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Benioff on being hacked: We're looking into some next-gen fax machines

Salesforce CEO talks diversity, investments and, yes, making the world a better place

Charidee

As always, Benioff took up a good deal of his keynote talking about his charity and non-profit work. And, of course, that included multiple repetitions of the Silicon Valley mantra of "making the world a better place."

"There are two types of entrepreneurs: those who want to make money and those who want to make the world better," he noted the first time while pressing the founders and entrepreneurs in the room to sign up to the Salesforce "pledge" that they will dedicate one per cent of their companies' equity, time and product to philanthropic enterprises.

He talks passionately about the "1-1-1 model," claiming that taking the approach will attract Millenial employees who want companies to do more than just make profits. Every company is "deeply tied" into your local economy and life and it's each company's responsibility to support that, he argued. "We're in a new world where CEOs have to think about others and not just themselves," he reiterated again.

Benioff took the same stance when it comes to diversity, noting that Salesforce also challenges companies to look at their HR figures and make sure women are being paid the same as men. As for racial equality, that is "much more difficult" in the the industry, but the company is dedicated to fixing it.

It's hard to argue with such philanthropic instincts, although it must be said, it is much easier to profess such high-minded beliefs when a company is already hugely successful. Benioff disagrees of course: "When you are a little company, you may think that [giving one percent/pushing equality] is overwhelming. But the reality is that if you don't do it at the beginning, you are never going to do it."

Money, money, money?

It's also a little hard to ignore the fact that for more than a year, Benioff has been at odds with his own stakeholders who complained bitterly about his massive $39.9m pay packet in 2015, despite the company's less-than-stellar results. And then froze a pay raise and cash bonus in April this year when he ignored their complaints (he still walked away with a $33.3m package though, so don't feel too sorry for him).

And of course there is the fact that Salesforce has still yet to actually make a profit. On stage, Benioff talked about how a company's decisions are not just about its shareholders but also its stakeholders – basically everyone directly impacted by the company. He ascribes to Stakeholder Theory, which adds a socioeconomic factor to a company's driving forces. Although, of course, it is still shareholders that have a vote, and based on their willingness to use it to curb Benioff's charity to himself, it is possible they may extend that to the company's larger charitable giving if the figures don't point toward the black.

For now though, Benioff is sitting pretty. Asked why he doesn't think that Salesforce has been "disrupted" by other companies in the past 15 years, he points to a process he carries out each year.

"Every year, I ask myself a few questions about what I really want, what is preventing us from getting it and how to measure progress toward it," he noted, "and then I take my vision for the world to my executive team and at the end of a process we end up with a team vision. We get clear about it and then go for it.

"So I think the reason we haven't been disrupted is that we have disrupted ourselves."

And that is Benioff in a nutshell. Infuriatingly confident to the point of arrogance – and yet probably also right. ®

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