Behind the founder: Marc Benioff

0:00

I want to zoom back to the beginning  of Salesforce.

0:00

One of the most legendary launch events in startup  history.

0:02

Just looking back at that, any lessons from what you did right  to get people to pay attention?

0:09

I'm throwing everything against the  wall.

0:09

I'm looking at what's going to stick.

0:12

I am looking to try to find the winning  tactic and turn it into a winning strategy.

0:16

Your stock is at an all-time high.

0:16

I'm curious just what you believe is most contributed to you being able  to stay on top and continue to grow.

0:24

I actually never look at the  stock.

0:24

I find the stock to be very distracting.

0:26

The stock isn't the  goal.

0:26

That's not why we're doing this.

0:30

AI is the defining technology  of our lifetime and probably any lifetime.

0:34

When was the moment for  you where you started to realize this?

0:38

I keep having these existential freakout  moments about AI.

0:38

This is really moving fast.

0:44

As a founder, you're just like, "Goddamn, I  just got used to AI, and everyone is wanting to work on AI in my company.

0:47

Now, we  got to freaking figure out agents?" No, no, no, no, no. That's a  mistake.

0:50

You want the mindset of, "Oh, the next thing is coming.

0:54

I  can't wait for the next thing."

1:01

Today, my guest is Marc Benioff.

1:01

He's co-founder  and CEO of Salesforce, which is the second largest B2B SaaS company in the world worth around  $350 billion at the time of this recording, making $35 billion a year in revenue, and 25 years  later, is still growing like crazy and dominating the market.

1:20

In our conversation, we talk about  leadership, AI, domain names, beginner's mind, marketing, product, sales, the hardest moment  in Marc's journey of building Salesforce.

1:26

Also, what exactly is an agent and so much more.

1:32

If  you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting  app or YouTube.

1:38

It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast  tremendously.

1:41

With that, I bring you Marc Benioff.

1:49

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3:57

Marc, thank you so much for being  here. Welcome to the podcast.

4:00

Excited to finally get connected with you  and excited to do this podcast with you too.

4:04

I'm even more excited, and I actually want  to start with something that I think most people don't know about you, but to me,  it's almost like a microcosm of how far ahead you look and almost how...

4:12

basically, how visionary you are, and that's that you've owned a number of epic  domain names. For example, bill. com, you. com- You. ... code. com, appstore. com.

4:24

First of  all, are there others I don't know about? There's a lot. Okay. Salesforce. com. Salesforce. com. That all came from... I'll tell you.

4:32

It's a good  story actually because what happened was I was working at Oracle for 10 years from 1986, and 1996  rolled around like it was a snap of the fingers.

4:45

All of a sudden, I realized, "Whoa, what has just  happened to the last decade?" The decade just flew by. It was crazy.

4:51

It was a big moment for me in my  career, and I had a...

4:51

It was a huge acceleration.

4:58

I went from being a kid right out of college to  working for Larry Ellison.

4:58

But after 10 years, I was pretty trashed, and so I said to Larry,  "Hey, I need to go and take some time off."

5:13

So I went to Hawaii and rented a little house  on the beach.

5:13

I had done some angel investing, and it was a cool moment where some of my  companies started to go public, including Siebel Systems and others, and Saba Software,  and people I had met at Oracle like Tom Siebel and Bobby Yazdani.

5:29

Then, I was just fascinated at  that point with the internet.

5:29

I had been working on it at Oracle for a couple years, so I started  buying a bunch of domain names of companies that I thought companies.

5:41

They weren't companies yet. Now, they are companies.

5:41

But ideas that I thought the names would be great companies one day and  reflected where I thought things were going. Yeah.

5:53

It's a long time ago now.

5:53

It's a really  long, long time ago. I think almost 30 years.

5:59

So one of the domain names  you owned was appstore.

5:59

com, which I know you gifted to Steve Jobs,  I read in your book.

6:02

Is there a story there that you could share because  that's an epic domain just to gift?

6:09

It's a great story, but it's really a story about  my relationship with Steve Jobs.

6:09

When I was in college in 1984, I had the opportunity to be an  intern at Apple.

6:16

I wrote the first native assembly language on the Macintosh.

6:24

It's a crazy thing to  be able to say, but it's true that I was writing these example programs for this Macintosh 68000  Development System on these Apple headquarter buildings in Bandley, Bandley Road in Cupertino  and started to have a relationship with Steve Jobs in that...

6:44

Not that I was actually talking to  him.

6:44

I was like this snot-nosed 19-year-old kid, but he's running around the building.

6:50

We  have this refrigerator over here with all these fruit juices.

6:55

There's a masseuse over here  doing shots and massages.

6:55

There's a motorcycle in the lobby.

7:01

There's a pirate flag on the  roof, and there's Steve Jobs running around, yelling at everybody, and it was freaking cool. Okay.

7:07

So you can just imagine like you're like, "Whoa, this is like I'm in a movie."

7:13

There's a  lot of other cool parts of a movie too that were going on, and it started my relationship  with him, and then I actually got to know him then as I eventually got to Oracle.

7:26

Then,  eventually, I started Salesforce, and I had this moment at Salesforce.

7:33

It was, I think, 2000,  2001.

7:33

I cannot remember exactly what it was, and we were at the opening of one of his  movies for Pixar, and we're having dinner.

7:50

There's a lot of details around the dinner.

7:50

It'll be a hugely long story if I go forever.

7:56

He says to me, "Well, Marc, now, listen to me. You're doing so great.

7:56

You've got your company, Salesforce.

8:02

If you need any help, you make  sure you call me, okay?" I'm like, "Yes, sir. I will do that." He took out his...

8:08

He had  just introduced the iPod, and he's like, "I got a thousand songs in my pocket here.

8:13

Look at this,  and that, and all that." It's this cool device.

8:19

I'm like, "That's such a cool screen. Steve."

8:19

He goes, "Oh, thanks so much."

8:19

I go, "Steve, you could do movies on there too, not just... or  photos.

8:24

You didn't have to do songs." "No, Marc.

8:24

I will never do a device like that. Absolutely not."

8:30

That's a little insight into his personality that he would never ever exactly say, "Oh, yeah, I'm  going to do the movie device that have the photo, the phone, the this." So, anyway.

8:42

Things were moving along at Salesforce, and so I was like, "I'm stuck, and I need  to get through my block, writer's block, entrepreneur's block.

8:57

I'm going to reach out to  him."

8:57

He's like, "Come down here right away."

9:03

So, literally, I got in my car, brought a few of  my team with me, and we go down, and he's like, "Oh, yeah.

9:09

Oh, yeah, you're blocked.

9:09

There's  three things you need to do right now." I'm like, "Okay. What are they?"

9:16

He go, "Your company, it  better get 10 times larger than it is now in 24 months or it's over." "Oh, okay. Yes, sir. Yes,  sir."

9:21

"Number two, you better sign a huge customer for this Salesforce automation product like Avon.

9:28

They're a great salesforce."

9:28

The CEO of Avon was on his board at the time, so that was on his mind.

9:34

"And one last thing I'm going to tell you you must do." I'm like, "Yes, sir. What is it?"

9:39

"You better  go build an application economy."

9:39

"An application economy?" "Yes." "What does that mean?"

9:47

"I don't  know, but you're going to go figure it out."

9:55

It was like meeting with your guru and getting a  Zencon or something where you're...

9:55

Now, you have a puzzle I have to solve.

10:02

I literally went away,  and I had all the notes from the meeting.

10:02

I went through it over and over again.

10:09

Then, finally, I'm  like, "I think he wants me to build an app store."

10:17

At that moment, I went to the domain registry,  and I bought appstore. com.

10:17

Then, I started working on it at Salesforce so that we would have the  ability with our platform to build apps, and then sell them, and that you could do all these things.

10:30

So I did all that and launched AppExchange in 2005 or 2006.

10:40

We didn't call it App Store because when  we tested the App Store name in focus groups, customers are like, "This is not an app  store. This is an app exchange.

10:46

We're all going to exchange apps and capabilities with each  other."

10:50

Anyway, it rolled out, iPhone rolled out, and then he basically said to me one day, "Hey,  come down and see me."

10:55

This is maybe a year after iPhone.

11:04

I'm like, "I'll be right down."

11:04

I get down there, and I have some team members with me.

11:11

They'd heard this story before, et  cetera, and then we're sitting there like this in the Apple Auditorium.

11:18

It's not like in  a hotel or anything.

11:18

I remember it very clearly like it was yesterday.

11:22

He said, "I brought you  all down here today."

11:22

It's very good theatrical performance.

11:28

I could never do what he does. It's  incredible.

11:28

He's got the thing, and then he says, "And I'm here to reveal to you the App Store."

11:33

All of our people go, "Huh."

11:33

They're doing break breath, and they're all like...

11:42

go white because  they're like, "Oh, Marc has been talking about App Store for years. How could Steve even..."

11:47

Then, at the end of it... It's all over.

11:47

Everyone leaves the auditorium.

11:54

They're all going out to  play with the App Store and all these things. I walked down.

11:59

He's sitting down there by  himself working on something.

11:59

He's in the corner of the stage. I go, "Hey, Steve.

12:05

Can I talk  to you for a second?" He goes, "Of course." Very generous with me. Very kind with me.

12:11

I go,  "Steve, I'm going to give you a gift."

12:11

"Wow, but Marc, what are you are going to give me?"

12:17

"Steve, I'm going to give you something you don't have, but maybe you'll need, which is the  appstore. com URL, appstore.

12:23

com, and the trademark for App Store because after that meeting we had  six years ago, I ended up trademarking these things and buying this URL."

12:36

He's like, "Oh,  it's very nice, but you know this App Store thing isn't going to be very big.

12:40

Whatever,  but thank you very much."

12:40

That was the story of App Store. It's amazing.

12:47

It was a very amazing  relationship that I had with him.

12:47

Very grateful to have that relationship and dramatically  influenced me in my career and my whole life.

12:59

There's one thread that I love about everything  you shared.

12:59

Here is how generosity was at the center of so much of this, him helping you, you  helping him, just wanting to help each other.

13:08

He is a very generous person, and I'll tell  you that he never turned down anything that I asked him to do.

13:14

I have so many stories, but one  story was I was thinking about buying this house, and I wasn't sure should I buy this house, Should  I not buy this house, whatever, and so he went...

13:29

He said, "I'll go look at it for you."

13:29

So he went,  he is looking at this house, and then he calls me, and he goes, "Well, I don't know if you should  do this or that, but this might be good. Maybe it is good.

13:39

Maybe it is a good idea."

13:39

Then, I'm emailing with him after that, and he's very sick, and it's all very sad.

13:45

Then,  he sends me an email, and the last email he sent to me was he said... I said, "Wow.

13:51

Well, this has  worked out better than I thought."

13:51

He goes, "Marc, everything has worked out so much better than we  could have ever imagined."

14:01

It was just a beautiful thought and incredibly sad all at the same moment,  and that was my last correspondence with him.

14:14

I feel like we could do  Steve Jobs stories all day. Yeah. Oh, no, I have hours. Yes, you can.

14:19

I have a lot of Steve Jobs stories, but- Oh, man. Yeah.

14:22

Anyway, those are a couple of them.

14:24

By the way, I also love that he had  B2B SaaS advice here like, "You need a big customer.

14:27

You need to hire  ACVs, build the marketplace." Oh, he hated those.

14:29

He hated SaaS, and he  hated that I was doing enterprise software. Yeah, he did.

14:35

He's trying to talk me out of being an  enterprise software executive.

14:35

He's like, "Now, Marc, what are you going to do?

14:38

You're going  to go home and tell your kids that you're working on enterprise software?

14:42

Who do you sell to, CIOs? Have you had met them?

14:42

How can you be doing this?

14:48

I can't imagine a more horrible career."

14:48

I'm  like, "I love it, Steve."

14:48

"No, Marc, you cannot love this. This is not great."

14:53

It was really a  funny thing.

14:53

He really disliked that, but yet, he was incredibly supportive of me.

14:59

He would call  me all the time.

14:59

It was really amazing, actually. Yeah.

15:06

It feels like a place he was  wrong in the end here, which is cool, cool to know.

15:09

I want to go  in a different direction.

15:12

He was rarely wrong, by the way, so.

15:14

He was rarely wrong with B2B SaaS. $350 billion  of value.

15:14

Who would've known it existed?

15:14

Speaking of that, so I want to zoom back to the beginning  of Salesforce and when you launched Salesforce.

15:25

It's crazy to think back to that when basically,  you were trying to convince people the future of software was not desktop software, it was  going to be in the cloud, it was SaaS.

15:30

You had all these end of software logos.

15:34

You had  mascots walking around with this no software thing.

15:38

You hired fake protesters at...

15:38

I think  it was Siebel's conference. It was very hard.

15:44

I think you read one of my books, Lenny.

15:46

I know the history of a lot of these things. Oh, okay.

15:49

It's one of the most legendary  launch events in startup history, so I've heard of it many times at this point. It was a crazy moment.

15:54

I mean, Siebel, who was  really the enterprise software company doing CRM, was doing a user conference.

16:01

I was looking for an  opportunity to launch our product, so we hired a bunch of actors.

16:10

They were doing this event in  San Francisco, and San Francisco is very woke, so people expect a good protest.

16:17

So we got some  picket signs at Home Depot and made some signs that said, "The end of software is near," and all  kinds of other...

16:28

"No software," and all these things.

16:34

We had a lot of funny things on signs.

16:34

We were running a protest outside of Siebel that they were in the software business, but we were  like, "Oh, no, we've got to get out of software.

16:46

We've got to create the end of software."

16:46

So we have picketers outside of the streets.

16:50

Anyway, he comes out himself out of the building  and really gets super upset.

16:50

Right then, we hit a button, and we have other actors in a  van who come out, and they are staging themselves as news crew.

17:06

So they are like KNMS, K No More  Software, and we're like...

17:06

They're interviewing the protesters.

17:17

So now he thinks that it's  a media thing. He calls the police. He got very upset. He's a great guy.

17:23

By the way, I love  Tom Siebel.

17:23

I think he's also one of the great entrepreneurs of our generation.

17:28

He's  just fuming, and he doesn't know what's going on.

17:35

He doesn't exactly know it's us, and  we're just having the best time.

17:35

That night, we had our huge launch event at one of the top  theaters in San Francisco.

17:40

We hired a great band, and it was really... We just had so much fun.

17:49

It was just a really great time. That was all happened. I remember very well.

17:55

It was February  22nd of 2001 or 2000, 2000, February 22nd, 2000. I love this.

18:06

I haven't heard that interview,  the reporter part of that story before. It was crazy.

18:12

I love it, and it sounds frivolous potentially, but I think the genius of this  that I want to touch on is- "Frivolous" is a good word.

18:18

It probably was frivolous.

18:21

So what I imagine is you're trying to get  people to even know Salesforce exists, to differentiate, to get the name out, and I  feel like that's something a lot of founders struggle with.

18:28

They don't really know how to  get their name out, how to get people to pay attention.

18:32

Just looking back at that success, I  guess, just any lessons from what you did right to get the word "Salesforce" out to get people  to pay attention at all to what you were doing?

18:42

Well, it's a noisy world, Lenny, and you can see  that. You can get on Twitter. It's like...

18:42

I mean, there's a lot of noise, and how do you break  through?

18:47

We have that challenge today.

18:47

We're introducing a huge new product called Agentforce.

18:54

I've only been working on it for a couple months now.

18:58

I introduced it at our Dreamforce  Conference, and that was one way to break through, which was I took our conference and said, "It's  just going to be about Agentforce."

19:04

I'm trying to think about, "What are all the things I need  to do to get my company 100% on Agentforce, my customers, everyone?"

19:18

because I know  I have a window of opportunity here.

19:25

We're first, we're ahead.

19:25

We have hundreds  of customers on this now.

19:25

We're on it, which is amazing.

19:31

We've moved our whole  help infrastructure to Agentforce.

19:31

We're seeing incredible results.

19:36

We've cut our human  escalation from our support infrastructure down by 50%.

19:43

We're resolving 83% of all of our  inquiries robotically. It's incredible.

19:43

So, now, how do I get that message out?

19:51

How do I do it  globally?

19:51

How do I find my KNMS moment where I can come up with something that's viral and exciting?

20:02

I'm trying lots of different things.

20:02

I have Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson who are  two friends of mine helping me.

20:07

So they said, "We'll cut ads for you."

20:12

They have  not been together in an ad ever, and they haven't done anything together since  True Detective. They're friends of mine.

20:17

Again, very generous people to agree to do this.

20:23

We've  shot three ads so far.

20:23

I put them out on Twitter to get feedback from folks. Is this a good idea? I am running this help. salesforce.

20:31

com to show what we can do with it. Is that a good idea?

20:39

I'm training all my salespeople in how to sell it. Is that a good idea?

20:43

I'm running  aggressive marketing against Microsoft because they have really a terrible product,  Copilot, that I have to position against and market against. Is that a good idea?

20:52

Should  I be marketing and positioning against them?

20:58

I'm trying lots of things, and what I'm  trying to do, Lenny, is what I recommend to all entrepreneurs.

21:03

The message is really in  the medium here, which is that I am looking to try to find the winning tactic and turn it into  a winning strategy.

21:10

I don't know actually which one of those things is going to be the most  important thing in launching this product, so I'm trying a lot of things with that old  expression.

21:19

I'm throwing everything against the wall.

21:24

I'm looking at what's going to stick.

21:24

Then,  once I find that thing, I will then grow that as my strategy, and that is what I'm trying to do.

21:30

I'm even expanding my distribution organization.

21:35

I'm trying to hire an additional one to 2,000  account executives just to focus on Agentforce.

21:41

So I'm trying to do everything I can to get  that light switch to go on where I can show customers this is an incredible opportunity  to lower your cost, to make things better, and to show that for the first time, we can  have digital labor, that Salesforce isn't just managing your data, but we're a digital  labor provider. So this is that moment.

22:03

There's so much there that I love, this idea of  trying a bunch of things, looking for the tactic that becomes your strategy.

22:08

It feels like also  there's this focus of just go all in and focus on this one thing, and then try a bunch of  different ways for this one thing that you're focused on to win.

22:17

There's also an element  of...

22:17

I just had Seth Godin on the podcast, and one of his big lessons is be remarkable.

22:20

Create something people remark about.

22:20

So this celeb-oriented ad that you're working on,  I think, is a really good example of that.

22:31

Well, that is a key thought though that  he's saying, which is you got to find it, but finding that is the hard part, so you got  to be like...

22:35

One of my friends is Chris Rock, the comedian.

22:41

So what he'll do is he just doesn't  go out and do a Netflix special with all of his jokes.

22:48

He's out there testing his jokes in  clubs and doing all kinds of crazy things.

22:53

I won't go through all the crazy stuff he does  to test his jokes, but by the time it gets to the big Netflix special, he knows what works and  what doesn't work.

22:59

So that is something that we all have to do as entrepreneurs.

23:07

We need to  be testing lots of things.

23:07

We need a lot of experimentation, and we can't be too arrogant.

23:11

I think another thing that's extremely important is...

23:17

I have a pretty deep meditation  practice for three, four decades which is we have to be cultivating our beginner's  mind.

23:22

We have to use our mindfulness in a way to clear everything out and then get back  to, "What is my beginner's mind?"

23:29

In the beginner's mind, I have every possibility, but in  the expert's mind, I have few, and in some cases, maybe none.

23:41

So I've been doing this a long time.

23:41

I've been writing software since I'm 15. I'm now 60. That's 45 years.

23:47

I don't want to have an  expert's mind.

23:47

I want to have a beginner's mind, and how do I have that beginner's mind?

23:54

Because  those ideas will come at me if I can go, "What could work?"

24:00

rather than saying,  "Oh, I know what is going to work," or, "This is the one thing that is going to  definitely work," or, "We have to do this."

24:10

As soon as you start using words like that, you  know that you're going to completely implode and fail.

24:15

You have to say, "Here, we have to do  all these things."

24:15

Like in my company right now, we just did this all-hands call.

24:20

I was like,  "There's six things I really want to get done," but one thing is I didn't get everybody focused on  Agentforce and really watch the energy.

24:24

Number two is I need to find more fuel in the company to fuel  this idea because this is clearly a breakthrough product, so how do I get everyone focused on it?

24:38

Number three, where I think it's really important, we need more distribution capability.

24:44

We don't  sell through franchises.

24:44

We're not selling through dealers, resellers.

24:49

We sell direct,  so I know I need more account executives.

24:56

Number four is I need to be telling lots  of customer stories.

24:56

So, number one, customer zero, me, and number two is I  need to tell you all the stories.

25:02

Like, you can see the story of Disney.

25:06

I'm doing a huge  amount of AI work for them and Agentforce work.

25:10

Let me tell you the story about Disney.

25:10

I need to  tell you that story, and then we have this whole ecosystem of people around the company called  Trailblazers, millions of them, who know our platform.

25:20

They all have to become agentblazers.

25:20

The last thing is I just shipped the product into all 135,000 Salesforce customers.

25:25

So it's their  nascent, and they need to flick it on.

25:25

I need to motivate them to turn it on.

25:31

These are the six  things I'm thinking about all the time.

25:31

So it's not just one thing.

25:37

I'm trying to figure out what  it is, and I need a beginner's mind to assess how do I move forward, how do I evolve, how do I  inspire, how do I motivate, how do I energize.

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26:52

I love this idea of beginner's mind.

26:52

I imagine it's very difficult to operationalize,  especially for a company at 25 years old at this point. Obviously, you meditate.

27:03

You put  a lot of effort and focus into building this.

27:10

It's hard to do that within a company.

27:10

Is there anything you do with meetings, with leadership, with the way you operate that  spreads this way of thinking within the org?

27:18

Well, Salesforce is now the second largest  software company in the world, but also the second largest software company in Japan, and that's a  country where I put a lot of time and energy into. I love going there. I love going to Kyoto.

27:27

When I  go to Kyoto, I like to go to some of these amazing Zen temples.

27:34

By the way, that's one of the things  that Steve Jobs love to do, and he used to go to these great sushi restaurants.

27:40

There's a great  one in Kyoto named Sushiiwa.

27:40

If you go in there, you'll see he's signed something for them.

27:46

It  says, "All good things. Steve Jobs."

27:46

I said, "What did he do over here?"

27:55

He would go to this  great sushi restaurant, and then he would go to Ryōan-ji, the Rock Garden Temple.

27:58

Incredible metaphysical temple. I've gone there.

28:04

I've gone there for decades.

28:04

I've brought a lot of friends of mine there. Yeah.

28:09

You got to clear your mind and let it  come in. You got to receive it. You need to listen.

28:15

I remember I even brought Neil Young  there, the musician.

28:15

He's one of my favorite people in the world, and obviously, I love his  music.

28:20

His soundtrack is the soundtrack of my entire life.

28:25

We were sitting there, and he was so  deep in meditation, and then he started walking around.

28:31

The temple was closing, and then he was  in the zone, and I didn't want to bother him, but I'm like, "You know, I think we got to go."

28:36

Anyway, it turned out he had written a whole album while we were there in his head,  and he was basically transcribing it all.

28:46

This incredible creative process.

28:46

Look, we're  all writing an album in our head.

28:46

What album are you writing?

28:51

What music are you writing?

28:51

How are you getting into that zone yourself?

28:58

You want to be a great entrepreneur.

28:58

You want  to be a great CEO.

28:58

You got to clear your mind, and you got to be ready to write that music.

29:02

That music could be your business plan, your product plan, your product launch plan  like we're talking about for my Agentforce product.

29:13

That's what we're all trying to do,  and I use a place like Kyoto as a place to do that also because geography is important. Where you are matters.

29:19

I know you're in Marin, so Marin County.

29:24

Maybe you can go out to the  top of Mount Tam.

29:24

Maybe you go to Spirit Rock with Jack Kornfield and go clear your mind  there, but you got to find the place to do that and create the location.

29:36

It may not  be in the office.

29:36

It may be somewhere else.

29:41

By the way, you have the most amazing friends  list.

29:41

All these folks you mentioned, I've met. Okay.

29:44

I don't know how long this  goes. [inaudible 00:29:49]. They are cool.

29:46

I am lucky that I've  met a lot of cool people. Yeah.

29:46

I don't know how I got so lucky  to meet some of these people.

29:53

I want to zoom out a little bit and talk about...

29:53

Every month or so, I hear about a startup, I do a bunch of angel investing, that's  trying to basically disrupt Salesforce, come after Salesforce. They bash your...

30:02

don't  kill me for saying this, your user experience.

30:08

They're like, "Oh, so complicated.

30:08

It's been around three to five years." We are too complicated. I agree. Okay.

30:13

I'm curious just what you  believe is most contributed to you being able to stay on top and  continue to grow.

30:18

We're recording this today, and your stock is at an  all-time high basically even now.

30:25

Wow, I didn't even know that. Roughly.

30:29

I actually never look at the stock. Okay.

30:31

I find the stock to be very distracting, and I  encourage my employees also don't look at the stock because the stock is just a reflection.

30:35

Money isn't the goal, right?

30:35

The stock isn't the goal.

30:44

It's coming at the end of the journey.

30:44

It's like that's not why we're doing this.

30:44

The journey is the reward.

30:51

That's also something  Steve Jobs would say all the time.

30:51

Another bow to Steve Jobs here.

30:55

I think that this is really  important, and I look at myself as a startup. I am a startup CEO.

31:05

I'm a startup  entrepreneur.

31:05

I'm still at the beginning of Salesforce.

31:10

No matter what I'm  doing at Salesforce, whether I'm the CEO, I'm sometimes the chair of the board.

31:15

Like, last  week, we had a board meeting.

31:15

Sometimes I'm a product manager.

31:20

This is a startup, and we're  a 25-year-old, 75,000-person, $38 billion, $300 something billion market cap startup, but we're a  startup nonetheless.

31:29

We have some great products, but we are just starting.

31:35

As an example, Lenny,  we are just starting the digital labor industry, and we have a product called Agentforce, and we  are just starting.

31:42

We are just at the beginning.

31:47

I want to bounce around a little bit, but  let's talk about Agentforce.

31:47

I know this is, as you've said, the thing you're most focused on  right now.

31:50

It's a big bet you all are taking.

31:50

When people hear this word "agent," I think a lot  of people are embarrassed to even ask like, "What does that even look like?

31:59

What is an agent  beyond what LLMs are today?"

31:59

Is there an example you could give of something you've seen that  maybe blew your mind of what an agent can do? Yeah. I saw it in the movies.

32:09

I saw it in Minority  Report, which was a movie that was co-written by our futurist, Peter Schwartz.

32:17

Tom Cruise runs  into the Gap store, and all of a sudden, it says, "Hey. Hey, Tom.

32:25

Have you thought about this new  shirt? Look at these jeans.

32:25

You bought this last time. Now, you could try this. You could try that. What about this? What about that?" It knew his history. It understood him.

32:36

It knew what was going  on. This is 20 years ago.

32:36

This whole store changes digitally to reflect his interest, his ideas, and  it's starting to talk to him and work with him. That is an agent.

32:51

It isn't just the agent that we  saw in the Matrix, Mr.

32:51

Smith, or whatever it is.

32:58

It's someone that's working with you,  someone.

32:58

That's an interesting, for you, slip.

33:02

It's something that is working with you.

33:02

It could be your piece of software in your phone.

33:07

It could be a robot that's going to be in  your home.

33:07

It could be your car that knows you, understands your preferences, has an institutional  memory of you, and now is helping to advise you.

33:22

I'll give you an example that I'm going to...

33:22

I go  into UCSF all the time.

33:22

I'm actually just getting through an Achilles rupture right now, so I've  had a lot of interactions, and the hospital...

33:34

or you're getting your healthcare, getting  your labs done, getting your physical done, getting your scans done, whatever it is.

33:37

There's  always these pre-operative and post-operative or pre-procedure and post-procedure things, and  you're getting these phone calls.

33:43

Every time I get a phone call, I'm like, "Ugh, that  probably just cost them a hundred bucks, and we probably could do that a lot  cheaper and a lot easier with an agent."

33:58

Then, when I talk to my doctors and nurses  at UCSF, they're all burnt out post-pandemic because they're scheduling pajama time to go  through all their digital messages at night.

34:08

It's like a lot of this could be done a lot  easier with agents and AI, and we're going to make their lives a lot better, a lot easier,  simpler.

34:13

Some of those things that they're doing, they don't need to talk to me about what my  cholesterol number is because I got my labs, and the cholesterol number is this number or that  number.

34:24

A lot of this can be done with technology, and then save the parts that are important for  them like when I come to see them or I want to have a real, deeper, more empathetic conversation  face-to-face with a deeply experienced doctor.

34:42

That's a whole another opportunity for me.

34:42

That is an agent or the agent is like... Here's an example.

34:47

I had a CT scan, and you have to drink  this contrast, and then all of a sudden, the...

34:53

drink it, but they give it to you through an IV,  and then they're taking better pictures.

34:53

But then, you have to drink water to flush the contrast  out of your body.

34:57

Do you think anyone called me and said, "Hey, did you drink the water?"

35:02

No,  nobody calls me to drink the water. You have to remember.

35:07

You're on your own in healthcare in  the US.

35:07

So the agent is going to call you and say, "Hey, did you drink the water? Did you take your  meds?

35:12

Do you need to have a repeat lab?

35:12

Do you need to go see your doctor again?"

35:16

So the  agent is going to be there by your side.

35:20

So that's an healthcare example.

35:20

There's a  lot of examples that we can probably have.

35:25

There's just a story in The New York Times  which isn't about agents specifically.

35:25

It was about comparing ChatGPT to a doctor  where they tested a doctor's ability to diagnose versus a ChatGPT directly  or a doctor plus ChatGPT.

35:33

By far, the best was just ChatGPT, removing  the doctor from the equation. Yeah.

35:43

They wrote up a clinical study where they  actually did look at, in a semi-peer-reviewed way, that ChatGPT, in many cases, was giving more  accurate diagnoses than a doctor because the doctor had a more bias coming in working with  the patient.

35:59

So that's super interesting and I think something that we should probably  all look at that study and think about that.

36:09

Speaking of The New York Times, there's actually  this quote I found.

36:09

You did this op-ed talking about AI.

36:13

So the quote is, "Throughout my  career in Silicon Valley, I've witnessed numerous waves of innovation, but none compared  to the profound impact of AI.

36:17

AI is the defining technology of our lifetime and probably any  lifetime."

36:22

When was the moment for you where you started to realize this where it's like,  "Oh shit, this is not just another cool toy?"

36:33

Well, I keep having these existential freakout  moments about AI, and it's happened over a series of decades.

36:41

But for those of us who grew up with  these movies like WarGames and Minority Report or Her or...

36:48

across the board or read some of these  books.

36:48

One of my favorite books on AI is Ghost Fleet.

36:57

You think about, "Where are we going with  AI?

36:57

Where are we going with AI?"

36:57

With Salesforce, I think about our journey, and I've been waiting  for this to happen and trying to bring us along, especially in the last decade with the  development of our Einstein platform, and now the development of our Agentforce platform.

37:16

This week, at Salesforce, we'll probably do about 2 trillion AI transactions.

37:20

With our total  now, Einstein and Agentforce platforms, we're definitely the largest provider of enterprise AI  transactions in the world as far as I could tell, and I keep thinking, "Wow, this is going to  get more and more intense."

37:35

One step was we had to automate all these customer touch points.

37:43

So like wearing my Disney fanboy shirt here, we run the Disney Store and the Disney Guides,  and there's Disney Real Estate, and there's the DisneyQuest call center, and there's... Every  aspect of Disney.

37:54

When you're a customer, you're interfacing with Salesforce.

37:57

So that's what we've loved doing, automating all these customer touch points: sales,  service, marketing, analytics, Slack, integrating it all with MuleSoft.

38:08

That's what we do, and then  aggregating it all into a big database where we call it data cloud, and then federating that  data cloud to other data sources.

38:13

So that's the two steps we've been doing, automate the customer  touch points, aggregate the data, and then step three is the agentic platform on top of that.

38:26

When you think about what's happening now that you can go to help. salesforce.

38:31

com and have your  issues resolved with that on the agentic layer, that's amazing.

38:37

Then, the fourth layer that will  come will be the robotic drone layer where those robots and drones will then feed off of the  platform and all of these capabilities.

38:43

That vision of the future is something that we've  all had in the industry for years.

38:50

It's not my magic vision.

38:54

This is a vision that's  been around.

38:54

It's been the fundamentals of computer science that we would move from  having...

38:59

We'd go from data to automation, and that is what we're all driving, and we're  driving that industry.

39:06

We're going lower cost, easier to use, and more automated constantly. That's powerful.

39:12

This is really moving fast.

39:20

You mentioned Einstein briefly.

39:20

I'll  also mention my dog is named Einstein, and I got Einstein swag once with the socks, and I love them, so.

39:28

Also, that's also an  example of you bought einstein. com very early. Yeah.

39:33

That was another domain name that you owned.

39:35

Well, I just thought Einstein would be a great  name to talk about artificial intelligence, and it really has been. There.

39:40

You can  see him behind me right on my shelf, on my bookshelf. I keep him back there. You see  Einstein?

39:45

I think they were [inaudible 00:39:50]. My view is blocked. Oh, I'll go grab him. Totally. Okay. Let's check it out. There he is. Ugh.

39:55

Show and tell Segment in the podcast. Oh, yeah. Oh, cute. Yeah.

40:00

That's a big old Einstein.

40:02

That's a key part of our vision for Salesforce,  our Einstein platform was everything we're doing.

40:08

We wouldn't get to Agentforce without  getting to good old Einstein here. Very cute.

40:12

As you talk about all this, I  imagine many people are thinking, "Oh shit, we're not going to have as many people working.

40:16

What are we going to do with our jobs? AI as agents."

40:20

I know anything you say could be  taken way out of context and just like, "Marc Benioff says everyone is not  working," but I guess just...

40:25

I know you've said you're not going to be hiring as  many engineers next year.

40:29

I guess anything there to help people understand how the  workforce will change in the future?

40:35

Well, I can tell you about my own company and what  I'm telling my own employees, which is that, yeah, we're going to have to rebalance some of our  workforce because you can see it in the numbers I just gave you which is we need less support  engineers because we have a robotic support layer with Agentforce.

40:49

So that is very real,  and we all need to adapt.

40:49

At the same time, I'm hiring a lot more account executives and folks to  grow the company.

40:57

So I just encouraged everybody on the all-hands call to think about that.

41:04

Then, I just gave you the idea of healthcare.

41:10

The interesting thing about healthcare though  is that a lot of the jobs that I think that are going to get created just...

41:16

we don't have people  for, and I think there's a lot of things that we need help with in the world that we don't have  people for.

41:23

So I think a lot of these jobs will not necessarily get replaced, and I think that...

41:28

I have a home in a small town, and in this small town...

41:36

It's very much a blue-collar town.

41:36

Folks  are still working in the restaurants, driving trucks, working in the supermarket, and working  on their homes, building, construction, gardening.

41:56

Look, it's going to be a long time before, I  think, jobs in the small town where I have a home will ever get impacted.

42:02

But in the large  town where I have a home, San Francisco, well, then I just gave you an example where I think  that jobs will get impacted.

42:09

So it'll be a tale of two cities, literally, and I think you  will see different impacts in different places.

42:21

So what I'm hearing there is  support people trending down, account executive sales trending up?

42:27

Right now, that is Salesforce in a nutshell.

42:31

That touches on something I wanted to touch on  also which is that you're...

42:31

A lot of founders today are very product-minded,  very product-oriented founders, and they want to build product-first companies,  grow product-led, all these things.

42:38

Salesforce, I think, very publicly, is very sales-led, very  marketing-led, not product-led.

42:45

Obviously, product is a core part of it, and it all works together,  and all these things.

42:49

But I guess just any advice for founders that are very product-oriented and  maybe are hesitant to lean into sales, into cust- Yeah.

42:57

I would say we're not sales-led.

42:57

Well, I think let's just use  Agentforce as an example, right? Mm.

43:02

So we're running the year, we're running this  year.

43:02

This is our fiscal year 25. Okay?

43:02

It ends in the end of January next year.

43:08

Lenny,  this is the year of data cloud.

43:08

This was not supposed to be the year of Agentforce.

43:17

So it's  the year of data cloud.

43:17

I just gave you the pitch.

43:21

We've automated all the customer touch  points.

43:21

Now, we're adding the data cloud to all of our customer implementations.

43:25

We have 135,000  customers.

43:25

We've implemented data cloud into all of them.

43:31

They all need to turn it on.

43:31

Our teams  need to show our customers how to build data cloud and how it's going to help our customers have a  better data structure.

43:37

I almost combined "beta" and "data" together.

43:44

So they need a better data  structure, data architectures, data cultures.

43:51

Then, we had our breakthrough, and I can tell  you the story where all of a sudden, I'm like, "Wow, this agent technology is happening  much faster than I thought it was going to, and we are going to market now."

44:02

By the time  we get to Dreamforce, we are going to take this incredible technology.

44:07

We accelerated it radically  because we bought this company called Airkit, which is one of our Ohana... It's a great story.

44:12

Great entrepreneur have this company, fantastic company called RelateIQ that we  bought many years ago, about 10 years ago, stayed with us for many years, like six or seven  years, wanted to leave, and we said, "Great."

44:26

We gave them the investment to leave, invested  in the company through Salesforce Ventures, built this amazing platform, and then we  said, "Now, we want to buy it back."

44:37

Then, he came back about a year ago, and then  it just accelerated the agent vision, and then we delivered Agentforce production code  at the end of October.

44:46

So, all of a sudden, now, we are releasing this product.

44:53

I think it's very important, if you're an entrepreneur, to realize it's not  just about the product.

44:58

It's not just about sales.

45:03

It's not just about marketing.

45:03

It's not just about  accounting.

45:03

It's not just about your investors.

45:08

It's not just about your employees.

45:08

It's not just  about your stakeholders.

45:08

It's about everything, so you better be ready to be an orchestra  leader.

45:14

You can't just be playing the clarinet.

45:20

I think that's what you're getting to, which  is that there's entrepreneurs who are like, "I'm just going to play the clarinet."

45:24

For those,  I don't think they're going to go as far as they could go.

45:30

You want to be playing the whole  symphony, and you want to get everyone running.

45:35

That symphony is sales, service, marketing,  product.

45:35

Every part of your shareholders, your stakeholders, your customers.

45:41

You have  to be constantly playing the whole symphony, and you have to have a big mind to think about,  "Whoa, I have a lot of stakeholders in my company, not just one stakeholder."

45:52

It's not just about  product and technology.

45:52

If you're going to narrowcast yourself, you're doing a disservice not  just to yourself, but to everybody else as well.

46:02

Speaking of big mind and beginner's mind, we have  a recurring segment on this podcast that I call Fail Corner.

46:07

Where it comes from is people come  on this podcast, they share all these stories of, "Everything is going great. We're killing it.

46:11

I've had all these successes," and people get discouraged because they hear just people only  succeeding when they often fail.

46:16

So I try to ask guests to share a story, and let me ask you  this.

46:23

Is there a story you could share when it was a big struggle for you when  you're struggling when something went super wrong that you worked  through and learned something from? Sure.

46:35

Well, I'll just give this example.

46:35

About two years ago, we went through this huge transformation in our company, and there  were a lot of crazy things that were happening, but it was a little bit like we're all on this  Airplane, and everything is going really well.

46:49

Then, something seems to be going really  wrong, and we look up front, and the two pilots seemed to be missing.

46:54

Then, the one guy  with the parachute jumped out of the plane, and then we're all like, "Whoa, what are we  going to do?"

47:00

We had to do some really crazy and somewhat destructive things at the moment to  basically get the regeneration of the company.

47:12

One of those things that we did two years ago was  we had to architect a layoff, and we had never done a scaled layoff before.

47:17

We had to lay off 10%  of the company to save the company, and I didn't want to do it.

47:23

I mean, it's the last thing I  want to do as an entrepreneur, which is to adjust our headcount, but we were coming out of the  pandemic, and we had just hired too many people.

47:33

Now, it turned out that a lot of companies  in Silicon Valley all did that same maneuver during the pandemic.

47:38

Things were so robust  in the pandemic that we were overhiring.

47:38

By the time the pandemic was over, we had too many  people. I mean, what did I know?

47:43

It was my first pandemic.

47:48

All of a sudden, my next pandemic, I'll  know that there's an economic cycle associated with it and an inflation cycle too.

47:56

So I learned a lot in the pandemic, and now, we're here.

48:02

Now, all of a sudden, we're  architecting two years ago this layoff.

48:02

Then, when we did the layoff, then I'm trying to  overcommunicate.

48:07

I'm having all employee meetings.

48:09

It's a complete dumpster fire. It's  a nightmare.

48:09

I'm getting bashed in the press, on Twitter.

48:16

Everyone is shooting at me. It's like, "Oh, boy."

48:16

If I had a thick skin, it got a lot thicker during that moment because  it's never going to go well no matter what, and it didn't go well but we got through it to  the point where you're giving me these accolades, wonderful, on this podcast about where we are  today financially and from a structural standpoint or now from product innovation standpoint,  but that's not where we were two years ago.

48:51

It was clear we had to go through a financial  transformation, which included an adjustment of our head count, and we had to go  through a technology, and a product, and an innovation transformation.

49:00

Those two things  were going to require us to do a number of things, and they were going to be painful.

49:06

So we all  had to go through some of that pain to get the gain that we have now, and that was not easy.

49:11

I was in shock that I was going through this two years ago because I had already been  running the company for 23 years.

49:20

Things were going pretty well.

49:24

Yes, there were a lot of  failures during that period.

49:24

I just didn't expect another massive issue to hit me. But guess what?

49:29

There're constantly massive issues coming at you, and there's more coming, and that's the nature.

49:35

My friend, Michael Bell, is probably the best entrepreneur I know.

49:40

He says, "There is no  linear success."

49:40

So what that means is that stock chart that you just referred to, there's no  up-and-to-the-right perfect chart where it's just one line.

49:52

I don't care who you are. Apple doesn't  have one. No one has one. Okay?

49:52

There's going to be changes.

50:00

It could be economic changes.

50:00

It could  be societal changes.

50:00

It could be the pandemic.

50:06

There's no up-and-to-the-right.

50:06

If you think  it's only going to be about up and to the right, you're in the wrong business or you have the  wrong life. Right?

50:10

Hey, the monastic life is maybe more for you where you're just out living  in that more of that steady state. Right?

50:15

But if you want more variation where it's not steady  state, the entrepreneurial life is a rock-and-roll roller coaster, and you get ready because  it's going to be pounding you all the time.

50:32

One of these people that you described that  jumped out of the airplane speaking on the roller coaster ride is your co-CEO, Bret Taylor.

50:35

What's  interesting to me is he's also all-in on agents, and what it makes me think about is there's  this meme of what did Ilya see when he left and tried to kick out Sam Altman.

50:46

I'm  curious just like what did you guys see about agents being the future that you're  both so committed to this? So interesting.

50:54

Well, I just think that this idea that  agents are one of the most important things that we're all going to work on, and I  think everyone is going to go to agents.

51:01

Look, I just heard about Google today has Agentspace.

51:08

At first, I was like, "Well, I guess they like the Agentforce name." I love Sundar.

51:14

He's one  of my favorite people in the world.

51:14

We heard Microsoft now has agents.

51:21

I read Oracle has agents  now. SAP has agents.

51:21

Everybody's got agents, and good. That's what we want.

51:26

We don't want to be the only one.

51:30

If you're the only one and no one else  is working on it, you've got a problem, actually.

51:33

So you don't want to be the only one.

51:33

You want to be in a market.

51:33

You don't want to be one company offering a solution and the only  one.

51:38

You want to be in a competitive market where people are competing with you, and you're selling  against somebody else, and you're getting better, and you're moving forward.

51:51

It's like the  automobile industry.

51:51

One of my favorite people is Akio Toyoda.

51:58

Toyoda-san was now the Chairman of  Toyota, was the CEO of Toyota.

51:58

His grandfather started Toyota.

52:03

He says, "Better, better, better. Never best."

52:03

It's the Japanese motto of Kaizen.

52:10

So we talked about Japanese Shoshin,  which means beginner's mind.

52:10

Now, we're learning another Japanese word here,  Kaizen.

52:14

Kaizen is continuous improvement, and you need to be doing continuous improvement.

52:21

With where we are right now with agents, every software industry is going to move to agents.

52:28

We  have to just like every software industry...

52:28

Well, at least in CRM or automating customer  touchpoints, data and managing data, and building that data infrastructure, agents. It's all  related.

52:40

We're all moving in the same direction.

52:46

I'm just thinking as a founder, you're just  like, "Goddamn, I just got used to AI, and everyone is wanting to work on AI in my company.

52:49

Now, we got to freaking figure out agents?" No, no, no, no, no. That's a mistake.

52:54

That is the  mindset you want. You want that mindset.

52:54

You want the mindset of, "Oh, the next thing is coming.

53:04

I can't wait for the next thing."

53:04

In some ways, you have to be saying, "I can't wait for the next  failure.

53:10

I can't wait for the next success.

53:10

I can't wait for the next innovation."

53:14

Oh,  well, that's innovation overall, right?

53:18

See, we're in an industry where technology is  constantly getting lower cost, easier to use, and more automated.

53:22

So if you're doing for  two and a half decades, or four decades, or four and a half decades now that I've been  doing it...

53:27

When I started in this industry, I started on a computer called the  TRS-80 Model I with 4K of RAM.

53:32

I was doing a podcast recently, and they're like,  "Well, who did you sell your first piece of software to?"

53:45

I said, "Well, I sold it to  CLOAD Magazine in Goleta, California and- For $75.

53:55

For $75, and they said, "Thank you for..."

53:55

and  then they said, "Oh, that's great, and did you send them the disk?" I'm like, "No, no. There  was no disk.

54:02

CLOAD standard for Cassette Load in BASIC.

54:08

That was the command in BASIC, C-L-O-A-D,  Cassette Load, CLOAD. That was the command.

54:08

So that was the name of their magazine, and then you  would get the cassette every month with five or six things that they had bought from people  like me."

54:22

I mean, they didn't know they were buying it from a 15-year-old kid in high school  in Burlingame High School California.

54:25

But I had written the How to Juggle thing, and they bought  it for $75.

54:30

They sent me the one-page agreement, and I signed it.

54:36

Then, I told my parents, and  they're like, "What? Huh? You're doing what? Oh, okay. That's nice, honey. Great job."

54:43

So they didn't understand. Nobody knew. It was crazy.

54:47

It was like 1979 or 1978, so nobody  knew I was selling software. I was in high school.

54:59

It was just a moment in time, but I need to  have that mindset all the way along which is, "What is the next great thing?

55:05

What is the next  great success?

55:05

What is the next great failure?" You're growing. You're evolving.

55:10

You're learning  from that. That's what you want.

55:10

You want to have that growth mindset. Right?

55:15

You want to  embrace that.

55:15

Does it make sense what I said? Absolutely.

55:22

I jumped on that one little thought. "Oh,  gee, yeah.

55:22

I've got this now under control, but now I've got agents, so now,  what am I going to..."

55:27

It's like, "No, that's what you want."

55:30

By the way, I want  what's after that too, and what's after that, and what's after that.

55:36

That's what's really  exciting about the future. It's coming. Why? I want to be...

55:43

One of our customers said  this, and people think I said it. It wasn't me.

55:47

I want to get to the future first and welcome  our customers there.

55:47

That's what I think is...

55:47

By the way, that's what I think Elon Musk does so  well. He is like...

55:56

I don't know all the crazy things he's doing to see the future.

56:02

He's clearly  doing some unusual things, but then he's like, "Yeah, we're going to have robots in the  future, and brain machine interfaces, and driving electric cars.

56:12

All of these things  are going to be happening in the future, and I'm going to have 10 companies  that are going to do all of them." Wow.

56:23

He's not only thinking about  it, he's doing them each. Amazing, Amazing. No one like this. Yeah.

56:29

Never seen anything like it.

56:29

I don't  understand how it is even possible. Same.

56:34

Marc, I know you have to run. This was incredible.

56:37

I think this is  a beautiful place to end it.

56:40

Oh, Lenny, you're so much fun.

56:40

I've been looking forward to being on your podcast  and talk about entrepreneurship, and thanks for everything you're doing for  the industry and for entrepreneurs everywhere. Same, Marc Benioff.

56:49

We're all so grateful to you.

56:49

Goodbye now, and welcome. I feel the same. Thank you. Bye. Bye, everyone.

56:52

Thank you so much for listening.

56:52

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57:01

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57:06

You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at  lennyspodcast. com.

57:10

See you in the next episode.