Pivot - BONUS EPISODE: Marc Benioff at Code Conference 2021

Episode Date: October 9, 2021

Kara and Stephanie Ruhle sit down with Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff. Recorded live at Code 2021 in Los Angeles. This interview has been condensed and lightly edited. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of the Bose Corporation. Hi everyone, this is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Today, we've got a bonus episode from our Code Conference. It's my conversation with Salesforce CEO, Mark Benioff. All right. So I'm doing a little better today, although I woke this morning not able to speak. But people keep delivering throat spray to me, and I really appreciate it. None of it's working, but I appreciate it.

None of it's working, but I appreciate it. So I brought on Stephanie Ruhl, who you saw make an appearance yesterday driving people crazy from the audience. So I thought I would bring her on to talk to someone I have interviewed dozens of times on stage here at Code, at the Salesforce Tower, all kinds of places. He's a live wire, is how I think I'll put it. And he's recently been

quite lively. Stephanie, anything to add? Mark Benioff. He's one of the most extraordinary business leaders today who cares about equality, climate, smart, good business, and the way that business should move in the future. He lives it and does it with Salesforce. The question is, how's he going to get other business leaders to do more to actually have an impact? All right, Mark, come out and tell us. I take it off. All right. Hello. Hello.

Hello. How are you doing? I like your slow move, your slow walk to the chair. I would be remiss if I said Mark Benioff is the most annoying person I know because he texted me over and over again. Literally, I had children. I had work. He's like, what's your testing procedure?

What's this? What's this? A lot of the stuff we put in place was due to Mark. So I would give you credit, because even though you're irritating, you were correct. He was irritating that he wanted to keep you alive. What a jerk! Oh, I'm not talking about that. You have young kids at home. I do. And you were right, and we made changes.

We already had a lot in place. But we doubled it. I'm a protester. Are you? What does that mean? It means I'm protest. Okay. Why did you wink at me like that?

Because I... Okay. All right. Because I like you. Okay, good. Good. So let's get started because there's a lot of things to talk about, workplace, work from home, tech in general.

Yeah. And your own business. But let's start recently. I wrote a column in the New York Times about an interview we did in 2018 where you compared Facebook to cigarettes. You've sort of doubled down this week. And at the time, I thought, oh, what is Mark saying now?

You know, he was just trying to be provocative. You talked about it this week also. So I'd love you to sort of update that and why you're doing this and saying this because very few people will do so one of the reasons that we are kind of on that testing thing we did a conference ourself last week dreamforce in san francisco which was exciting to bring dreamforce back to san francisco and it was not 200 000 people but it was you know a thousand two thousand and uh the things that you're doing here,

a lot of these things we also were doing. And so I was just reflecting back some of the process and procedures. Because look, we don't want to send anyone back with an infection, right? We don't want to take somebody who's healthy and send them home because they wanted to come to the code conference or they want to come to Dreamforce.

But they go, their party favor is some virus. So I think that that is important. We all want to get back together, but we want to get back together safely. And that's true in my business too. That is, I want to open my offices, but I want to do it safely. I want to have events like you're having,

beautiful event here you have in the Hilton. I want to do it safely. I have a lot of off sites also where I bring all my executives together,. I want to do it safely. I have a lot of off sites also where I bring all my executives together, but I want to do it safely. And I am even building a huge new ranch, you know, which is going to be like a corporate training center, kind of an about of the old model of GE and Crotonville, if you ever went there, which was kind of, you know, I was in New York, where they, you know, companies used to build these big training centers, which were like these dude ranch type experiences with dorms and all this. And I think we're going to kind of move back into that world

as well, because you're going to need a way to onboard people culturally. And you're going to need new ways to do that, you know, for big companies like ours. So when you look at all of those things, you know, working at home or working at an event or working at an offsite, how do you bring it all together safely? And I think that it's connected because it's all about trust. You know, we're in a crisis of trust worldwide. It's in many dimensions, you know, it's the pandemic, You know, it's the pandemic. It's equality. It's the digital revolution. It's the climate. And this kind of crisis of trust is kind of out there. And we need to kind of decide, you know, what side of the equation we are on that. And that's really what's on my mind. And that's what's related to it. All right. But I asked you a specific question.

I know. I gave you actually the answer, which was because it's about trust. And it's really when I see the opportunity to, look, you're either a trusted enterprise or you're not a trusted enterprise. You're either trusted in business or you're not. This has been your narrative, by the way, for a long time. And you use the word, your code word is responsibility. Yes. that's where you clue in and you know it's the same thing which is when we look at all these things and by the way that's how I could get to you you know I knew you were gonna go testing because I said what's your responsibility and then you're like oh yeah I remember oh yeah of course I'm gonna do the right thing so that's where it is important and I think in business or in social media for example because

we're have a digital revolution. So the mistrust and misinformation that we see, and Stephanie was telling me issues, you know, that she is aware of in her world. And the reality is, is that it's related to what we're going through. Because in the pandemic, in the climate, and in the political environment, these digital revolution that we've been talking about here at the Code Conference, it, you know. Go for it. It, right? Yeah.

It is related. Because in those things, in digital revolution, it wraps into those other three categories very aggressively. And if you don't have trust, it can very painful and I think we see that but are you making trust what's going on but are you making trust responsible for too much stuff right so as it relates to social media if it's are you a trusted enterprise are you trying to do the right thing right like we try to get our kids to do the right thing but what we really do at the end of the day is set rules and unless more rules are put in place can you get critical mass big We try to get our kids to do the right thing, but what we really do at the end of the day is set rules.

And unless more rules are put in place, can you get critical mass, big, important businesses to actually start doing the right thing? Unless they're forced to regulate. You're right in that it's about values. You have to decide. Look, you're the CEO of a company and you're a journalist even, right? Whatever industry you're in, what is your high corporate value? You know, we talked about this when we were together in 2016. I watched the interview to get ready.

Oh God, you know, because you're, it's hard to like be interviewed you because you run at such a high clip. And I'm like, I got to dial into this vibe. And I'm like, whoa, like buckle up and hold on because Kara's going to take you on the roller coaster. I'm about to pounce, but go ahead. Yeah.

I know. And that's where it's like really important that we're able to say trust is our highest value. You know, Salesforce is about trust. It's about customer success. It's about innovation. It's about equality. It's about sustainability. And if you're not able to really say what your high values are, and like when we talk

about, you did by saying you're a tester, for example, trust and safety are connected. Those are high values that if you can't say you're about trust and safety. Let me ask you why you are so articulate about it, especially around Facebook when you did that. You had to know the impact. Someone after that, to me, called you a class traitor. Yeah. Which was class traitor. I was like, you're an idiot, but fine. I was like, oh, interesting. And someone else said you broke, joking, Scott Galloway said,

you broke the code of the white guy. I love Scott. Yeah. So why do you do that? Did you understand the implications? And what do you think now? I know why I did it, but Brad, who you know, he doesn't want me to say why. But I do. Okay, well, I'll tell you why. All right, good. I will tell you why. Excellent. But just, Brad, just hold your ears. This is a dark story, but, you know, I grew up in a family of kind of justice warriors. And one of the leader was my grandfather. He was an incredible attorney. And it was an amazing time in San Francisco. And he was kind of an incredible, he was also a supervisor, where you could be a supervisor and attorney at the same time, which you can't do today.

And he had a lot of unusual lawsuits. But one of the lawsuits that he had was a young girl who was nine was raped on the beach, Baker Beach in San Francisco. Her name was Olivia Nimi. And she was, several of her friends went to the beach and raped her with a beer bottle. And it was a horrible thing in Baker Beach. And the night before, a couple nights before, NBC had broadcast a movie called Born Innocent. And they had a scene that mirrored this. And the kids did this exactly the same thing, but they were using a plumber's helper. They broadcast it

at eight o'clock at night. And my grandfather's client basically said that these kids were saying, are you doing it like the way you saw it on television? Now, I was 12, 13, 14 years old. This is very deep in my mind. And at the dinner table, you know, this was an unusual family that we had. My grandfather would talk about his cases, not just this one, but others. This case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And he would fight that he fought this case. And this was very important to him, saying, this was wrong. Do they not know they're using their media in this dark way? And went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court says,

Mr. Lewis, you are, my grandfather's name was Marvin Lewis. And they said, Mr. Lewis, you're wrong. This is covered by the First Amendment. You can go away. And then basically right then the government, the FCC came in and said, actually, he's right. And that is how we ended up with things that we know from our life and childhood. Things like late nine television, the family hour, prime time, all got regulated out of this famous case on Born Innocent with NBC. And in my subconscious, I still hear my grandfather saying all the time to me, you have to do what's right. You have to fight for what's right. You have to use your platform for change. You know, in my case, it's a business. So I can say I'm using my business as a platform for change. But you have to use your

life for that. You do that. You do that. I see it every day. But it's very important. But not everybody feels it. Maybe not everybody had the grandfather that I had. And that's just one story, you know, that I have that really kind of opened me and like set my tone. Now, I didn't want to go into the law. So I found a computer when I was 14 years old, and I started programming, and I started a software company when I was in high school. a computer when I was 14 years old and I started programming and I started a software company when I was in high school. So when I am out there today, I am, you know, still feel my grandfather, like a lot of us do. We feel our grandfather or grandmother or parents inside us. And it's coming through me. What do lawmakers say to you, right? You're one of the most influential people we know. You have been wildly outspoken. And I can't imagine that anyone in this room disagrees with anything

that you just said. So when you tell this story to Congress people, you've spent a lot of time in the White House, in current administration, last administration, what do they say to you when you make this case? Well, I think that they are very sensitive, just like you are, that we are in a new world. Yeah, but they're in a position to actually do something. In a lot of cases, people do not understand the new world as well as we do. You know that. You can bring them out here. You're going to have regulators on the stage.

You have some excellent regulators. I just spoke to the commissioner outside, Margaret, and she's amazing. And, you know, she understands a lot of these things very well. So I think some do understand it, like her. I think others don't understand it as well or don't want to understand it. But look, this has been going on a long time, and that doesn't shake off our responsibility to do the right thing. That's all. And it doesn't matter if you're a journalist, you know, or a CEO.

You're a journalist and a CEO. Or you're the CEO of a company. What was that? No longer a my CEO. Well, you know what I mean. You're a journalist, you know, or a CEO, you're a journalist and a CEO, or you're the CEO of a company or what was that? No longer am I a CEO. Well, you know what I mean? You're a leader. And that means you have to do the right thing. All right. What has to happen? Were you surprised by January 6th and the involvement of social media? I wasn't really. I think that we're really in a world where you're, you know, it's kind of the way I see it is when I got ready for the Dreamforce keynote, I kind of built a diagram that looked like this. In the center, I think the world is in a crisis of trust. And then I think there's kind of four main elements. And I think the digital

revolution is impacting all the three other elements. And one of them is this kind of political dysfunction and inequality and bifurcation. And so it gets integrated in to this world. And when we also, when we talk about the pandemic, like you just had a very nice panel up here on the pandemic, you have another one, but a lot of the things are like, oh, these narratives that get kind of put out there. It's like, wow, how is that possible? But you see it gets wound into the media. And not in every country as much, but certainly here. So what needs to be done? Not just in Los Angeles, but other places. To some other topics. Well, what do you think needs to be done? Cigarette

companies were legislated. I think regulation. I think that regulation. Well, I wrote a whole book on this, so you can write the book. It's easy to find his face is on the cover. A good picture, too, by the way. So if you do say so, you just know I thought it was a very good picture. But, you know, I think that it is. I think there is a role, a very important role for government. And that we should call for more regulation. But Mark, you said this in 2000. And I think it's important.

And I've said this now for a long way. This is not my first time. It's not. It's not like you're, oh God, Mark, this is shocking. No, we've been talking about this for almost a decade. And it's only gotten worse. What's that? And things have only gotten worse.

Things have gotten worse. And we have, and by the way, the things that we care about, pick one of these topics that you actually care about and you'll go, oh yeah, it's been influencing the topic that I care about. So if you care about the climate, like I really do care about the climate. I'm trying to like come up with what are the things that we can do? Like Salesforce is now a net zero company. We're a fully renewable company. We started something called 1T.org, which is to plant a trillion trees on the planet. That's very important to me because emissions have put out 100 gigatons of carbon since the first industrial revolution.

But we've now deforested half the planet. We've gone from 6 trillion trees to 3 trillion trees. Every trillion trees sequesters 200 gigatons of carbon. That means we've lost 600 gigatons of carbon storage on the planet. Are we going to put it back? We can. We know how to plant trees. Not super complicated technology. Like, we can do it. So I think that when we look at things like climate and like, let's go plant trees, let's

cut emissions, let's educate, let's light up ecopreneurs, let's regulate, even with climate. Like, I love what the the EU is doing with the Green Deal for example where they're going to tax companies for carbon which I think is the

right thing to do and when you do all of these things and you reforest okay this is powerful but if you get on social media

and you say oh yeah I'm going to plant trees and then you'll get like you didn't think there were anti-tree people but they are out there there are

I know they don't advertise they don't advertise they don't advertise it it And they'll find you, the anti-tree people. They don't advertise it. It's like people don't say they don't like animals. You never know when they're going to just pop out. Say, no, no, I'm anti-tree. Right.

You know, and you're like, you're the anti-tree person? Yes, I am anti-tree. And I was, this cannot be true. But it is. So, you know, that's kind of how life is right now, where you can be for something in climate or in the pandemic or in equality even, you know, which we've talked about, right? Or in exhaustion and or in other areas. And that anti-whatever-you-are is going to appear because of the nature of media. Let me ask you, I do want to talk about climate

change in more detail, but if you were the CEO of Facebook, what would the first thing you do be? What would you do? I would just do what I'm doing in my company, which is to say trust is my highest value and this is how I'm going to operationalize it. That doesn't mean anything. That's a lot of words. That is not true, ladies. Let me tell you why. All right. You're wrong. All right, gentlemen. Every company in the lobby has a plaque that says those words. It's not true, and I'll tell you why. All right.

Thanks for saying that, but you're wrong. Okay. We're anti-tree, but go ahead. I'm worried about that part. No, I like trees. Number one is, I had this very cool guy call me. I did not know him about six or nine months ago. Young guy in his early 30s.

Vlad Tenev. He's the CEO of Robinhood. And he's got this hot company and it's growing. I'm not really involved in it. And then he's like, yeah, you know, my friends say I got to talk to you. I'm like, fine. And then they're calling me too. You got to talk to this kid.

All right, I'm going to talk to him. And it's a great conversation. I'm like, whoa, this kid is really smart. Like it was really impressive and has this really big vision for financial services and really incredible entrepreneur. And who doesn't think he should be regulated? And so he's out there and but he's got some issues. And so we're kind of going through it. And, you know, what my observation is after I listened to him for a couple of hours or a few hours, actually, said, I've been listening to you now for a few hours. And I have a question for you.

You know, what are your what's your highest value? Said, I got this. My highest value is democratization. It's I want everybody to participate in the financial system. This is very important to me. You know what? We just artificially remove people from the financial system, and it is wrong. And I'm like, well, that's very compelling.

But I said to him, democratization is not a high value, so pick a higher value. And he's like, hmm. And I said, let me ask you a question. What are you doing to keep your users safe so that this isn't these horrible stories that we're hearing out of this company are not happening because they have horrible stories? And he's like, I haven't really thought about that. And I said, what about this question? What if you made safety your highest value? What if you made safety your highest value and you operationalize safety?

your highest value? What if you made safety your highest value and you operationalized safety? What are the five or 10 things you could do to make your system safe? How would you code it? How would you create it? How would you operate it? And that is kind of how I work with an entrepreneur. But that flies in the face of democratization because he could argue democratization means I get to ride in a car in the front seat with my seatbelt on. You are 100% right. You're 100% right. But you have to choose what your highest value is. And yes, it may cost you because you may not get to as many users. You may not have as much revenue. You may not have as much market share, which your venture capitalists demand you have. But you will have safety. And when you get out there and you end up on Jim Cramer or you get out on

Stephanie Ruhl's show or with Sarah Eisen or whatever it is, and they say to you, why did this horrible story happen with your product? You have to say, I feel terrible because our highest value is safety. And we were operationalized at this 10 ways and we need to do these 10 more things. And in these stories that are happening today, where safety has impacted the brand value, market share revenue of the company, those CEOs have to come forward. Robinhood is an example. Peloton is an example. There's many examples of stories of CEOs who need to really think about what is our highest value. And this is, you know, when I go back and I watch that horrible interview from 2016, you did great. I was not great. And I was like, it was like, yeah, that was actually one thing we talked about, that every CEO has to choose. I actually,

at some care, don't really care what your value is, but at least tell us what is your highest value. And when I find a CEO or an entrepreneur and I say to them, what is your highest value? And when I find a CEO or an entrepreneur and I say to them, what is your highest value? And they're like, well, I haven't really thought about it. That to me is the biggest gap because I think that we all have that opportunity to make a conscious choice to not only decide what we want for our company, which is very clear for a lot of entrepreneurs. This is what I want. Boom. But then what's really important to you? Tell me your highest, most powerful value. And I know like for you, it's responsibility. One of them. What's that? One of them. And what else? Stop lying to me. Yeah. You

want truth. Truth and responsibility. These are high values, right? So that's very important. And when somebody comes up to you and they're not saying the truth or they are not preaching responsibility, you can see that because that's who you inherently are. All right. I'm going to go with, would you still call Facebook a cigarette company? I'm going to bring it back to them. I, look, you have experts here. Jim Steyer is right there. No, I want to know from you because you said it.

I think that the characteristics that I kind of laid out are probably still accurate. And I think that it needs to, they need to continue to move forward. Stephanie has a very good story that she was telling, you know, backstage. Maybe she'll tell it on stage. No, I was just saying what I don't understand. Come on, tell us the story saying what I don't understand. Come on, tell us the story. What I don't understand is, I gave you the whole pitch.

Yes. What I don't understand is, right, they keep saying we're trying to move in the right direction. Yesterday, Instagram CEO says, you know, we have a new feature. We have a nudge. So if, Cara, you are, Nudge me.

You are looking at content over and over on Facebook, Instagram, the same type of content, and maybe it's, you shouldn't be looking at that thing. What we do is we nudge you with a different suggestion, which is so obtuse and crazy because the idea is if this is a teen in crisis who's looking at things that are unhealthy for them, if you're now nudging them

to look at a babbling brook, then you've clearly never met a teen because they're not going to do it. And unless they're forced to do something, we're just putting more and more people at risk. So when you have shareholders or a VC breathing down your neck and you're talking about safety, it doesn't become at the core of what they have to do. It seems like an abstract. And if you thought they were a cigarette company three years ago, then wouldn't you say they're crack cocaine today? And it January 6th happened. cocaine today. And it January 6th happened. Said it perfectly. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's not even the whole story. She has another part of the story, which is darker and maybe she'll tell.

All right. Darker. He had a rape. And I think that that's, and I think that probably for every person here, if we asked you, did you have a story like that? Raise your hand if you have a personal story around this. So you have personal stories. And I think that that's very powerful. And that's where we are today. And I think we'll have more personal stories. And as we circle the clock in the pandemic, or we circle the clock on climate, or we circle the clock on equality, or on the political process, or whatever, you're going to have more stories

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And we have these conversations all the time. So we are all at risk and we all need to work together to protect each other. Learn more about how to protect yourself at vox.com slash zelle. And when using digital payment platforms, remember to only send money to people you know and trust. Reimagined Nissan Kicks is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system, you can get closer to everything you love about city life in the all-new, reimagined Nissan Kicks. Learn more at www.nissanusa.com slash 2025 dash kicks. Available feature.

Bose is a registered trademark of the Bose Corporation. Welcome back to this bonus episode of Pivot. Here's more of my conversation with Salesforce CEO, Mark Benioff, at this year's Code Conference. All right, we're going to switch talking about your businesses. But let me just say, they're not under pressure. What, I have a business?

But she's 100% right. They're not under pressure. They're not under pressure. And they're doing it anyway. They just can tune out of Kara and I. They hear us, they just tune it out. And you know what they look at? Their share price today.

And it's rocking and rolling. And you know what lawmakers are up their ass? None. Thank you, Stephanie. Anyway, let's move on to your business. Why, how is- Jim Steyer cannot wait to start talking about this. I know.

You bought Time Magazine. Unfortunately, he's got a mask on. I want to talk about two of your acquisitions, Slack. Yeah. And then Time Magazine. That's your personal one. Yes. Start with that.

How do you like being a media mogul? I like it. I've had a lot of fun. I really like Time. We have a great group in New York. They're a lot of fun people. They're very different than the people that I normally hang with. Right. You know, because, you know, I try not to stay around journalists too much.

Okay. But... We don't want to hang out with them. Just kidding. I'm just kidding. But I, no, I really enjoy it. And I think that there's some fun out. I'm just kidding. But I know I really enjoy it. And I think that there's some fun things. Time is several things. One is it's a magazine that everybody knows and has in their subconscious.

Two, it's the digital digital service. Three, it's an event company. Four, it is also a venture capital company, which is actually doing really well. And five, it is a movie studio. And that is doing way better than we could have ever imagined. And it's got the number one movie on Netflix right now, which is Inspiration4 about these four civilians that went in the rockets. And very proud of our team on what a great job they did on that. It was something they completely architected. If you have not watched Inspiration 4 with your kids on Netflix, this is a powerful thing.

I also did not really get teary or whatever, but on episode one, I did. I was very impressed with the content and the story and the character development. And then the second one that's coming is Kanye West. character development. And then the second one that's coming is Kanye West. And I've seen that, and it is going to change a lot of people's views of exactly what kind of a genius this is, because you're going to see him in, this is, the partner is a close friend of his from childhood who shot a lot of video from the very youngest years when he started writing music and so forth. And when you see this incredible story, you'll just have a view of him. So you like it.

It's so amazing. Are you making money at it? I wouldn't say we're making a lot of money. I would say it's a labor of love, for sure. It's an impact investment for us. We didn't buy it to make, you know, Salesforce profitability and Salesforce margin, which is, you know, our margins are at record levels. I would say that this is more about, you know, that we need a free press and we need high quality journalism and we need something like time. Are you going to buy anything else? I think one media company is enough for anybody.

Really? Not two? I wouldn't do two. And I think Focus. By the way, we're making it. When we had it, we didn't have the movie studio. The venture capital was not amplified. We didn't.

There were parts of it that weren't in. So we're making it bigger. And it's very cool. And you should come to New York and see them. I know your editor very well. Yeah, he's a very good person. What about Slack? And it's very cool. And you should come to New York and see them. And I know your editor very well. Yeah, he's very good. Very good person.

What's Slack? Slack is very also, you know, well, you know, take a look at the last 18 months. My digital life and my digital headquarters is way more important than my physical headquarters. You know that we have these towers all over the world in New York and Indianapolis and San Francisco and Tokyo and London. And we have almost 75,000 people now. They're not in their towers. We built these gorgeous towers. They're mostly at home. And that's fine. And so their digital infrastructure is extremely important. The digital headquarters is just way more important than the physical headquarters,

and we're not going back, and that's why we Slack. But I would say that we... Is that your ad? I'm thinking about it. I was going to try it out with you. But I think that Slack is essential for many companies, and what we've done with it is not only continue to amplify all the amazing

things that it's doing and now they have some great new audio video capabilities and so forth, but we're rewriting the front end of Salesforce to be entirely Slack. So at our Dreamforce conference last week, our sales cloud and our service cloud, which is kind of our core, they just look like Slack. And then our marketing cloud, our commerce cloud, our platform, our analytics, they just look like Slack. So it's basically our new user interface. And we're trying to amplify that. And for a lot of our core products like service, the ability to swarm a case, this is really cool. So like, you know, there's a major customer service issue.

We're doing the incident management. We're doing the escalation correctly. We're doing the case management. And then with Slack, now you're just able to swarm that case with your team and solve it together. And I think it's very powerful to add collaboration. And it's funny because we talked about that in our 2016 review.

Yeah, I thought you were going to buy Slack. And it took us a while to kind of get there because we were kind of bumbling through other social media companies. We wrote our own. It didn't get as far as we wanted it to. There was other ones that we tried to buy that we got pushed away from.

And then we ended up with this great company. You did buy one before that, right? What's that? You did buy one before that, I thought. I don't even remember. Probably. I don't know. But this is the big one. Mark, you sort of. 27 billion. It was big. Evangelize, you know, how extraordinary it's been as we can now work from home. But it's also great for your business. It's great for Salesforce. Yes. It's great for Slack. Yes. Can you separate the two in that? Do you really believe people working from home is optimizing business? Because there's all sorts of CEOs out there who are kind of biting their tongue while we're home, who are saying this, we proved that we could not go out of business in the last year, but we're certainly not optimizing productivity. I have to be very, very careful what I say. No, you actually don't. And I will tell you why. You'd be preferred if you weren't. Because if I actually tell you what I think, what will happen is within five minutes, my phone will be lit up

with very close friends of mine telling me that I have to stop saying what I actually believe. It's a very strange situation. But it doesn't help anyone for you not to say what you actually think. All right. Well, look, number one, we're not all going back. I have talked to CEOs all over the world, all over the world, of the largest and most important companies. The most any of them really have is about 15%. Even in countries that are stabilized and are done with the pandemic,

some people are going back, but people's consciousness and lives and ability to work has changed. We have new skills. like I always tease you. You're at home. You know how to make a whole television series right from home. You have your assistant there and on and on and on. That is not how it was two years ago, but it is now.

And it's a powerful thing for you. And I think that you're a great example. But if you look at our workers in sales and service and marketing and engineering, they can work anywhere. They can do anywhere. they can achieve productivity. Now do they still need to be culturally onboarded? Do they need to meet their peers? Do they need to have relationships?

Do we need to seed trust through our physical relationships? Yes, we do. So what do we need to do? We need to, number one, embrace, we're not all going back, and I'm sorry to all my friends, but we're not all going back. And I'm sorry to all my friends, but we're not all going back. And I will get these phone calls and they will literally, I've never heard people as mad at me. What kind of people? They are CEOs of Fortune 100 companies.

They want people to go back. Yeah. Salesforce, you know, will do, we've given guidance now for over $31 billion in revenue next year. It's a large company. and these companies are peer companies and they call me and they say, you need to stop saying this because I want all my employees back in the office. And I'll say, they are not coming back. And I say, there's five things you need to know. One, they're going to work at home and they are working at home very successfully.

Two, they're going to come in the office and that will be great, but it might be a different experience. Three, they're going to work at events like this, like we're all working while we're here. You know, we all got our phones and our laptops out. Who's not doing email and everything else while we're all talking? Four, and I do like off sites

and, you know, bring my employees around or dream for it. Four, we also are going to have like the ranch, that idea, you know, some kind of cultural center. It could be a... But you can do that. You make a gazillion dollars. No, anybody can do that. And as an example, I am an investor in a company called NCX, which is doing climate offsets through AI and they don't have any physical headquarters, but they do get together once a month and they get a big Airbnb and they all make it happen.

By the way, another one that we do this is WordPress. WordPress does not have, he's a great CEO. We're a huge investor. He has no physical headquarters. He never has. He never has. And he's a profit in this area. And he gets Airbnbs once a month

and brings all of his workers together. And then five is this, testing. That is, yes, send us a couple Q-tips. That's all we're asking for. We know you don't have the virus. Now everyone can get together safely. Nobody wants to bring this home to your kids. So it's easy, one, two, three.

There's different quality tests. Choose the one that's most appropriate for you and make it work. And that's the one, two, three, four, five. So like at Dreamforce last week, people sent us their Q-tips. We registered them. They showed up. They give their lanyard. It's connected to their Q-tips and they can walk in and everybody had a great time. We screened out 10 infections before the conference out of a thousand people. So we had a thousand people. We had 10 infections. We screened those out. They all came in. We left with no infections. Thank God. And I think that, you know, that's what ultimately we want. That's what work will be. And work. And I want to come to the office

and have that experience or to that or anywhere. And that's my vision for the future work. That five levels, but with wrapped in a blanket of safety. And I've even productized it where I built something called Health Cloud 2.0 and it does contact tracing. It does vaccine management. It does the digital certificate for the testing and everything you need. And you can choose how you want to keep your employees safe or your customers safe

or how you're going to bring people together safe. And I think that it's what we used in New York City, by the way, to do all the contact tracing or all the vaccine management. But now it's like appropriate for a company as well. So now you have the CEO's piss at you. I have just two more questions. We've run out of time for a second. We're going to go a little longer.

Check out more from my interview with Mark Benioff after the break. Support for this podcast comes from Anthropic. off after the answer. Claude is a next-generation AI assistant built to help you work more efficiently without sacrificing safety or reliability. Anthropic's latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, can help you organize thoughts, solve tricky problems, analyze data, and more, whether you're brainstorming alone

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Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca Here's more of my conversation with Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff at this year's Code Conference. You said that Salesforce for more than double its revenue from $21.3 billion to $50 billion in the next five years. Yeah. Rock on. Okay. We just gave guidance that we're going to do 31.8. I think it is. I don't have the card

in front of me. So please check the actual numbers of what we said. But we're going to have, we did, we had two years in the 20 billions over the last, this year and last year. And the next year is going to be in the 30 billion. So the company is really scaled. Will you be the CEO for that period of time? Because two years ago you had. Are you. Will you be the CEO for that period of time? Because two years ago, you had a co-CEO. Are you unhappy with me as the CEO? No, but you had a co-CEO. I thought we were friends.

What is going on here? You had a co-CEO not long ago. I did. I did. And he wanted to retire, which was literally retired one month before the pandemic. I don't know what he knew. And it would have been a lot easier if he was with me

in the last two years, honestly. Are you going to get another co-CEO? I wouldn't be what he knew. And it would have been a lot easier if he was with me in the last two years, honestly. Are you going to get another job? I wouldn't be opposed to it. I think that these are big, hard jobs. And when you're on the road and you have like a lot of external responsibilities like I do, it's nice to have operational excellence, which I have. I have a phenomenal management team. I have a phenomenal management team. When this pandemic started and we went through that transition, I said, looks to me like not only we're in a new world, but I'm going to need a new model and a new management team.

And I put those three things together, and it's been very powerful. And you can see in the last five quarters, three of the quarters, we had our record operating margin of over 20%. Five out of the last five quarters, we had more than 20% growth. And we just said that next year we'll do more than 20% operating margin. So you're not going to run for mayor. It's very powerful. You're not going to run for mayor of San Francisco. You always ask me this and it's offensive.

Why? Because just because I talk about social issues and just because I say, you know, that we should have equality for all, it doesn't mean I'm going to be a good politician. You know, I would be a horrible politician. Why? Horrible. Why? Because it's not at all what I do and I'm not politically savvy. I don't think I'm good at all. Some of my friends who I see in the audience, they're all shaking their heads up and down going, don't encourage him. Because it's not true. I can barely do what I'm doing now.

It works. Listen, it worked for Donald Trump. I'm just trying to stay on the ground and do my best. All right. And I'm here with everybody on the audience where I'm like, let's just hang on here and make it all work. And my last question before we get to audience questions is, there is politics in everything you do now.

You were very strong around KSUs in Ohio. True. Mike Pence, your friend. Indiana. Indiana, sorry, I forget where he's from. Indiana, we're the largest tech employer, and we had, you know, the LGBT community is very important to me, you know that. What about Texas? Look, we have a parade of politicians, governors, mayors, presidents, ministers, governors, mayors, presidents, ministers, and they all want to discriminate against our employees. And it is like, whoa, it is the LGBTQ community is under attack. This race is under attack. This gender is under attack or whatever it is. And all I want to say to my employees is I have

your back. That is, I will take care of you. And if you are under attack, the power of Salesforce, which we have our power, whatever it is, whatever we can muster up somehow, we'll move you. We will protect you. We will get you healthcare. We'll do whatever you need because we have a big company. We'll use it for good. If we make any promise to anybody, when we say that business is the greatest platform for change, what we're really saying is we will do the right thing. And over the last 22 years, and you track me maybe closer than anybody, and we've had a lot of conversations at a lot of unusual venues and forums and programs. And I didn't realize this, but I told you the story of my grandfather, But I'm a native San Franciscan.

I was born on Divisadero Street. When they called me in Indianapolis and they go, well, they're going to discriminate us and we're gay. I'm like, what? How could that be? It took me a long time, honestly, to realize that's even the thing, that that could happen. And then when they did it, I'm like, well, fuck them. We're leaving Indiana then.

And then we they did it, I'm like, well, fuck them. We're leaving Indiana then. And then we're going to. And then we got a phone call. And then they negotiated the end of the law. And I went, whoa, I guess we have more capability than we do. What are you going to do in Texas? Are you going to say, fuck them, we're going to leave? What we said was, you know, if you're unhappy. It's about the restrictive abortion laws.

Yeah, look, we'll negotiate when we can. But ultimately, what we'll say is, if you're unhappy, you're working at Salesforce. You know, you're not. But let's say you, you know, one day maybe you will be. Ever. If you're working at Salesforce, it would be heaven for you. No. And then, or you're working at Time because it's the same policy. No. Time. I don't work for anybody. Think about it. And then, all right. But you really, you should really think about it. Never. But then, what we would say is, all right, you can move and we'll move you. Or you need help or you need support or you need something from us. We are there for you.

That's my relationship with what I call my Ohana, which is my employees, but also my customers and my partners too. And I get a lot of emails and there's a lot of help that has to go out to our whole community, because we have 15 million Trailblazers. We have an economy of like 1.9 trillion that we are connected to with our Salesforce ecosystem. When I think about our world, our life, who we are,

I have to think about, I have to hold them all in my heart. And I can't, when I get an email or a phone call every day, which I do, and they're like, hey, I'm part of the Ohana, and I need help, and this is my issue, and I am in another country even, then I will say, yes, that is my responsibility. We'll get a plane. We'll fly them to wherever they need to go. In some cases, it's a lot of health care issues. They need a real hospital. They need to come to UCSF in San Francisco where I've put more than 300 million dollars in. I feel it's my responsibility in San Francisco to focus on the public hospitals. I also focus on the public

schools. We put more than a hundred million into the public schools and I'll say help this person please if at all possible because I think it is important that we are helping each other. This is a moment where if, if at all possible, because I think it is important that we are helping each other. This is a moment where if we're not all together, if we are not going to get through this moment, we have to be together. We all have to be together, not just in this room, but collectively. And that's how we're going to get through this difficult moment.

We can do this if we do stay together. Are you going to be the business leader to solve a major issue for families across the country, and it's child care? You cannot find a single successful working parent that doesn't have good child care. And there's almost no companies in this country that actually own and solve that problem for their employees. This is a very important issue for you and for everybody. We all have to do it together. What does that look like?

What's that? I don't know what that means. I'll tell you what it means. It means that you can do something. I can do something. I can talk to my congressman, which I do. I can talk to my senators. I can talk to my mayors.

I can talk to the president when I have that opportunity. Presidents are changing, but my values are not changing. I'm the same person. So, you know, we all have to do something. We cannot all do everything. If we think we're going to do everything, that's where we'll get lost. Just get in touch with what is the one thing you can do to make the world better? What is the one thing that you're going to do to make the world better? And when you come up with that, like you just did, then you can move forward. And that's the powerful thing.

All right. We're going to get going, Mark. All right. Thank you. You are the best. Thank you. That's true. All right.

My mom agrees. Yeah. Okay. That's the show for today. Stay tuned for more bonus code episodes in the Pivot Feed. in the Pivot Feed. is the city-sized crossover vehicle that's been completely revamped for urban adventure. From the design and styling to the performance, all the way to features like the Bose Personal Plus sound system,

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