These tech CEOs, they need to realize if they want to do business in San Francisco and use all of our civic resources, and in some cases have gotten mid-Market tax breaks, then they should be more than happy to give a small amount — which is what San Francisco is for San Francisco largest companies — to help us focus on our number one issue.

Marc Benioff

Categorized in : Technology

The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.

Marc Benioff

success motivational inspirational

You need to get to the future, ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive.

Marc Benioff

ready customers needs

You have chosen the wrong path if it's not fun. And you are probably not taking enough risk if it's not hard and rocky sometimes.

Marc Benioff

entrepreneur risk fun

Once you know what you want and what is important for you to achieve, also define the values associated with it. What is important? That is something a lot of entrepreneurs pass by too quickly. For us, the things that were important were, No. 1, customer success. Nothing is more important to us than making sure every customer is successful in our service.

Marc Benioff

entrepreneur business successful

You must always be able to predict what's next and then have the flexibility to evolve.

Marc Benioff

next able evolve

I always tell people: Life is the dance between what you desire most and what you fear most. You've got to be able to deal with the threshold of control.

Marc Benioff

desire people

Most of all, I discovered that in order to succeed with a product, you must truly get to know your customers and build something for them.

Marc Benioff

succeed customers order

The only constant in the technology industry is change.

Marc Benioff

constant industry technology

I know Donald Trump quite well. We've never shared values, he and I. But I respected his ability to turn it around. So I respect somebody who can turn things around and be successful. I think the president's communication style is the most difficult thing because he actually does care, people who know him know he cares. But his style of communication, his combative approach, the elements of ego that are obviously there in all of us but seem to be more easy to see in the president sometimes than other people, get in the way of his capacity to lead, unfortunately.

Marc Benioff

communication successful thinking

I think a critical part of being successful in our industry is having a beginner's mind

Marc Benioff

successful mind thinking

Staying relevant is key. When you're telling your story, you better have a modern story to tell. If I was still saying the same story I was saying 10 years ago, it would not be that interesting.

Marc Benioff

keys years interesting

If there wasn't any competition, I'd be very worried, because it would mean we were not doing very well.

Marc Benioff

worried competition mean

I’ve seen how important this concept is in business. To be truly successful, companies need to have a corporate mission that is bigger than making a profit. We try to follow that at salesforce.com, where we give 1% of our equity, 1% of our profits, and 1% of our employees’ time to the community. By integrating philanthropy into our business model our employees feel that they do much more than just work at our company. By sharing a common and important mission, we are united and focused, and have found a secret weapon that ensures we always win.

Marc Benioff

successful winning philosophy

Life grows relative to one’s investment in it.

Marc Benioff

relative investment grows

The world is being re-shaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work.

Marc Benioff

technology powerful opportunity

One problem we discovered, for example, was that our "create a new account" button was in the wrong place...By simply moving it to the left side, mirroring the way people read, we saw a huge improvement in the way people used the site.

Marc Benioff

buttons people moving

As we talk about devices, you should never forget that behind every one there is a person - a customer. It“s not the Internet of Things, but the Internet of People - of customers. We are moving to one-to-one relationships.

Marc Benioff

never-forget people moving

I don't look at business as a zero-sum game. I don't. I've never seen it play out that way in our industry, and I think you innovate and you add value, deliver value back to customers, and you get value back from the world.

Marc Benioff

zero games thinking

You don't want to be the only car company. When you're the only car company and there's no competition, customers may not know what a car is, the roads may not be developed for cars, there may not be gas stations everywhere.

Marc Benioff

gas-stations competition car

There is no finish line when it comes to system reliability and availability, and our efforts to improve performance never cease.

Marc Benioff

availability reliability effort