20VC: Marc Benioff on The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge? Marc Benioff's Five Step Process to Priorities and Why Money Does Not Make You Happy & Work From Home vs In-Person; How to Manage in Changing Worlds

0:00We must enforce our laws. I don't think it's a lot to ask. We have to fund our police force. From the time that Gavin Newsom was mayor to today, we've gone from a little over 2 ,000 cops on the streets of San Francisco now to about 1400. That's completely unacceptable and we need to now expand our police force. It's the most beautiful city in the world and the safest and the cleanest and the dim -lab narrative which is that there's like a some doom going on. They're to persistence. I've wanted to have Mark Benioff on the show for the last 8 years or 3 ,000 episodes. I called emailed him different cold emails 53 different times, A .B testing different effectiveness levels.

0:41Finally, we made it happen. So for those that want to give up, for those that do not think they will make it, just take the next step. So without further ado, I'm so, so proud and very honoured to welcome Mark Benioff, founder and CEO at Salesforce. But before we In the show's day, this episode is brought to you by Tegas, the go -to research destination for bold investing. Tegas curates, expert in -size analysis and financial data to give you powerful perspective for your investment decisions. With lightning fast access to over 60 ,000 transcripts across 20 ,000 companies, you'll discover a wealth of unique insights to fuel your fundamental research, gain perspectives, synthesize information, and even model outcomes all on TIGAS.

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2:56So you have built in security training, vendor and risk management and more to make compliance uncomplicated. SecureFriends makes it fast and easy to achieve and maintain compliance so you can focus on serving your customers, automate your security and privacy compliance with secure frame and you can schedule a demo today at SecureFrame .com. Mark, I have been looking forward to this one for a long, long time first. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's always great to see you, Harry. Thanks for having me on your show. Not at all. I'm very much looking forward to this. I want to start. We had Dreamforce last week.

3:30I want to start with a broad question. But tell me about your vision for AI. How do you see AI from this point forward? But, well, I mean, we're going through an unbelievably great and exciting time for AI. I have to be honest with you, I thought this moment was going to happen about 10 years ago. I had a bit of an existential freak out myself at that moment and ended up making a lot of major investments for Salesforce in AI, building our teams, acquiring a number of exciting companies, and then we built our Einstein platform. And that's kind of how we became the number one enterprise AI today.

4:03We're moving obviously in everyone knows the new version of AI which is beyond predictive in the generative. And then we've got another big wave coming very very close which is going to be autonomous in agents. And then of course we'll get to AGI. And I think that these four waves are all happening in a way simultaneously in a way that I think far exceed my expectation. When you sit in the Salesforce ballroom, what are the reasons that Salesforce force wouldn't wing the next five to 10 years for AI. What are the hurdles you have to overcome? Well, we are in a remarkably good position. Number one, because we're in San Francisco, which is the number one AI city in the world.

4:41That's where all the talent is and all the great startups and companies. It gives us a leg up on the ability to invest in these companies, but also to tap into the universities like Berkeley and Stanford, which have had such huge impacts on the AI world. So the other great thing about Salesforce is the nature of our product is a week command a lot of data. So we don't look at our customers data, but we built our AI in fact, we were really the first AI that was built where it was able to operate on the data without us seeing the data. And that's really the magic of Einstein is that Einstein operates with a complete trust layer.

5:16Many people suggested that you mentioned SF being the center that many people suggested that you're in Hawaii. How do you respond to them? Is that fair? Is that not fair? Are they missing something? I've always lived half and half back and forth. I've just loved both places and I'm fortunate that I can go back and forth. It's a short flight. Last week, you know, I was in San Francisco all week. This week I'm in Hawaii. Next week I'll be back in San Francisco. And so it goes. Usually I'm with customers. That's my number one place where I'm living. You know, people to say something like that maybe they look at my life as being how they operate their life, but my life is not static.

5:55It's a quite a dynamic moment and every costelling on the move. You mentioned SF being at the sense of that. If you're in charge of San Francisco today, what would you do? The thing that I've noticed, especially on social media about San Francisco is that there's a, and this has always been true about San Francisco, is that there tends to be a bit of a political group who is trying to jockey for a certain level of power in the city and by doing that they kind of position San Francisco in a certain way which is not true. If you look at any of the interviews that I did with Matthew McConaughey or with Gavin Newsom or with Sam Altman, you'll see I asked the audience constantly how many of you are seeing it totally clean San Francisco.

6:36You'll see all the hands going up on independent press interviews that are done. You'll see reporters asking that if people walking around the city. Part of that is there's this whole thing that they've created this concept of this a doom loop narrative. And the dim loop narrative which is that there's like the sum doom loop going on. And Harry, you and I should come into San Francisco to walk around and I assure you you will not say that it is a doom loop. And in fact, to that point, real estate is on fire. We just sublies to quarter million square feet of space in one of our buildings to former slack headquarters to a company that didn't exist a year ago.

7:12And I think that San Francisco real estate will certainly be sold out again because of the huge amount of startups that are happening in San Francisco, but because of this kind of political group that has like trying to commandeer social media for a lot of different reasons to eliminate taxes to this to that fairity of San Francisco. By the way, we can go into that. While that is true I'm not sure but it's always been true in San Francisco that you end up with a group of people like this. So what would you do if you're in charge? I have a 10 point plan I could walk you through or I'll set it to you Harry it'll be much easier and it goes true in detail exactly what I would do and it's something that I evangelized with all these folks we must enforce our laws I don't think it's a lot to ask we have to fund our police force that we have a great police force in San Francisco But from the time that Gavin Newsom was mayor to today, we've gone from a little over 2 ,000 cops on the streets in San Francisco now to about 14 under it.

8:09That's completely unacceptable and we need to now expand our police force. It's the most beautiful city in the world and the safest and the cleanest and we have the statistics to prove it. But sometimes it doesn't deliver the goods every single day and it's kind of a funny thing about San Francisco. But it's also one reason I love it so much. You met a shun makin' with kona hee there. People don't know this. I run every single day and I listen to his commencement speech on the 13 trudes. I find it actually centers me, fuck meditation, that's what I need. And he says one thing, he says, LOWEAS of many things, but he says, life is not easy.

8:42Most things are more rewarding when you have to break a sweat to get them. And I was listening to this and I was like, I wonder what Mark would say to that when I ask him when you reflect on the immense success of Salesforce? What comes to your mind when you think about breaking a sweat to get it? Well, he's one of my closest friends and we spend a huge amount of time together and I'll just tell you that you know What he says is don't have acid and that really comes from his dad this family is a family of people know who they get it done That's why I think he'd be very good a mayor or governor or even a president because he's a get it done person When he was working on his book, you like I'm gonna write a top book I said Matthew you're gonna write the number one book and then he became the number one book He like completely goes for it and it's incredible how he lives his life.

9:27He's an amazing person. He's a father. He's a son. He is a CEO. He is a philanthropist. He is an actor. He is a writer. What it gets right down to it. He's an incredible person in all these things because he believes that he am do all these things. He will do all these things that he must do all these things and he does and it's an incredible thing to watch. I've never really met anybody like him in my life. When you think about a sales source journey, what was the thing you have to break his sweatfall, how did that feel? You know, inspired by people like Matthew, I feel like I need to continue to work harder, do more, go pull up more places.

10:00Obviously, dream force is going to be a success, well, like it was last week. I'm going to have to be there, be a huge participant, and that's true in a lot of things that I do all over the world. So you got to go there and make it happen. I have to ask, when you were young, did you always have an inevitableness you have success about me? Did you know that you would be successful? I don't look at it as success. So maybe that's part of it. You know, when I was young, and I worked very closely with my partner from my high school software company as one of our primary engineering leaders in architects, Steve Fisher.

10:30And when we started our software company in high school, we were both about 14, 15 years old. And we were writing software on Tari 800 and Commodore 64 and Apple too. And it was an amazing time because nobody knew what we were doing or building these entertainment software products and different titles and cartridges. And the thing that's cool about all that is that you know when we were doing all that we were just entering the software industry We're just doing because we love software. That's what I love I love talking about seeing software evolve go forward. We talked about AI And also the other thing that I love philanthropy and giving back and giving back to San Francisco You know, we're the Salesforce the largest philanthropy business ever Cisco We've given more than a hundred million dollars to the public schools more than a hundred million dollars to the public hospitals That's a lot about giving back not to mention a lot of other NGOs and nonprofits in the city and all of the incredible mentoring Tutoran and volunteerism are employees do those are the two things that I love I guess software and philanthropy and that's the the in and in my life that go back and forth that I do agree.

11:33I just have to ask, when you think about the array of different options you always have that you're disposed of, you mentioned different frontiers of AI, the different ways you can spend your time, how do you analyze your decision making framework today, and has it changed at the time? How old are you now, Harry? 27. 27. So when I was 27 and Oracle, I was already a vice president, I was actually just become about it, senior vice president, and I was inexperienced and I didn't have a lot of leadership skills. and I was working for an incredible CEO, Larry Ellison, he was awesome. And what I learned rapidly was I needed more skills, more capabilities, so I started to do a lot of personal development.

12:09There was no leadership training at Oracle. Oracle's leadership training was trial life fight. I was lucky to be able to hold my own because I was an engineer, but I also had business background, sales background, marketing background. So I started taking a lot of courses and a lot of personal development courses, and I'd be working in Oracle and it would not be a shock to find me in a Tony Robbins seminar, Steven Covey seminar, Deepak Joe Prick seminar. All of a sudden I had this breakthrough thought, which was there were five questions that I needed to answer before I started any project. Because I am an ADHD person, maybe one of the first that I knew, it was hard for me to focus and get around a certain project.

12:50I wasn't ready to take any of the ADHD meds so I came up with something else. The something else was called V2Mont. It was five questions that let me really focus on my company, myself, a product, a customer, and the first thing I do before I do anything is number one, I say, what do I really want? You know, like we just had Dreamforce. I want to have the biggest and best Dreamforce ever. And as part of that, I want to totally save San Francisco. I want to release Salesforce's incredible new AI product lines. Number one is, we want to have the number one AI CRM. Nothing is more important than that right now for Salesforce.

13:23Number two, we do want to have the best dream for us ever. And number three is we want to have an incredible San Francisco. So let's get clear about our vision. Now what's the most important value associated with those three things since gotta be trust? Customers are coming to San Francisco. They want to learn about our new Einstein one platform, which is our amazing new AI platform that has not just our core applications, but our Einstein and our new data cloud all integrated as one metadata platform. That's critical. Well, there's nothing more important than that. They're gonna have to trust it, they're gonna have to find the success in that, they're gonna have to find the innovation in that.

14:00But they're also gonna have to find the safety of the Units Airwarsisco as well. If they don't have safety or they don't feel safe on the streets, we can't do Dreamforce we're not able to communicate all these things. So we need to get clear about what are our core values that are really gonna guide Dreamforce last week. Trust, safety, innovation, customer success. By the way, it was the most sustainable dream for us ever, sustainability, equality, to make sure everyone is treated well We've learned a lot at doing more than 20 dream forces about how we have to deal with every stakeholder group So what do I want?

14:31What's important about it? How do I get it? What is preventing me from having it? And how do I know that I have it? And those five questions really are guiding me. That's my V2 mom process You mentioned that priorities. It's a thing to my theme for me. This tool was part kind of the different checks and balances in his life where he has work, he has his bars, he has the being a good father, being a good friend, and you know, his career. Can you take me to a time like your priorities have been out of whack? Something's going wrong with that, and what you've learned from it. Well, my priorities are constantly on the fact.

15:02So, you know, my priorities are like my spiritual health and well -being, my physical health, my family, my friends, my business, my ability to give back. It's a dance, you know, when you have a dynamic life, I think it's a dance because different things are coming at you. It's the constant battle between the urgent and the important when 1992. I started to really take meditation classes at work with people. That also has really kept me, you know, going down the straight and narrow and keep my head in the game and also to really constantly consider the questions that you're asking me. What is important and what do I really want and what is the prioritization and is it in balance or is it out of balance?

15:42That's been an incredible part of my life. I'm so happy to have that as well. You mentioned valleys. I know it was a fan book clearly. Mac and me, Gronnie says, we've financialized our valleys into society so much in his speech. I had no it for word for word after about 4 ,000 years, but my question to you is, Mark, how do you reflect on your relationship to money staying? Does money make one happy? Well, money's never going to make you happy, and I guess that's one of the reasons that I'm so into philanthropy. I've given away more than a billion dollars to all kinds of organizations, mostly in San Francisco, mostly our university, mostly UCSF, I built two children's hospitals, I built an ocean program, I've done all kinds of things, wherever I go or where I live, I make sure that I'm always giving back its scale to the community.

16:27Personally, I feel that too much is given, much is required. I wanna build a great company, but I also wanna give back. Now I wanna tell you why that's selfish, because it gets to your point. I'm not gonna be happy unless I'm giving. I've interviewed maybe 50 billionaires. The single biggest challenge that they have is how do you bring up children with the same tenacity hunger work ethic when brought up in very different financial environments. The University of Cross -Tabored, I had generalised it before this 48 out of 50, said that was the biggest challenge. How would you say you do it? How do you bring children up to have that same longer and tenacity in very different financial environments?

17:02Math and McConaughey probably is a set of bass and his books, which is, you know, you have to pay attention to, are you spending time as a parent? Are you spending time? I'll say as a son, my mother also is still alive. So in many ways I'm also still very much her child. And I'm sorry last week she was at San Francisco. People come to dream for a seat or she's in all of my programs. It's probably a better question for her. She's obviously still working on me. Fortunately, this some of these questions about happiness aren't things that I have to wrestle with because I was able to cross those bridges so many decades.

17:37If you could cool yourself up the night before you had your first child and say, Mark, you should know this and give yourself some advice. What would that advice be? I think the number one thing that everyone needs to do is enjoy every moment. And I'll say to people the same thing and maybe it'll help you. Tell me, what are 10 things that make you very happy? Now let's make a list of 10 things that make you not so happy. Now let's look at these two lists. How about doing a little bit more of what makes you happy? and a little bit less of what makes you unhappy. Everybody knows what makes them happy and what makes them unhappy, but I think they have to have the permission to do less unhappiness and more happiness.

18:14And I think then you will be obviously happier if you're doing things that are making you happy. I'm going and not fuck it. It's the very end of the end of the year case, I why not. Something that makes you happy for the millennial generation maybe I'm gonna get in trouble first, is working from home. My team wanna work from home, I want them in the office. How do you feel about the, What if it's what from home that makes you happy and how do we feel about the reversion back to work in office? Well, I think for different kind of workers, it's different and I think like start with our engineers our engineers Only have to come in the office ten days of work You know for our engineers we want them to come together to collaborate and hang out and to get to know each other But they're very productive at home.

18:53I work mostly at home I have for my entire life I just never bailed it work well. It'd be successful in an office because I can't tell you why. Today, I think there's a balance between working at home and working in person. I need to be with my customers all the time. Now that could be digital, like I was just with a customer before we had this conversation. And I'm in my Zoom room here and I'm like hanging out today. And last week I was with thousands of customers. And it has to be a balance of being in person and digital today. I think for everybody, it has to be a little bit different. I think that for our sales and marketing people, Well, we tell them that four days a week, we want to see them in person with a customer.

19:32For our sales and for our marketing people, and our G &A people, we like to see them in person three days a week. Obviously I'm in an office right now. I'm not really at home. I have my chief of staff and other employees here working on various things of my future. As Fuz Just here, we're doing a variety of things. I think there's a lot of benefits to be at home. I think there's a lot of benefits to being in person. And I think there's a lot of benefits to being with customers. I think you have to do all those things. Listen, I want to move into a quick fire round. So I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts.

20:02Does that sound okay? Sure, absolutely. Harry, has anything been off? I said that so far. Mark, I have to get into your team. And so I'm kind of like battling with a shit. Harry, I told you everything's on the table. And you shouldn't listen to my team. That was never part of any deal we had. What is great fatherhood mean to you? You know, I look at my mom and I look at my dad. And my dad was just one of the greatest people. and I just am so fortunate. He passed away when he was 83. That was about 11 years ago. He died of prostate cancer. It's one of the research that I fund. One of the largest prostate cancer research programs in the world at UCSF.

20:37My mom also, and as a cancer survivor, she said, he answered four times. Breast cancer twice lung cancer, kidney cancer, L and skin cancer. That's one of the reasons why I fund an oncology and breast cancer as well. I think about my dad, I think about incredible ice he add. That's my role model. So that's what great father That is. Well, it's the biggest insecurity today. I guess trying to do it all, you know I do try to get as I kind of said before making an happen. I've got that math you look on a Motion where I'm trying to do it all being that every bring that every you know every season every man the renaissance It's not easy.

21:14You try to do it all. It's not always working but sometimes it is, when it is, there's nothing better. So it's a lot about, like you said before, staying in balance and keeping things in the right prairie. What do you believe that fear around you believe? I believe I'm height, I'm guided, and you know, that I'm part of something much larger, whether it's the universe, whether it's God, whether it's something on a spiritual basis. I feel that spirituality remains a major part of everything I do last night before I went home. I did, you know, an hour of meditation and prayer. You could have dinner with anyone.

21:45that are alive. Who would it be? Am I them? Abraham is like the centerpiece of this week. It's the start of the world And I would say that that is someone you I would really like to have a long conversation with I think that we need more Understanding from him to kind of come back together and unify our divisions in the world That's somebody who I would like to have a meal with if I could that was an amazing thing You gave me permission, so I'm going for it. Elon was up Who would win in the cage match? I would say I know Elon much more than I know, Mark. And it seems like Mark is training really exhaustively.

22:22And I think Elon has that won't go into it, because it's not appropriate medical conditions that would prevent him from winning any kind of match. Hypical day for you as much as you can. So maybe make it in Hawaii, where maybe it's more standard. But what does not many of you stay look like as much as you can standardize it? I get out. I like to start my day with meditation and prayer. I like to have breakfast, do my email and text and then get going and it's not unusual for me to meet with customers Like I did before this be with my family and also, you know my mother still lives with me And so that's an incredible part of my life all of that is kind of how it kind of comes together every day It goes pretty fast.

23:00Oh, there's a workout in there as well usually I try to get in the gym Why do you think you still need to improve as a leader? I just love innovating and love creating and love growth more than anything I sometimes sacrifice things to grow. The company to grow innovation to do new things. I love creativity. And so my team's job is to kind of keep me in the zone to bring me back so that we always have solid balance financials like we've had. For example, the last three quarters, especially at Salesforce because that's where I really want to have my head and where the world is going. me not either where we are or where where we've been.

23:39I think it'll be the biggest highlight moment from the Salesforce journey. We were like, I remember that moment when I did this, the first dream force, the first customer, the bringing your mother to the first dream force. It was really last week when I got on stage and I did one slide that said, Salesforce is now San Francisco's largest philanthropist and we've given more than $100 million to the Children's Hospital and more than $150 million to the public schools. I wasn't sure it was really possible. Probably the best decision we made was when we started Salesforce 25 years ago, we put 1 % of our equity, 1 % of our product and all of our employees time, 1 % of our employees time into a foundation.

24:19And it was simple then, Erie, because we had no money, capital, you know, boys. I was felt like if you just could take 1 % of everything and let it scale, that it would be an amazing way to get back. Because while I love building product and I love the end of the 80s and I love creating and I love doing all that I have to say that if that's all you're doing you're not gonna end up with a lot of settlement You're only gonna get to the happiness and so sell minute. It's not only you creating but you're giving You've got to give back and you have to find a way to give back at scale and so many of my friends have you know They they've died and when they've died they left these huge fortunes and then when they've left their family to give back, you know, at that point and that was kind of their motto, well, I'm gonna go until the end and then at the end, that's when my family will have the money and they could do the philanthropy.

25:11What's the hardest part of giving effectively? I was Chinese David Valais and you bang the other day about this on the show. What's the hardest part about actually giving effectively? I think the number one thing that people must do is just start giving and find what works for them affected. I know people who do very effective global philanthropy. That's not me. I've tried a deep global programs. It's very difficult. I have a program called 1t .org, the Trillion Tree program, trying to sequester 200 gigatons of Cardband with a Trillion trees. There's a lot of fulfillment and a lot of fun. While building the AI version of Salesforce is amazing and all the things that are going on, never forget that you're going to ultimately get the most happiness and the most fulfillment is not just setting your intention for a great company of great products, but something that's going to give back and impact the world in a positive way.