Marc Benioff started Salesforce in 1999 at the height of the internet bubble. He had been working at Larry Ellison’s company for 13 years and decided he wanted to start something of his own. He was one of the highest-paid Oracle employees at the time. However, even with the financial comfort, he felt that his idea had reached the perfect time to kick off.
He quit Oracle and established Salesforce, a company that was focused on re-inventing the world of enterprise software through cloud computing. Later, in 2000 the dot-com burst happened, and all tech companies were losing money faster than they had ever imagined. Startups like Benioff’s were on the brink of death. Many of these companies decided to close up shop completely to avoid total failure.
It was so bad that no venture capitalist wanted to touch Salesforce at the time. No one was feeling optimistic about investing. Benioff recalls in a story published by Business Insider how one of those venture capitalists shouted at Benioff’s wife who was pushing a stroller up the streets of San Francisco saying, “Salesforce is never going to make it!”
Salesforce & Larry Ellison
When Benioff launched Salesforce, Larry Ellison was a close friend and also his employer. Benioff was working at Oracle for a while before Salesforce took off. Larry was one of the first seed investors in Salesforce. However, despite their friendship to date, they drifted apart after Benioff realized that Ellison had secretly launched a CRM company that was competing with Salesforce. In the years that followed, Benioff quit Oracle and later forced Larry Ellison to quit the Salesforce board.
Salesforce got its first batch of venture capital after many pitch decks, meetings, and presentations. The man who first gave Salesforce a chance with his money was Pat McGovern. After years of Benioff and his co-founder Parker Harris struggling to pay the bills, McGovern gave Benioff a chance to pitch Salesforce to him moments before he had to board a plane. McGovern is the founder of International Data Group which publishes magazines like ComputerWorld, PCWorld, and Network World. He had been investing heavily abroad, mostly in companies based in China.
Marc Benioff’s success with the Software as a Service (SaaS) model
Once Marc Benioff had pitched his “next level of software” company to McGovern, he got an investment on the spot. Later on, he would raise $62 million from McGovern and other private investors.
“It took us about $55 million before we went cash flow positive,” Benioff said.
The rest is history. And that history is good. Salesforce has a market cap of $157.73 billion as of 14th November 2022. In 2020, they announced the biggest season yet for digital sales, which were up by 50% to $1.1 trillion globally. The stocks at Wall Street are healthy as they have ever been; Salesforce is arguably the biggest CRM company in the world.
When Marc Benioff started his company, his goal was simple: to build affordable online customer relationship management (CRM) software as a service. He was one of the earliest adopters of the software-as-a-service model now commonly known in the startup world as Saas.
About two decades later, he has achieved his goal as an entrepreneur. He needed salespeople to track leads and manage clients more efficiently. More specifically, he wanted this CRM to be easy to use as it was to get a book from Amazon at that time. He and Parker Harris, his co-founder, have achieved this with a solution that now employs over 48,000 people and is loved by millions of customers. In San Francisco, they employ more people than any other tech company. More specifically, they have over 8,000 employees.
What aspect of Salesforce does Benioff value most?
Without values, it is not possible for companies to succeed. This is especially the case for startups. Big companies have the luxury of hiring huge PR agencies to fix even the worst of problems. However, startups have a smaller budget, so they need to think their PR strategy through more carefully.
In the wake of Facebook’s user data violation in the Cambridge Analytica scandals and fake news ravaging the platform, Benioff spoke out. Similarly, when Uber had issues that led to Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick stepping down, Benioff spoke up again. For both companies, he emphasized that the biggest loss they had suffered was the loss of consumer trust. As far as he was concerned, the consumers no longer trusted how their data was being used or how operations and employees were managed.
“There is nothing more important than the trust you have with your customers, with your employees, with your partners and all your key stakeholders.” ~ Marc Benioff
For startups and CEOs, his advice is to protect trust as your most valuable asset. In an interview with CNBC, Benioff said:
“In today’s world, you have to have trust as your highest value. When you lose trust with your customers, like we saw with Facebook, you’ve got to really work hard to build it back. And in that case, you have a crisis of trust. We saw that last year here in San Francisco with Uber as well. These are companies that go through an incredible crisis because they have to reboot their values.”
What guided Benioff in his early days?
For someone who faced so many obstacles, Benioff must have had guiding principles or some motivation and drive that inspired him to keep pushing on. One of Benioff’s earliest employees, Tien Tzuo, has written about his experience as Salesforce’s 11th employee and first chief marketing officer (CMO) in an article published by Forbes. This all shows one thing – drive and passion could never have been enough. So what was driving Benioff?
1) Pitching a product is more about listening
Tien once attended a meeting with Benioff where they would pitch a client on joining Salesforce. It was a Salesforce meeting that turned into a sales call, and later into a listening call.
Benioff didn’t wait for the client to explain what problems they were facing and then pitch them product features. Instead, he started asking the client questions like, “What do you think of the name ‘Salesforce.com’? What do you think of the tabs as a navigation tool? What do you think of the Salesforce colors?” He learned very early on that communicating with clients is crucial because it gives you insight into the aspects of your product that need to be improved.
The clients then replied with feedback. As the sales call went on, the CMO realized that Marc’s strategy was to test his vision, strategy, and ideas. He used this opportunity of speaking to potential clients to help him get an understanding of not only what the client was looking for but also what the client thought of the product design and efficiency. Listening was his way of pitching the product, and it worked so many times.
2) Do not be afraid of big ideas
When Salesforce first started, it was not just a big idea. It looked downright impossible. In those days, companies were spending weeks, months, and sometimes years installing heavy software to use as CRM solutions. They were basically spending millions of dollars on a product that was not really worth it. Taking this into consideration, Benioff transformed the concept of CRM systems.
One of Benioff’s goals was to cut down on costs and drastically reduce the learning curve while clearing away installation specs and procedures. Salesforce was going to be a solution online, in the cloud, and all you needed to do to use it was a $50 monthly subscription, internet, an email address, and a password.
In 2003, Benioff called Tien and asked him to prepare a different kind of software release event. Marc was tired of boring release conferences. He wanted something new to rejuvenate the upcoming software release. His idea was to name the release “S3” and release it in a movie theatre during the premiere of Terminator 3. While this caught the then-CMO by surprise, he obliged and bought all the movie tickets at once. However, before that Tien would need to raise $250k through partner sponsorships
He did raise the money after convincing the sponsors that Salesforce was up to some good. The software release was a huge success. This launch taught Tien how to push beyond his comfort zone and go for more. It also proved that it’s important not to be afraid of new ideas, despite how big they might seem.
3) Always remember your first principles
When Tien and his team came up with new ideas, a new way of doing things, and a whole new strategy, they would be so excited to present these to Benioff only for him to toss them aside. He would incessantly remind them of what Salesforce was aiming to become and why their ideas were going to take Salesforce away from the direction it was designed to go in. Those were the fundamental ideas under which Marc started his company.
Some of the questions that he asked them and indeed had asked himself years earlier while launching the company were “How does the Internet change software delivery?” or “What if CRM was as simple and intuitive as buying a book on Amazon?” It was these questions that he would remind his team of so that they did not waver from the goal and vision of the company.
Tien learned from Marc Benioff that it takes a lot of discipline to craft messages that will uphold your brand identity. Marc would deliver the same fundamental first principles of Salesforce in a thousand different ways to ensure it doesn’t become mere recitation. It was about staying on course.
4) Do not be afraid to tear up the master plan
When you start a business or get a role within a company, you always have a plan. You want to do this and that. After a month or a year when it doesn’t work, do you keep doing the same thing or do you start over?
Over the years, Marc Benioff has rewritten many new master plans for Salesforce. In the 9 years during which Tien worked at Salesforce, he rebuilt his team with a new spirit and new plans every so often when the initial plan wasn’t working.
This is the way to do things in the 21st century. When Apple realized that the populace preferred bigger phones, despite their initial stands on the phone sizes, they changed and made bigger phones. Amazon began as an online bookstore. Today it is way more than a bookstore. Salesforce is definitely no longer just a CRM company. It has expanded into more verticals in its quest to make enterprise software easily available online. Microsoft used to focus all its energy on selling more Windows licenses and Microsoft Office suites. Today, the company is moving full speed into the cloud market and making this a major component of the business.
Sometimes the best-laid plans do not work out in reality as you had planned. Even as you stick to the company’s founding principles, always question whether your plan is working. If it is not, change it. When your role at the company doesn’t seem to be working, redefine it by employing new strategies. Always be ready to tear up that well-laid plan and start over.
5) Dream big
Salesforce has come a long way. The company had a humble start. After a couple of months, Marc Benioff had the company move into an 8,000-square-foot office. There were only 10 employees, and this was in 1999. His co-founder, who has run the engineering division since the company began, was astounded that Benioff would lease such a huge space for only 10 people.
However, Benioff had chosen to see things the way he wanted them to be instead of the way they were.
“We’ll be out of here before you know it,” he had said to Parker Harris. True to his word, one year later – despite the tech burst – they ran out of space and moved to a bigger space.
6) Think about the future
Despite his disagreements and eventual fallout with Larry Ellison, Benioff has indicated in his book “Behind the Cloud” that they are still close friends and Larry is his mentor. One peculiar thing about Larry Ellison was how much he would talk about the future. People joked that he had his tenses confused and was not living in the present.
Nonetheless, Marc Benioff learned so much from Larry’s outlook on life. The best leaders think about tomorrow more than they think about the present. Leaders have to envision the future even when it is yet to happen.
Benioff writes in his book:
“A successful leader is one who is always thinking about the future, not just the present.”
7) Every employee is a marketer
When Salesforce was starting off, one thing that Benioff and Harris did was to make sure that every employee played a key role in marketing the company. There were several training sessions every year even as the company expand to hundreds of employees. They wanted to train their employees on messaging.
“It also provided information about the benefits of our service, our newest customers and partners, and our most recent awards. With this card, we leveraged everyone—from developers to engineers to quality assurance people—as integral parts of our marketing organization,” he writes in his book.
If the company had just distributed the information card, it would have been pointless. Instead, they offered training for every member of the team. In this way, they ensured employees were clear on what message should be delivered to the world about Salesforce. Benioff wanted the marketing to be first-class, and the marketing pitches to be out of this world. The training was effective and brought into perspective the message on the cards.
How Pressfarm can help with your marketing today
Startups today can leverage the existence of tools and services like Pressfarm to handle their public relations efforts. These include marketing pitches, cold emails to journalists, custom media lists for targeted pitching, compelling story angles, and long-term PR strategies. The messaging has to be honed again and again in consideration of modern PR trends. This is easier if you partner with professionals who have experience in the PR industry and are aware of the changing trends.
With a PR package from Pressfarm, you can get a professional press release, compelling guest posts, and a creative media kit, all of which can help you make a splash in your industry. Beyond creating quality content for your brand, the experts at Pressfarm have devised a successful content distribution strategy – one that has generated positive publicity for hundreds of brands over the years.
By submitting your content to quality media outlets and startup directories, Pressfarm can boost your online visibility and ensure your brand features in relevant search results across different search engines. As a client, you also have access to Pressfarm’s media database of over 1 million journalists across different niches. Thanks to this database, you can continue doing media outreach for your brand for up to a year.
With Pressfarm, you can finally share your brand story widely and capture public attention for your brand.
Marc Benioff on startup investment
For the last decade, Marc Benioff and Salesforce Ventures have made a very good name for themselves in Silicon Valley. In fact, they have put money into about 20 startups and counting. Marc is definitely becoming a big name in the venture investing world, and startups are clamouring for his money and begging to get his name on their boards.
Getting Benioff to invest in your company isn’t easy. Startups in Silicon Valley are vying for unicorn status. This is exactly what Benioff doesn’t like. Speaking to Business Insider about 3 years ago, he said he would never invest in companies that want to be seen as unicorns and billion-dollar companies before the market has validated them.
How do you validate your billion-dollar status as a startup? You get an IPO and let the market see your value. He advises startups to shun companies and investors who are just chasing unicorn status. He has demonstrated this concept using a startup known as Fitbit for which he was an early investor before it launched its IPO later on.
“There is no reason for these companies who claim to be worth billions of dollars to stay private. They need to get out on the market, run their companies with the right level of governance, and let the market rationalize these valuations.” ~ Marc Benioff
Marc Benioff at Evernote & DocuSign
Through Salesforce Ventures, Benioff invested in Dropbox, Evernote, and DocuSign long before they were billion-dollar companies. He insists that valuations should be factual and realistic, and that there is no problem with not being a unicorn.
Startup founders and investors have argued that staying private allows you to run your business in the direction you would like it to go without focusing on making more money for shareholders. However, Benioff disagrees. He has not had a problem making money for shareholders. Making money should go hand in hand with the strategy for a profitable company.
“Being a public company is good. It forces us to make sure we keep the cadence…we have to keep our eye on the ball. The unicorn mania that’s going on, that’s dangerous for our Silicon Valley economy.” ~ Marc Benioff
Marc Benioff on dealing with uncertainty and change
During a recent interview with Chief Executive, 2022’s CEO of the year addressed the period of uncertainty that the world is in. Between the long drawn-out war in Ukraine, businesses upended by COVID-19, and news about an impending economic recession, this is a bleak time for many businesses.
Rather than focus on the flux and uncertainty, Benioff advises business owners to focus on what they value.
“Number one—always number one—is knowing what is important to you and your core values […] At Salesforce, it’s trust, its customer success, it’s innovation, it’s equality, it’s sustainability. The values are your true north. When we went through the pandemic, one reason that we were able to succeed and accelerate was we just kept coming back to our values over and over again. ” ~ Marc Benioff
At 23 years old, Benioff won the Rookie of the Year Award at Oracle. When he 26 years old, he was already being paid $300,000 a year as a star executive at Oracle. He started out as an aspiring entrepreneur but today he is a golden star in marketing. He had a net worth of $6.68 billion as of November 2022 and all his conferences are still attended to by the big players of Silicon Valley. His startups are well-funded, and are a reflection of what he believes in as an entrepreneur. Startups in 2023 can learn a lot from Benioff as they aspire for growth to become the next big companies of the future.