tv Studio 1.0 Bloomberg October 19, 2014 9:00am-9:31am EDT
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>> he may be the most influential man in san francisco. mark benioff has transformed the way that businesses do business. he has pioneered the flight to the cloud and a new model for philanthropy along the way. he launched a career at apple, became a star salesman at oracle. then he went on to start one of oracle's biggest competitors. joining me, from dreamforce 2014, mark benioff. so great to be here at one of the biggest conferences in the world. how many people are here
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today? >> 145,000 registered to attend physically. 3 million have already attended online. >> i will never forget the first time i saw your keynote. it was like seeing moses part the red sea. how much practice goes into that? >> this year, i had not been on tour, so it was a new show, and i had to practice it quite a bit. >> you announced a cloud-based analytic platform. what does it give to your customers that they did not ave? >> analytics is a category that is rich for innovation. a lot of companies have sat on their kingdoms too long and kept the status quo going. there's a long list of companies. one of those areas is analytics.
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it is a new way to look at it with mobile visualization, analytics for the rest of us. >> there are myths that are boiled down into legend. what is the myth of mark and what is the reality? >> the reality is that this took a long time. they underestimate what you can do in a year and what you can do in a decade. in this industry, if you focus and have a clear vision, you can have a phenomenal outcome, and that is what we are doing. >> you started your first company when you're 15. then you went to apple and worked under steve jobs. what was the most important thing you learn from him? >> passion. steve jobs is one of the most passionate people i ever met. in 1984, i was programming assembly language, the language at the core of the microprocessor, down at apple eadquarters. we were writing the first software for the macintosh. steve jobs came storming down the halls, motivating the
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evelopers. his energy was infectious. everybody wanted to work as hard as they could because he was there and he was working so hard. i learned that, i learned that you have to be all in. that is something i try to bring to salesforce. >> how confident are you in the future of apple under tim cook? >> i think he is doing a great job. we have seen great products this month with the new iphone. i have a 6 plus. apple is a great company, the greatest story in american business. look, steve was the greatest of the greatest, we all know that. being the follow-on will be tough. >> steve jobs and larry ellison were personal friends, but how were they different as bosses?
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>> both are phenomenal visionaries. both have a feel for where the industry is going and work hard with teams to create that reality. i think that where they are a little bit different is there a -- larry was maybe a little more of a suit and tie person, steve was always in his jeans and black turtleneck. their styles were remarkably the same. i think that is why they got long so well together. >> in what way? >> it gets back to that passion. they were passionate, dedicated, focused. the number one issue for both of them, their business. nothing was more important to steve than apple, nothing is more important to larry than oracle. there is a message in that. for both of those executives, the number one thing in their lives was their work. we all know that larry ellison is a force of nature, and what he wants, he will get.
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>> you tweeted there will only be one ceo, what do you ean? >> i am sure mark will continue to do a good job just like they have, but we all know that larry ellison is a force of nature and what larry ellison wants, he will get . whoever is the ceo will have to bend to larry. >> larry gave you money to start salesforce. >> he did. >> salesforce has -- >> that might be true. >> what did salesforce do right that oracle has done wrong? >> instead of delivering books
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or search results or something like that, we are delivering functionality. we have stayed very focused and dedicated to the idea for 15 years. because of that singular focus, we have been able to achieve great success and there is a message. ou have to be dedicated. >> is there another message that oracle missed? >> oracle has a different message. the cfo at the time said, it is a good thing you are leaving. he said, it will be hard first to do a brand-new technology model and business model because everything from the way you do software to the way you recognize the revenue is completely different. >> you and larry ellison has had a rivalry and a partnership.
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what is your relationship really like behind the scenes? >> we have a great elationship. i saw him sunday night where we were hugging and kissing. we have been friends for 30 years. it is very exciting. i do not think, with had -- i have had some great mentors. people i am thrilled to have. my parents, my grandparents and also as you mentioned steve jobs nd colin powell. i don't think anyone has influenced me more than larry ellison. i would not be the ceo i am today -- not just because of this money but because of everything.
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>> big tech companies are splitting up and why is that happening? >> there are a lot of different reasons why that is happening. one may be the companies have become too big -- the become unmanageable and you want them to be smaller units. it is easier to manage so been organization like hp, they will have one for each and that will be a great strategy for them. i think the same thing is a great strategy for ebay. a lot of other companies will follow that. >> is oracle one of those companies? >> i think that with oracle, that is difficult. number one, the distribution will be the same no matter what. oracle has to innovate at a higher rate.
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>> salesforce has been a big buyer. how do you continue to buy companies without losing focus or getting bloated? > acquisitions are hard no matter who you are. after doing 25 acquisitions over the last five years, acquisitions are hard. but you cannot transform your company. they bring incredible people into your company, and if you can nurture them, you can get results. the number one thing is that, as a ceo, you have to choose what you will be in. i only have so much time. where i spend my time is super important. i kind of divide my time into four quadrants. in a certain quadrant, my transformation quadrant, that is where i spend the majority of my ime. the things that, if i do not do them, they will not get done. there will be other things, nurturing things that are coming two or five years from now or things around the efficiency of
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the business, that i do not have to be as involved in. those transformational things, i have to pick and choose carefully. and that i can really deliver a great result. >> google delivers moonshot technologies. how much time and how many resources do you devote to nnovating from within? >> for us, that is what it is about. when i sit there with my teams, we are figuring out -- and i think wave is an example. we wanted to build a product hat would be for everyone of the company, not just analytics. number two, that it would run great on these mobile devices. not just this platform. the third thing is, behind us are a lot of developers know a ot of software ceos. they want to build on that platform and build their own companies. so we build a platform as well. by doing great, great, great democratization, great
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consumerization, and then a great platform, where delivering a new product. >> what is the salesforce strategy to get into china? >> they are a super important market. we work closely with customers there. we have to work very closely with the government. all of those things come together to create something in china. >> the nsa revelations, i wonder how much that impact your business, because you have sensitive data. will you have to have one in every important country? >> yes, but for another reason heard as the cloud is going mainstream, every president of every country want to have their own cloud. angela merkel wants the german cloud. francois hollande wants the french cloud. abe wants the japan cloud. >> they want a cloud maker. >> they should have one. they should have their own clouds. every important country in the world will have their own clouds.
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they will all interoperate, or they can have their own local versions. that is my job. >> how does that work for me security and privacy perspective? > security and privacy perspective, we use the best practices in the industry. i will say something that you already know, and that every viewer will now, there is no finish line when it comes to security. we are in a difficult and dynamic situation for cyber security. if you take any position other than that it is a tough environment, we taken super seriously and are super autious.
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>> you have sold tens of millions of shares in the last year. why? >> i have sold a lot of stock over the last 10 years, and diversified out of a percentage of my stock. but i still have a large position in salesforce. i am either of the largest shareholder or one of the largest shareholders. >> no shareholder should be worried about your ompetence?
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>> as one of the largest shareholders, i have never been more excited. >> you created the 1-1-1 model, giving 1% to philanthropy. why is this the best way? >> on day one, we want 1% of our equity, 1% of our profit, and 1% of our time into a public charity. it was easy because we had no stock, no employees, no product. now that it is paid out, we have delivered more than a 680,000 hours of community service, $70 million in grants to nonprofits around the world, including big grants locally to public schools and hospitals, and -- this is what i am most excited about. more than 20,000 nonprofits and ngos use salesforce for free. >> you are san francisco born and raised. why is giving back so important o you?
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>> because i knew i would never have real joy and happiness and fulfillment in my life without giving. i had already been through a pretty awesome ride at oracle. 13 years. i joined in 1986 to 1999. i had seen the trajectory, but what i recognized was that just building a product and selling it to the customer will not make you happy and fulfilled. as an executive, i had seen that and i saw was that if we could tie philanthropy into our business, we would have not just a good finance result, technical esult. i was perhaps too confident in my ability as a technical leader. but i wanted to have fulfillment, to enjoy in my life. i knew i would have to do something philanthropic. >> some people criticized your efforts as marketing. ow do you respond to that?
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>> it is just amazing to me that anybody can say that. because we are so dedicated, over a decade and a half, to helping other people. we are so through-and-through that this is what we are about and what we want to leave behind. at the end of the day, i am not sure that people will remember salesforce or cloud computing. but i know that they will emember the work we did in the world while we were a successful business. and all the things we did to give back. and that is what is important to me. >> inequality protests have broken out in san francisco. google buses have been attacked. you have become the social conscience of the tech
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industry. you have said the tech industry has to do more. how happy are you with the response? >> i feel very aligned with the protesters. i will tell you, what is exciting for me is that it gives me a vehicle to say to companies, give. do more. if you want to, somehow, quality -- quell these voices, show them that you are not just extracting value but giving value back. our corporate leaders are phenomenal leaders. if they can partner with the mayors and superintendents, they an do a lot of good. the more that we can make that happen, the more result we will get. we see that in san francisco and we will prove that. >> you have been disappointed, haven't you, in terms of the response of some of these companies? why aren't we seeing this? >> i can give you great examples of where i tell people that we should do more and i see them fully give and go all in. then i can give the example of a famous ceo who i will not say on your show and say don't you want to give back? and he wrote back and said, what have i been given? i created all of this. and i was like, i am taken aback
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by that. it is a point of view. the reality is that we are all working together to make this a better place. if we do not work together, it will not happen. taking that position is not going to anyone anywhere. > you are active politically. you've hosted fundraisers for president obama. how satisfied are you with his residency? >> i am not a democrat or republican. i give money to a lot of politicians, including president obama and a lot of his competitors. i am an american, i want to advocate for my causes, and programs like that give me access to them so that i can say why we should do things like philanthropy, increase cyber
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ecurity -- >> how closely are you keeping an eye on the startup community and what could become the next salesforce? >> i spent a lot of time on startups. i love spending time with them. i only get a limited amount of time. in my next life, whatever that is, i would like to spend more ime helping entrepreneurs. >> what is next for mark benioff? >> i would love to spend more time with entrepreneurs and with hilanthropy. both of those are highly constrained because i have a day job, which is running alesforce.
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i love that. i love the job, i love the industry, i love making the people behind the happy when they come to dreamforce. >> we talked about your mentors. how does mark benioff want to be remembered? >> if i leave anything behind, it should not be cloud or the democratization of software. it should be that the true joy in life comes from giving. you can be in business, you can be a ceo and have a great company, and that can be one of the greatest vehicles for giving that you ever have. use that platform to give back, and you are going to not just have great success, but you are going to be happier than you will be successful. >> mark benioff, thank you for joining us. this has been a phenomenal opportunity. >> thank you for coming to dreamforce. i hope you will come back next ear.
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>> it has been called the harvard of silicon valley. y combinator is perhaps the most prestigious startup incubator in the world. it has funded 700 companies including dropbox, airbnb, and stripe. behind it is a couple with their own startup story. how did they build y combinator into what it is today? joining me on this edition of "studio 1.0," y combinator founders and husband-and-wife paul graham and jessica livingston. thank you for joining us. paul, it has been six months
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