other company like eli lilly, cummins, and hundreds of other companies, Even Companies all over the world said, i agree with marc, we are going to disinvest. Mike pence called me and said what are we going to do . And i said i think we are going to have to issue rolling economic sanctions against the state of indiana. [laughter] what does that mean . And he is like i dont know but , i think it will be bad and hes like, what should we do and im like lets resolve this, we know each other, this is not that hard. I sent two of my employees to and in facti sent two of my employees to his office and , 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 it was crazy. We are against it. You said you lobbied for it and you were supporting it and you lobbied for it and it was actually 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 and we have been able to move hundreds of families off of the streets. We have 8000 homeless on the streets of San Francisco. We need a lot more money. So i can see, so all of a sudden a group of people who are the top homeless advocates, and most brilliant people in homelessness including the , university of california, San Francisco, scientists, medical doctors 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. 5 of revenue but only for the top 50 companies. The top three, salesforce, facebook, google. We can afford it. Lets support it. So i just said, when i did that, that was like, hearsay. People could not believe a ceo would support tax and some ceos of other Tech Companies got really upset with me, very upset with me and it became a kind of a nightmare for me where all of a sudden i got on the front page of the new york times. It is benioff versus the ceos. Where it isit is benioff versus the ceos. This is a very small amount of and im like, 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 do advertising that is not true. They should be regulated very aggressively. David have you heard from Mark Zuckerberg about this . Marc sure. I have talked to him and his Management Team and what i tell him is, trust has to be your highest priority. If trust is not your highest priority and youre not thinking about all your stakeholders and you are only focused on money, then what kind of business are you building . They agree that pornography , for example that pornography should not be on your site so , they have built the technology and it cleanses their site of pornography. They are very careful about that. They have advanced ai. But, there are other things that allow. And were they could look for truth, where they could work to have great integrity. And make sure everything is accurate and clear. They do not do that. And that i think is a problem and it needs to be directly addressed. 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 would never be a politician. I will never run for office. I wouldnt know how to run for office. I do not see how i could do that. I like to go to hawaii and enjoy myself. That doesnt really work with that model. [laughter] i think business is the greatest platform for change. I think what i am doing i can have more impact with 40,000 employees and my trail blazers and all of my partners all over the world and say we can change the world. Because by the way if you and i , do not change the world, no one else is going to. You know, 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 you know improving the state of , the world. Isnt that everyones tagline . That is why we are on this planet. That is why we are here. To improve the state of the world. We are not here just to make money. We are not here to manipulate other people to get our way. We are here to improve the world and to love each other. That is what it is all about. Announcer the following is a paid program. The opinions and views expressed do not reflect those of bloomberg lp, its affiliates or its employees. This is a paid advertisement for legal services. Tony welcome to our program. I am tony nokes and with me is dr. Wendy walsh. Our program is about side effects caused by products and devices, t

© 2024 Vimarsana

comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.