Whether it gets spelled Salesforce.com or salesForce.com or salesforce.com, Marc Benioff’s company long ago made a name for itself — even while Benioff himself has been criticized as a trash-talking showboat and “the biggest mouth in Silicon Valley.”
In the decade it took him to guide his startup to more than $1 billion in revenue, Benioff became notorious for marketing stunts promoting Salesforce.com as “The End of Software.” One featured the image of the Dalai Lama, then visiting San Francisco, and the words: “There is no software on the path to enlightenment.” Benioff apologized, but one observer noted, “The apology itself may have been little more than additional mileage for a shameless promotion.”
Salesforce.com, meanwhile, has forged its own reputation as the tech pioneer for introducing on-demand, Web-based customer relationship management (CRM) services as a lower-cost alternative to standard enterprise software from the likes of Oracle and Microsoft. Many startups followed Salesforce.com‘s lead with alternatives for functions like accounting, payroll and marketing automation. Collectively, the trend is known as software-as-a-service, or SaaS — a vital component of the larger phenomenon of cloud computing.
Hence the title of Benioff’s recently published book, “Behind the Cloud,” billed as “the untold story of how Salesforce.com … revolutionized an industry.” While recently traveling on business in Europe, Benioff answered some questions from the Mercury News by e-mail. The following interview was edited for clarity.
Q: Some people, including your old boss at Oracle, Larry Ellison, suggest that “cloud computing” is a confusing buzzword and just a lot of hype — that we’re still talking about computer technology, not water vapor. When people ask you, “What is cloud computing, anyway?” what is your answer?
A: Cloud computing is a technology model that refers to anything that involves delivering services over the Internet. The idea rests on something we call “multi-tenancy,” and it’s easy to think of it as an apartment building, where the tenants of the building share common costs such as building security or the laundry facilities, but they still have locks on their doors and the freedom and ability to design their apartments as they wish. Consumer services like Yahoo Mail or Gmail use this kind of model — it’s how their consumers access their individual mail accounts cheaply (or even for free) through a browser without the need to install any software. It’s how myriad users share the same back-end systems. We stood on the shoulders of consumer giants like Amazon, Yahoo and eBay, which had pioneered this idea, and we demonstrated that companies could run all their business information that same exact way.
The term cloud computing gets thrown around a lot these days by a lot of companies, so it’s no surprise that some people are confused. If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business.
The way you pay for cloud-based apps is different from the way the software industry has historically worked.
There’s no longer a need to buy servers and software.
When your apps run in the cloud, you don’t buy anything. It’s all rolled up into a predictable monthly subscription, so you only pay for what you actually use.
Q: Your new book touts “the Salesforce.com playbook” and includes 111 “plays” relevant to starting and running a business. Whatever became of Liberty Software, the company you started at age 15? Did you read business books back then?
A: I began Liberty Software in high school and continued it in college, running it out of my dorm room.
Although I loved working on technology — I’ve always been a computer geek at heart — my professors encouraged me to get a real-world job working with customers.
During my time at Oracle, I also embarked on a self-guided crash course reading the popular books by the 20th-century leadership gurus such as Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins and Dale Carnegie.
I sought wisdom from the writings of Martin Luther King Jr., W. Edwards Deming, and I explored traditional spiritual texts about Eastern religion and philosophy.
I listened to hundreds of hours of tape recordings by experts in corporate development.
All of this was influential to me.
But ultimately, you take all this stuff, everything you see, everything you read, everything you learn, and you interpret it and piece it together to help you make sense of things your own way.
Q: Another new Silicon Valley business book, by John Mullins and Randy Komisar, is called “Getting to Plan B.” Did Salesforce pretty much fulfill your original visions, or did it go to a Plan B, C or further down the alphabet?
A: You must always be able to predict what’s next and then have the flexibility to evolve. People always ask me about our business plan at Salesforce.com. They are surprised when I say we didn’t really have one.
At least it was not the kind of plan you learn about in business school or the ones venture capitalists like to see.
We use something I created called V2MOM (an acronym for vision, values, methods, obstacles, and measures) as an exercise in awareness where the goal is total alignment.
It’s very simple to master and it allows us to keep our vision, while having the ability to change and evolve how we get there.
To answer your question, I think we’ve always stuck with an overarching Plan A to succeed in our end-of-software vision, but we’ve rapidly evolved it with the help of going down the alphabet, specifically by planning according to the letters V2MOM.
Q: Why did you give Salesforce.com a name that frustrates journalists, copy editors and anyone else who writes and reads English? Does it bother you to see a capital S and small F sometimes?
A: We never meant to frustrate you, and actually, that’s not how we write it. It’s salesforce.com. — all lowercase. At times our name did concern some people.
During the dot-com meltdown, everyone said, lose the dot-com! They worried we’d be branded with the dot-bombs and dot-cons.
I never considered it.
I always believed in the power of the Internet to change everything. I still do.
Contact Scott Duke Harris at 408-920-2704.
MARC BENIOFF
Title: Founder, CEO and chairman of Salesforce.com
Age: 45
Education: Bachelor”s degree in business administration, University of Southern California
Previous jobs: Management roles in sales, marketing and product development at Oracle. Worked as a language programmer at Apple. At age 15, founded Liberty Software, a company that made Atari games.
Recognition: Honored as a “Visionary” by SD Forum in 2004, as a “DEMO World-Class Innovator” in 2005 and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year in 2007. Received Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award in 2007 from the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy.
5 THINGS ABOUT MARC BENIOFF
1. His golden retriever,
Koa, has been described
as Salesforce.com”;s “chief love officer,” but is not listed
on the corporate Web site.
2. His Bay Area roots trace back four generations; his late grandfather, attorney Marvin Lewis, was influential in the development of BART.
3. He runs a company that
some employees have described as possessing a highly political internal culture, according
to GlassDoor.com.
4. He is proud of Salesforce.com”;s “1/1/1” philanthropy
policy, which dictates that
1 percent of equity, product
and employee time be applied
to charity.
5. He is fond of Buddhist
philosophy, yoga and most things Hawaiian, including
the word “aloha.”
