Speaker A
There's one building that rises above the rest of the San Francisco skyline. It's home to a software giant whose story begins somewhere more tropical.
Explore Marc Benioff's journey from a self-taught programmer to Salesforce CEO leading the AI agent revolution.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Salesforce revolutionized software delivery by pioneering SaaS and cloud computing.
- AI agents represent the next phase of automation, enhancing productivity and reducing costs.
- Marc Benioff’s leadership combines innovation, marketing savvy, and a strong company culture.
- The AI boom is a survival strategy for tech companies, with Salesforce aggressively investing.
- Ethics, security, and inclusivity are core values guiding Salesforce’s AI and business strategies.
What the video covers
- Marc Benioff founded Salesforce, pioneering cloud-based CRM software and transforming software sales.
- Benioff's vision includes AI agents, digital workers designed to autonomously complete business tasks.
- Salesforce aims to deploy one billion AI agents by the end of the year, with thousands of customers already onboard.
- Benioff's leadership style blends Hawaiian spirituality, celebrity culture, and bold marketing.
- The shift from traditional software licensing to SaaS empowered business users over IT departments.
- Benioff credits AI as a key partner in strategic planning and company growth.
- Salesforce's AI platform, Agent Force, focuses on productivity, cost reduction, and customer service automation.
- Benioff's background includes early programming interest and rapid rise at Oracle before founding Salesforce.
- The Dreamforce event showcases Salesforce’s influence and Benioff’s charismatic leadership.
- Security and ethical considerations remain important as AI adoption expands in enterprise settings.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Marc Benioff and Salesforce
- 01:12Salesforce Mascots and Branding Strategy
- 01:58Marc Benioff’s Early Life and Programming Journey
- 03:20Founding Salesforce and SaaS Revolution
- 05:17Impact of Salesforce on Software Sales and Business
- 06:18AI as a Strategic Partner and Agent Force Vision
- 07:16Marc Benioff’s Leadership Style and Company Culture
- 08:18Dreamforce Event and Salesforce’s Market Influence
- 09:11Challenges and Future of AI in Business
- 10:20Closing Thoughts on Benioff’s Legacy and Vision
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
I heard something, did you really come up with the idea for Salesforce while you were swimming with dolphins in Hawaii?
Speaker A
I did. I did. I, I, I do a great dolphin imitation. Did you know that? Can you, oh, oh my God.
Speaker A
How do they respond? Do? This is Marc Benioff, CEO and founder of Salesforce, the world's number one customer relationship management, or CRM, software provider.
Speaker A
They sell cloud-based business tools for sales, marketing, e-commerce, all that good stuff. It might sound niche, but their clients include the likes of Apple, Boeing, Amazon, and more than 150,000 companies.
Speaker A
Benioff has been called a master networker, a force of nature, Mr. Disruptor, and the Fresh Prince of software.
Speaker A
Let's just say subtlety isn't really his thing. He spent more than $20 million to license Einstein's likeness for the face of Salesforce AI, pointing to the future.
Speaker A
And if you're wondering why they have so many cuddly mascots, they're really leaning into this.
Speaker A
It's all part of the strategy to make tech and AI seem friendly, accessible, and fun.
Speaker A
Are we having fun yet? Is this supposed to be a flying squirrel? What is this?
Speaker A
Today, Benioff is all in on the AI boom with a new product, AI agents, a digital workforce to autonomously complete tasks.
Speaker A
This is what AI was meant to be. These are agents who are making you more productive or reducing your cost, making things easier.
Speaker A
He isn't the only one betting big on agentic AI, but true to form, he's all in.
Speaker A
It's like walking with a rockstar. Yeah, I'm like the Taylor Swift of tech. Don't worry. We'll give him a chance to explain that one. Okay.
Speaker A
And pose for some photos. Hello? Yeah. Here we are. Back in the Ohana Room.
Speaker A
Welcome back. Thank you, Ohana. We're so happy to have you. How do you know what Ohana means?
Speaker A
I was born in Hawaii, born and raised. And you love Hawaii, which I love. I love Hawaii too.
Speaker A
But next time if we do this, I want Mai Tais on the Big Island.
Speaker A
Let's do it. Deal. Come over. I've interviewed you many times. Does Steve ever ask you for advice?
Speaker A
No. I don't think I have a lot of advice for Steve Jobs. For more on that dispute and Marc Benioff's vision, but our vision of the future is different.
Speaker A
How can we be? What are we really trying to achieve here? And how? But I want to go back a bit to Young Marc.
Speaker A
Growing up in San Francisco. Yeah. Young Marc. So your parents ran department stores. That's true. Your first job was cleaning jewelry cases at Benioff's department store.
Speaker A
Benioff's department stores. Yeah. Who was Marc Benioff before Marc Benioff? Tell me about the young, do I even exist?
Speaker A
Is this an existential thing? Should I bring in some spiritual guru? Maybe. I don't know.
Speaker A
Yeah. But seriously, tell me about you as a kid. - I was born right there.
Speaker A
My grandfather was a supervisor and worked right there in City Hall. And he also was an attorney at 690 Market Street, right there.
Speaker A
And we used to walk right back and forth there. And he was doing civic leadership.
Speaker A
And my father, you know, was a retailer. I was just 15 years old. I was cleaning jewelry cases, and I walked across the street to a Radio Shack store, which doesn't really exist anymore.
Speaker A
And I found a computer. And in that computer, I became fascinated and I taught myself how to program.
Speaker A
I sold my first piece of software when I was about 15, called How to Juggle.
Speaker A
And that was that. - The rest is history, which is a bit of an understatement at its core.
Speaker A
This is a story all about software. A self-taught teenage programmer turned visionary tech billionaire.
Speaker A
And believe it or not, it all starts with a customer service job. In 1986, you could find Benioff answering customer calls at a not-so-little future competitor called Oracle under the wing of longtime CEO Larry Ellison.
Speaker A
Benioff's knack for sales took him straight to the top. At age 26, he became the youngest vice president in company history.
Speaker A
Then in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, Benioff struck out on his own, founding Salesforce, and the software as a service, or SaaS, industry was born.
Speaker A
Not everyone saw the potential. Nonetheless, Benioff's vision and the first of many over-the-top marketing campaigns paid off.
Speaker A
Within five years, Salesforce went public, and within a decade, both Benioff and his company were counting cash by the billion.
Speaker A
He's been no stranger to top billing ever since. I caught up with Bloomberg Businessweek editor Brad Stone to get his expert take on what makes Benioff a cover man.
Speaker A
So you've been covering tech for decades. You've covered Benioff for decades. Let's go back to 1999.
Speaker A
What made Salesforce such a game changer? I mean, we have to go back to how software was sold back then.
Speaker A
They were licenses, they were slow to install at companies. You had these very powerful IT departments that were in charge of managing the installations.
Speaker A
Upgrades took forever. Salesforce was ahead of the game in selling software over the internet as a service, hosting it in their own data centers.
Speaker A
And not only was that an entirely new model for selling software, it moved the center of gravity, the power center in companies, from these IT departments to business planners and executives.
Speaker A
You founded the company now 25 years ago. So you've seen the rise of mobile and social and the cloud, and now AI.
Speaker A
How has the CEO job changed for you? Well, the CEO job is really changing fast.
Speaker A
You know, because it used to be, I felt very alone at the top, but now, like I just finished writing the business plan for this year, and I always do that with someone else.
Speaker A
Like I take one of our executives, and for the last three years, I've also found a new partner in AI.
Speaker A
So I have an AI partner, I have a human partner, and it's the three of us who are writing the plan together.
Speaker A
So it's a little less lonely at the top of AI. Today, in the wake of the ChatGPT craze, companies, including Salesforce, are turning to AI as a survival strategy.
Speaker A
Not just the kind of AI that can generate recipes or cartoonify your family pictures, but the kind that can do your work for you.
Speaker A
In Benioff's case, the vision is a platform called Agent Force. It's these agents, these digital laborers, digital employees who are out there doing this work.
Speaker A
Servicing the customer, selling the customer, marketing to the customer, partnering with me to do the analytics, the marketing, the branding.
Speaker A
So that's, you know, exciting. You've said you'll have a billion agents on Salesforce before the end of the year.
Speaker A
Yes. - Are you on track? What are they doing? What will they be doing? I mean, we're remarkably on track because we now have about 5,000 customers deploying this.
Speaker A
And it's amazing how many agents we see getting spawned. And I mean, by far, it's the fastest growing, most exciting thing we've ever done.
Speaker A
Classic Benioff salesmanship. Marc Benioff is a larger-than-life figure in San Francisco, in the technology industry.
Speaker A
I mean, literally he cuts an imposing figure, right? Six and a half feet tall.
Speaker A
He runs one of the most important technology companies in San Francisco. Now it is fundamentally a boring company, right?
Speaker A
They sell software to businesses to help salespeople track their interactions with customers. You know, he's gonna watch this, right?
Speaker A
But what Marc is so good at is enlivening that mission and inspiring his employees.
Speaker A
He does it through casting rivalries. He does it by imbuing a mission, bringing sort of Hawaiian spirituality into the company.
Speaker A
And he also does it by seasoning the company with celebrity. You go to a Marc Benioff event and you might be seeing A-list talent, and it's sometimes easy to forget that what he's fundamentally doing is selling software and services to companies.
Speaker A
I figured what better place to see Benioff in action than his 22nd annual Dreamforce event?
Speaker A
Of course, more than 45,000 other people had the same idea. And Benioff was no doubt the star of the show.
Speaker A
Alri
Speaker A
We don't wanna lose you, Emily, in all of this That is along with Pink Kate Hudson, Imagine Dragons, Jane Goodall, and of course Matthew McConaughey, Salesforce's creative advisor and advertising news.
Speaker A
The booking app I used didn't have Agent Force. How do you get your Dreamforce game face on?
Speaker A
Well, it's hard because I think in this case, this year, everything has changed with ai.
Speaker A
Yeah. And everything has changed to the point where you have to understand that customers want the power of AI without the mystique.
Speaker A
I want to try to get to that point. I've never walked with you through a Dreamforce where Yeah, where it's, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker A
I started to think we might not make it to our live TV interview. All right, so that's The show here. You're On that side.
Speaker A
Yeah. Sorry. Gotta prioritize the customers, Emily. Yeah. Gotta prioritize the customers and the fans.
Speaker A
Do you feel like you're sort of refounding the company for the AI era? Well, I really think that, I mean, that's one way to think about it, but I think the other thing to think about it is that, did you want to get in here?
Speaker A
And I, I - And the, come on, Emily. We're Can we get it? All right? Let's do it. What are we doing? We sit here.
Speaker A
Here you go. Okay. Okay. And close for some photos. Hello? Yeah. Look at everybody. All right. It's good. Okay.
Speaker A
All right, great. What's the, what's the, what's the point of this? What it just, what's the point of any of this really?
Speaker A
Is it just the vibe? It's the vibe, The okay. Is everyone loving this? We're loving, yeah. Great. Exactly.
Speaker A
This is so Silicon Valley. Yeah, Silicon Valley will do as Silicon Valley does. But we were in a crunch, so we had limited time for canoes.
Speaker A
Here we go. Did you wanna do some golf And no time for mini golf.
Speaker A
Okay. Okay, we're two minutes out. Alright. Alright. You got the walkin talk wanted, I got the watch. I know.
Speaker A
So, I don't know if you know this, but our last interview at Dreamforce, someone spoofed it.
Speaker A
Thank you so much, Marc. It's always great to be here with you at Dreamforce.
Speaker A
- Welcome back to Show The - Rockstar. Welcome. It's a simple question. Just tell me what Salesforce does.
Speaker A
What, what do you do for your customers? They don't care. Salesforce has kind of become a meme.
Speaker A
There's these jokes out there. I is so scary. Thank you. It's okay. It's alright. It's alright.
Speaker A
People who use it say it's can be confusing. Boom, click and go back this way.
Speaker A
Boom. Here, here, click and go. That way. Boom. That way They joke that some people don't even know what it is.
Speaker A
How do you feel about your company being both a lifeline and a punchline? I love it. And also like even Elon Musk texted me and said, Hey, I, I don't understand, what does Salesforce do?
Speaker A
And I'm like, what is this? The meme? And he is like, yeah, you also have Slack.
Speaker A
Yeah, we also have Slack. You have Tableau. Yeah, we have Tableau. You also have MuleSoft. Yeah.
Speaker A
We also have all these other products. It's like, why do you call this company Salesforce?
Speaker A
I'm like, what should we call it Agent force, Whether or not a name change is in order, it's clear that agents are the talk of the tower.
Speaker A
But how far will this whole agent thing actually go? Alright, go agents. Seriously how far Salesforce's revenue has reliably grown year over year from the start.
Speaker A
But for the coming year, they gave a forecast that fell short of estimates, sparking pessimism.
Speaker A
So all eyes are on Benioff's AI strategy, what it means for the future of Salesforce, and even the human workforce too.
Speaker A
So you've said you won't hire any more coders at Salesforce, and you've said today's CEOs will be the last to manage all human workforces.
Speaker A
What does this mean for businesses? Well, I think I just had a meeting, you know, coming from a meeting with my head of engineering, and we're looking at productivity levels of 30 to 50% this year in key functions like engineering,
Speaker A
coding support. You're saying Service AI is doing 30 to 50% of the work. AI is doing 30 to 50% of the work at Salesforce now.
Speaker A
And I think that that will, you know, continue. I think that this is, we have to get our, all of us have to get our head around this idea that AI can do things that before, you know, we were doing
Speaker A
and we can move on to do higher value work. Salesforce has cut more than a thousand roles already this year.
Speaker A
While some of these employees might be redeployed in new positions. These kinds of big reductions are sweeping through businesses as AI takes center stage, Salesforce's marketing, its AI tools on their ability to replace human labor.
Speaker A
Do you have any ethical qualms about that? Well, it's a digital labor revolution that is, you know, we're probably looking at three to $12 trillion of digital labor getting deployed.
Speaker A
And that digital labor's gonna be everything from AI agents to robots. And I do think, you know, to your point, you know, CEOs have to make sure their values are in the right place and that values bring value.
Speaker A
Could an agent replace you one day? I hope so. You hope so? I mean, of course I'm partially kidding.
Speaker A
You know that, but we're becoming more automated. How secure is all this? I mean, you know, there's malicious code, there's hallucinations.
Speaker A
Like what are the risks for businesses Security, You know, there's no finish line. You can never have extreme confidence on security.
Speaker A
You have to be completely paranoid. Hallucinations is a, is a different story. The current state of the art of AI is not a hundred percent accurate.
Speaker A
Doesn't it get messier? It, it could get a lot more accurate because the models themselves are stacking their intelligence.
Speaker A
So hopefully they're honing what the truth is. And I mean, that's the hope. But right now it's not a hundred percent accurate.
Speaker A
In our own work, we're doing hundreds of thousands of conversations, just our ourself and our company with our customers.
Speaker A
And we have about 93% accuracy. Even for a large brand or a large company that we work with, like Disney, it's about 93%. It's not a hundred percent.
Speaker A
Right. 93% though, that's not good enough, is it? It's pretty good. You're able to do a lot, but you have to be realistic that we're not at a hundred.
Speaker A
You'll never see me saying that we're at a hundred percent, but I think for a lot of the other vendors, maybe they're at much lower levels because they don't have as much data and metadata and they're not able to kind of put
Speaker A
as information into the model to get to a higher level of accuracy. - That air of competition is at the heart of this AI enterprise software game.
Speaker A
You've been throwing some shade at Microsoft lately. We all know now that Microsoft copilot is basically the new Microsoft Clippy.
Speaker A
Everyone knows that at Microsoft has disappointed the world with copilot. And I mean that's Just a, that's just a repackaged chat g pt, you know that? Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker A
- Marc, - What's the beef? What did Clippy ever do to you? I think we had to make it clear the difference between what we were saying and what Microsoft was saying.
Speaker A
And what Microsoft was saying was, Hey we, this is a copilot revolution. We're all gonna have this co-pilot. It's about the co-pilot.
Speaker A
And then customers were not connecting with that. And then we said, no, look at this.
Speaker A
This is the agent force vision. This is what AI was meant to be. That these are agents who are making you more productive or reducing your cost, making things easier.
Speaker A
Microsoft did try to buy you back in the day. Does that have anything to do with it?
Speaker A
Well, I don't think we're gonna go into that. What is it between Salesforce and Microsoft?
Speaker A
Well, I mean, they're fundamentally competitors, right? I mean, Microsoft has a suite of CRM tools, dynamic 365 that competes with the Salesforce suite.
Speaker A
They compete in the cloud. Azure from Microsoft competing against Salesforce's platform. You've got a Slack which Salesforce bought competing against Microsoft teams and Microsoft's reputation for bundling software together.
Speaker A
But look beyond, I think the basics of the competition in the marketplace. Marc is always someone who has known the motivating power of a rivalry.
Speaker A
And he learned that from Larry Ellison, one of his first rivals. And so I, I think it's something that he really loves to talk about.
Speaker A
This is a market that's probably big enough for all players, but for Mark being able to target the kind of evil empire I think is valuable.
Speaker A
Google and Meta we're on trial for being monopolies. Is big tech too big? Should it be broken up?
Speaker A
It probably has been too big and it probably should be broken up. Especially when you get to ai, you're looking at the amass of even more power.
Speaker A
So these companies, they make their own models, they control entire industries. And for companies that control or have monopolistic aspects of their business, it, it has to be looked at.
Speaker A
And I think that that is a key part of the government's role when it comes to competition.
Speaker A
And that's definitely one of the guardrails of capitalism. Throughout your career, you've been an advocate for social justice, you've stood up for your employees in various states through political shifts, but more recently you've stepped back from some of the diversity and new inequality initiatives
Speaker A
within Salesforce. You've been criticized for cheerleading for the new administration. How do you navigate the intersection of politics and running a global company?
Speaker A
Yeah, it's two different things. And I, you know, I think one thing is equality is a core value at Salesforce.
Speaker A
And as someone who grew up in San Francisco, that's in my heart. You know, I guess my heart has rainbow colors.
Speaker A
And in terms of making adjustments at Salesforce, I think that, you know, when we can look at it on, in the reflection of the current administration, what's going on, even in the world, you know, there were certain things
Speaker A
that we were doing that just weren't too extreme. And so it gave us an opportunity to look at, hey, how do we slightly adjust what's going on while maintaining our core values?
Speaker A
It's a funny thing, you know, I own Time Magazine, You just interviewed President Trump.
Speaker A
We have a hundred year history that the president who's elected that year becomes person of the year.
Speaker A
Well, if we put him on the cover and if we make him person of the year, even though it's a hundred year history at time, we're all of a sudden siding with the administration.
Speaker A
What I really want Time Magazine to be is right down in the middle and to reflect both sides.
Speaker A
And I think it's great that he's on the cover. And by the way, lots of people are on the cover. And that's the idea.
Speaker A
This is obviously a cover that, you know, there have been people revered and despised who have had that quote unquote, honor Benioff got criticized for cheerleading President Trump in that moment. Is that fair?
Speaker A
I, I think it's, this is a moment to be very clear about who Marc Benioff is.
Speaker A
Okay. You know, the things that he talks about. I think these are heartfelt, but they're also tactics.
Speaker A
I mean, he's a businessman. Salesforce has a lot of business with the federal government.
Speaker A
This is not a president. You want to be on the enemy's list. So I think it was very transactional and very much in keeping with who Marc Benioff is and the intelligence that he brings to operating in the real world.
Speaker A
You've had a couple of co-CEOs who people thought would replace you. It didn't happen. Maybe you thought they would replace you.
Speaker A
Why has it been so hard to pass the torch? It's a good question. I mean, maybe you have a good analysis.
Speaker A
You know, I thought, I've been on a succession plan several times where there was a successor in place.
Speaker A
I feel like I always want to have a successor in place. I have one now. I had one before.
Speaker A
Who is it now? I've had several before. I don't think I should talk about it anymore.
Speaker A
Is one of the things I've learned because all of a sudden it like changes maybe through nothing I'm doing.
Speaker A
Or maybe it is something that I'm doing. But you can tell me privately what you think I, what I should be doing.
Speaker A
Well, so is it them or you? Why are you sticking around? Listen, number one, I've never been happier, more excited about Salesforce.
Speaker A
You know, I just finished my management meeting and then came right here and it went by like a snap, you know, because I just am so excited.
Speaker A
It's like that first minute that I walked into Radio Shack and saw that computer, you know, of course you know how life is.
Speaker A
There's ebbs and flows. But right now I'm like, wow, this is great. And it's, it's amazing what's happening.
Speaker A
I mean, I've never really seen anything. I'm sure you see it yourself everywhere you go.
Speaker A
Oh yeah. It's an exciting time. It's an exciting time. It's an incredible moment in our industry.
Speaker A
You are one of the biggest philanthropic givers in Hawaii and San Francisco, and I know you've talked for many years about how more tech leaders need to do that.
Speaker A
Yeah. What should they be taking away from the, the book of Benioff? One thing that's really powerful is we put 1% of our equity, 1% of our profit, 1% of all of our employees' time into a foundation.
Speaker A
25 years ago, it was very easy 'cause we had no equity, no profit, no time.
Speaker A
But we've been able to give away a billion dollars, run a hundred thousand companies for free on our service.
Speaker A
Done 10 million hours of volunteerism. And that's exciting. And that is what, you know, an example that we can give back and that business can be the greatest platform for change. Yeah, That's, but how do you get other people to do
Speaker A
It's well, more than 20,000 companies, I think now have copied the 1 1 1 model.
Speaker A
But to become one of the largest companies in the world and to show that you can do well and do good, this is our core value.
Speaker A
And just coming up with another tech company and another product, I was never interested in that.
Speaker A
Yeah. - That isn't what I want to do. Look at this. This is gorgeous. Isn't this?
Speaker A
I mean, you can go all over the world as we both have. You don't have anything quite like this.
Speaker A
It's just extraordinary. You have the top startup in the world right here, OpenAI. You have one of the top hospitals and medical centers here.
Speaker A
You've got so many great things happening in the city. It's just a great city.
Speaker A
Well, so what do you think about the narrative that San Francisco is in decline?
Speaker A
I think it's a false narrative. And I think that if you just come out here and walk around or we talk, if we just want to talk about business, where are we starting with?
Speaker A
We're starting with ai and where is AI being built? The people who are creating the future here.
Speaker A
Oh, and by the way, that's always been true. This isn't the first gold rush we've been through.
Speaker A
There's this complaint though that tech has ruined, the city, has increased inequality, has run out the middle class. What about that?
Speaker A
Well, I think it's been true since, like, I remember my grandfather saying that to me in the fifties and sixties and seventies.
Speaker A
It was always about, Hey, it's this company, this industry, it was banking or it's, you know, it was Levi Strauss or it was this, the Gap or whatever it was.
Speaker A
But the reality is, is that this is a huge industry and any, every city in the world is envious of what we have happening here.
Speaker A
They all want that capability. You can go anywhere, you can go to Japan, you can go to Singapore, you can go to Sydney, you can go to London, you can go to Paris.
Speaker A
Where are the top AI companies? None of those cities. They're all right here. So the Taylor Swift of Tech, do you really think, I don't know, this is my, you know, Era's tour is happening right now, and then it's over
Speaker A
and then I can walk down the street and nobody knows or cares who I am, which is wonderful.
Speaker A
So there's, I think that's the best of all worlds. You know? How do you stay so ambitious and so zen at the same time? Do you meditate Every single morning?
Speaker A
Every morning? What's the routine? You gotta come back to your breath, Emily. Okay. Yeah. You have to bring everything down.
Speaker A
And don't worry, let it all go. I feel better. Do you guys feel better? I feel good.
Speaker A
Thank you.
Topics:Marc BenioffSalesforceAI agentsCRM softwarecloud computingAgent ForceDreamforcetechnology leadershipsoftware as a serviceartificial intelligence
