Peter life is a squishy balloon you know your life is a squishy balloon we don’t have to go through your life my life our businesses are squishy balloons whose life and whose business is not a squishy balloon yeah these principles these ideas it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to handle homelessness biodiversity your business your life your relationship your marriage whatever it is the reality is is that these are the principles that can help you achieve what you want and a massive transformative purpose is what you’re telling the world it’s like this is who I am this is what I’m going to do this is the dent I’m going to make in the universe it’s a pleasure to share a conversation I had with Mark benof he is the chairman founder CEO of Salesforce this conversation took place in January of 21 right in the middle of the pandemic we’re talking together about the future of work about how to be a CEO
[00:01:00] during this difficult times had to come out of the pandemic also talking about Mark’s moonshots one of them is homelessness he’s been dealing with it headon in San Francisco and perhaps you have in your hometown as well as well as the environment Mark is an incredible philanthropist he is the individual who funded uh y Dr yamanaka to create the yamanaka factors which created induced Pur potent stem cells he’s funding research across the board on heal and biotech incredible entrepreneur an incredible CEO please join me for this master class on philanthropy and Leadership with Mark benof by the way this conversation took place at abundance 360 my year long executive Summit if you’re interested in learning more go to [Applause] [00:02:00] you are and how much you have going on and Salesforce has been one of the most extraordinary success stories I think the fastest growing software company ever um and uh with the acquisition of slack that was I’m sure a uh an extraordinary experience going through that Mark I the things that I’m most impressed by is the the scope of your philanthropy we had yesterday uh a team from uh the Gladstone and I know that you were principally uh funded yamanaka’s work on IPS cells uh I’m curious how that came about well thank you Peter it’s uh great to be with you and uh you know it’s been an exciting Journey building a Salesforce uh we’re now 54 over 54,000 uh employees and we’ll do uh more than 21.1 billion in Revenue this year we’re very excited uh with the company’s progress but looking back you know it was really all about uh
[00:03:00] focusing on three things and when you think about what are your moonshots and you’re thinking about what what you’re trying to create at Salesforce 21 years ago when we were putting together the company we said there are three things we’re going to do one we’re going to create a new technology model a new technology model um which today is easy to describe called the cloud but we realize technology was changing two a different business model for software up to that point licensing was the key part and the key to the business model was subscription so that’s very powerful because when you couple a new business model and a new technology model you can transform an industry and three we weren’t going to just build products and sell products we were going to do something philanthropic along the way and integrate service into our culture from the beginning and the way we did that is we took 1% of our Equity 1% of our profit and we took 1% of all of our employees time and we created something
[00:04:01] called salesforce.org which has become a uh very substantial nonprofit and NGO and probably one of the most exciting things is that it’s done 5 million hours of volunteerism giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in Grants on its own and runs 50,000 nonprofits and NOS for free on our our service and those three ideas really created Salesforce amazing and that’s what we really pioneered and everything came from that intention that we would create a commercial company that we could do well and do good at the same time th this is a really powerful thought for business and that we would focus and we would manage for all stakeholders not just all shareholders at the time and certainly when I went to business school I heard Milton fredman’s comment that the business of business is business our idea was the business of business is improving the state of the
[00:05:00] world so how do you improve the state of the world how do you build a company that does you know more than 20 billion dollars in Revenue has a global management team but has the right values the values that is what is really important to you you know as an entrepreneur you have to make these decisions upfront number one what do you want that’s what you’ve been asking you know what is your goal what is your moonshot what is your vision what is your idea but number two what is important about it what are the pioneering values and we’ve seen lots of different entrepreneurs have different kinds of values don’t we and when we look at those values that was when we asked the question what do you really want as an entrepreneur what is really important to you well different entrepreneurs have different value systems and we can see that across the board look at the social media entrepreneurs look at the you know uh energy entrepreneurs look at the automobile entrepreneurs different different entrepreneurs have different kinds of value that is what they want
[00:06:01] and what is important to them is different so you have to decide not only what your vision is your outcome where you’re going what your direction is what your trajectory is but what is important about it is it about trust is it about Innovation is it about equality is it about power is it about control you just said is it about money is it about market share well look everything cannot be important you have to choose you have to make choices especially as an entrepreneur and you can’t just say everything is important to me because if everything is important nothing is important you have to choose because when you have those values in hierarchy then you can really operationalize your values and I’m happy to talk about how to do that what that means and when you operationalize your values that’s when you can get transformation and that’s when you can get change let’s do that because I think you hit on probably one of the most important things as people
[00:07:00] are calling their shots and shaping their future their values their guide post having a Target to shoot for but also the values you’re going to maintain as you shoot for that that Target and I I am curious about how much of of a moonshot success like Salesforce is luck timing your emotional drive you the company’s values the team how do you rate those things you know it’s not about rating them it’s really about operationalizing and I think that this is really the I think where people kind of really struggle and I think in our industry that we have a whole concept called okr there there’s another you know there’s a lot of different methodologies for kind of getting your head around things look number one the most important thing is you’ve got to start with a beginner’s mind you have to really let go of the past look we’re in a new world I’m at you know I’m basically at home all everyone’s at home and you know we we have to let go of the past we’re in a new world we’re in a new world and where we’re going is
[00:08:00] completely different than where we were going even just a year ago so we have a new world and we’re going in a New Direction well this is an opportunity to have a beginner’s mind you know in a beginner’s mind there’s every possibility in the expert’s mind there’s few or no possibilities so you need to regain your beginner’s mind especially at a time like this and a key way to do that is what the Japanese called Shin that is to really kind of clear your mind really let go of the past to really say what is it that I really want not what my mom wanted or my dad wanted or my friend wanted you know but what do you really want because at the end of the day you know 20 years from now you’re going to look back go this is what I really wanted so do you want to be the richest person on the world is that the most important thing to you do you want to heal the planet you know and restore ecological balance is that the most important thing to you do you want to dominate your industry whatever it is
[00:09:03] is that the most important thing to you do you want to create a breakthrough Innovation that transcends your company and inspires others is that the most important thing to you do you want to create an industry you know and change the Dynamics of that industry is that the most important thing to you get clear about what do you really want what is your outcome because whatever you focus on you’re going to get you’re going to have that emotional Fitness the energy the power all these things that you’re talking about you’re dancing around on the stage you know great and then but what are you focusing on what are you focusing on yeah and what is it that you really want that’s step one but then step two gets right into okay now what are the values look for me at Salesforce the most important thing to us is trust nothing is more important than the trust we have the trust we have first of all myself as an entrepreneur I have to trust myself two others do I have trust trust with you do I have
[00:10:00] trust with others do they have the Integrity you know do they do they have the ability to work with me do they say what they’re going to do trust where is trust in the hierarchy for me it’s up at the top not for everybody so I talk to and I work with people all over the world trust may or may not be at your highest level but you need to kind of look at how important is trust you know one of the books that I love reading is the Psalms the book The Psalms when you read those psalms trust is a big part of what is being written in there go back and read that that will like inspire you around the word trust second one is for me is customer success you know if my customers aren’t successful I’m not successful my customers aren’t happy I’m not going to be happy so that that’s a key driver for me and my company that is I’m all about making sure that others are successful it’s not enough for me to be successful the others must be successful or I cannot achieve my success and really the third thing is
[00:11:01] then about you mentioned you know we’ve received a lot of recognition for the Innovation that we’ve achieved over 20 years different outside periodicals or national engineering organizations or whatever it is innovation is extremely important to us but you know like for us it’s a dance what’s more important customer success or innovation a lot of people in our company go innov a tech company we have to have innovation has to be first but I will like push back customers because if we’re building product for product’s sake it doesn’t mean anything if the customer isn’t successful but that is a dance you know inside our company these values have to sometimes dance together sometimes it’s hard to have a priority sometimes it’s hard to have an order but number one trust two customer success three Innovation and four for us is equality the equality for every human being it’s why we do our work for homelessness it’s why we do our work in education that you mentioned it’s why we
[00:12:02] would do our work in the environment because the environment is a quality so those four values then we start to operationalize that so that’s the you know the the first step is get clear about what you want the second step now is get clear about what’s really important to you what are your values what are the principles the tenants that you’re going to buil B build your idea or maybe your life on who are you as a person in your heart of s what are your values and three now I’m going to get into whoa how am I going to create all these things how do I take my vision and my values and turn it into my manifestation and that’s the third step that we call methods that is methods how do I get what I want well look back to our values methods and actions and those kind of okr world now we’re in the okay look that’s operationalizing your values that’s all it is and the best way to do
[00:13:00] that is you want trust what are the three things you’re going to do to get trust tell me what they are you know you’re going to do what what what action are you going to take are you going to build ethical guidelines for your company are you going to build information security are you going to be transparent in your operations how do you build trust inside your company and tell me how much of those things going to cost the reason why that’s important is this is going to become your operating budget as well which is a critical part for any entrepreneur how are you going to get customer success going to hire some salespeople are you g to hire some customer success managers are you going to operationalize customer success and some powerful way how much are those things going to cost you and three Innovation you’re going to hire some Engineers you’re going to build some hire some product managers going to build some products what’s that going to cost you INE equality okay you’re going to pay men and women the same for the same work you’re going
[00:14:02] to you’re going to take care of your local schools you’re going to be a net zero company which I hope every single person is signed up to be well what is that going to cost you and you start to add those things up you’re having the beginning of your plan here’s what I really want here is what is really truly important to me and here is how I am going to get it this is my operationalizing my values and then the fourth thing four step is now what is preventing you now this is where things are going to come up these are your obstacles these are the problems where you’re going to call people go oh boy I’ve got a problem this is not working out this is an issue and by the way those obstacles manifest through those values what is preventing you from having trust what is preventing you from having customer success what is preventing you from having Innovation what is preventing you from having a quality or whatever your core values are your values could be quality they could be they could be all kinds of different
[00:15:01] things and you could be saying what is preventing me from having that and then step the fif step in that I kind of get my head around is how do I know now that I have it what is my measurement what does the world look like and that’s the measurement how do I know I have trust what is my measurement for trust how do I know that I have customer success hey thanks for listening to Moon shots and mindsets I want to take a second to tell you about a company that I love it’s called levels and it help helps me be responsible for the food that I eat what I bring into my body see we were never designed as humans to eat as much sugar as we do and sugar is not good for your brain or your heart or your body in general levels helps me monitor the impact the foods that I eat by monitoring my blood sugar for example I learned that if I dip my bread in olive oil it blunts my glycemic response which is good for my health if you’re interested learn more by going to levels. link back / Peter levels will
[00:16:00] give you an extra 2 months of membership it’s something that is critical for the future of your longevity all right let’s get back to the conversation in the episode your book Trailblazer which I’ve read is a is a beautiful story that hits on all of these beats and and and gives you the details here so please I commend the book to everybody watching um uh and what I’d like to do is shift a little bit to some of the big moonshots you and and your wife Lynn have been extraordinary philanthropists um uh far more than than most people in Silicon Valley by by significant amount uh are you open to talking about some of the big moonshots and some of the things that you’re most passionate about uh because I think one of the things that’s important is I want to inspire everybody watching on the notion that you can go big you can go bold you can because if you if you say you can’t then you’re not um there’s there are there are you know four or five that I want to at least
[00:17:00] touch on you decide what you want to talk about the one trillion trees uh homelessness um ocean Plastics biodiversity those are four that I’ve heard you speak speak to can you which one do you want to jump into what are you what are you excited about making a Dentin well I mean let’s go right to homelessness because it’s such a complicated issue for every major city in the world but especially where I live in San Francisco it’s a major issue and you know with homelessness uh it feels very you know like you can’t get through it that it’s too difficult and or that you should you know this isn’t my issue this is the mayor’s issue this is uh the the homeless um organizations issues yeah and the way I manage my business is through stakeholder Theory which is I’m managing for all my stakeholders not just my shareholders and that idea of stakeholders well you have to Define like who are your stakeholders that you’re managing for they have to be part of your vision and I’m managing for all my stakeholders that is of course my customers are my stakeholders so as I
[00:18:01] mentioned managing for them my employees are stakeholders I have to manage for them okay my partners are my stakeholders my shareholders are my stakeholders who else are my stakeholders well the public schools you know I’ve adopted a public school I’ve adopted a school district i’ you know everyone should be adopting a public school who are the key stakeholders in your community that you’re going to adopt as an entrepreneur now well I’m you know we’re the largest employer in San Francisco so when I’m walking to our headquarters building you know well if you’ve been to San Francisco you know there’s a homeless issue well what am I supposed to do just ignore it or you know there through the grace of God go I what is it you choose what is your level of compassion or what is your you know level of ability to see yourself and others you know are you the other or you yourself and this is really important you know how do we look at that this is
[00:19:02] where after a while it’s like whoa we’ve got to do something so you know we can form we can fund the local NOS that are taking care of the homeless you can give money directly to the homeless you can look at the budgets you can but eventually say wow I don’t know how to move forward so I realized that we need a lot more funding we needed a much more aggressive action towards the homeless and we created something in San Francisco called Proposition C and we wrote a very simple proposition and saidou know what a very small tax on the very largest companies would fund $300 million a year into the homeless and we could directly address this problem in a material way we also started at the University of California San Francisco with medical doctors the research that is published by the way in New England Journal of Medicine AMA clinical trials how to actually deal with the homeless I’m not
[00:20:01] an expert on home I’m not a medical doctor I don’t know about addiction I don’t understand about mental health issues but I know that where there are people like that I know where they are I know who those experts are so bringing them in and then saying okay now if we did this if we had the funding and we had the expertise how do we put it together to really address this look at the end of the day the answer to homelessness is very simple at home everyone who’s homeless needs a home it’s not that complicated housing is a critical part but you also have to address the addiction issues you have to address the mental health issues and there’s other issues that you have to address so we focused on creating something called propy in San Francisco we got that on the ballot we had a huge fight a huge fight mostly with people out of our town who are anti- taxers who came in from outside San Francisco and said oh no all taxes are bad you know it’s very pavian
[00:21:01] for a lot of people especially cosos you say tax they say no it’s a pavlovian response but it’s not true in a lot of cases you need the ability to directly address serious social issues with taxes and in this case these um homeless Services needed to scale so he put on the ballot 62% of San Franciscan said we agree this is the right approach then the anti- taxers was not good enough for them they had to come back and sue again and they kept it in the courts once the Supreme Court of California and we won and now there is the all this only been going actually for about 90 days all the funding that we now need to directly address the homeless situation in San Francisco is in place so is what is that well it’s clear what did I want what was important to me you know how am I going to get it by the way how what is my obstacles like
[00:22:00] these anti- taxers and then how will I know that we’re successful ultimately you know that we have a reduction in homelessness in San Francisco and that we are able to get you know our city back into a stable ecosystem just to hit on that last point I think without a Target you’ll miss it every time and being clear about what you’re measuring and whether you’re going in that direction is so critical and homelessness is such a squishy balloon you push in one place and it comes out another do you have any kind of a actual metric over a timeline that you’re targeting yourself Peter life is a squishy balloon you know your life is a squishy balloon we don’t have to go through your life my life our businesses are squishy balloons whose life and whose business is not a squishy balloon yeah these principles these ideas it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to handle homelessness biodiversity your business your life your relationship your marriage whatever it is the reality is is that these are the princip principles that can help you achieve what you want but you’ve got to get
[00:23:01] clear about what you want you need be able to take a pen by the way I do this all the time just take a pen and I just say what do I really want and write it down five 10 words maximum and then I’m like what’s really important to me I can’t tell you the thousands and thousands of time that I do that exercise and now I’m getting older you know I’m 56 I’m not 36 when I started my company I was 34 you know I hav’t didn’t graduate when I was graduated college when I was 21 you know my values you know and and how I look at the world it changes as I get older of course and now it’s still works I write down what do I want and then I just write down what is the number one word that is most you know clear to me on what my value is and then how am I going to get that so if I’m working on a new project like I was just on the phone with an amazing climate scientist in in Switzerland and we’re talking about some amazing vision that he has for biodiversity he’s already published some
[00:24:00] amazing research on something called one trillion trees he’s just an incredible person and when I’m on the phone with him I’m trying to get clear what do I want what does he really want what are the values and are our values congruent that is what he wants and what I want and what’s important to him and what’s important to me I need to ask that question you know I listed his values hey hey Tom tell me what do you really want Tom what’s really important to you these are tools not just to ask for yourself you could say it to others and then that helps you model and profile them so you can say oh this is now I understand this person or this business or this entrepreneur you know we have a lot of as I said earlier we have a lot of different characters entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley where I am and you can say okay well I know this entrepreneur so and so you know they’re really great now just tell me what do you think’s the most important thing to them what is true truly the most important thing to them and how are they
[00:25:00] operationalizing that in their business as Priority One and you can see it it will give you the gleam of insight into that personality and that person but then if you’re going to connect with that person or you’re going to try to you know either do business with them or you know invest in them hey that’s going to give you the ability to say yes I want to align with that person because they have the same values that I have or hold on you know what that’s not giving me the best feeling this is giving me a little bit of the Ebie jeebies here that this person’s values are not exactly what I want because everybody’s values are different and let’s not put any judgment on there right now let’s just say that you have the ability to look at these look at everyone or everything or your company or abstract and say okay yes I can align here because you can choose what you want to do and what your life is going to be about and you have to think about it from from the perspective of not just your vision not
[00:26:00] just your moonshot the moonshots are very important no of course going to the moon but what is most important about it what are the principles that are guiding us there let’s jump into uh the environment because I it’s you’re a you’re super passionate about that you’re a great spokesperson for it you’re supporting the work there do you mind jumping into one trillion trees and educating the the community about that well I just was uh had a you know one of my men tours is uh I was just on a conference with Al Gore who’s really inspires me over and over and over again I’m sure all of you have watched know him read his books heard him speak um and you know for someone like me I’m I’m not an environmentalist I don’t really understand a lot of the environmental actions it’s taken me a lot of work to try to understand what can I do you know I’m the SE of a software company what should I what can I do so you know the first thing that kind of
[00:27:00] came to me was well I guess I could commit to my company being Net Zero because clearly it has to Al it’s all about emissions number one so how what is our rate of emissions in our company and we’re a big company so we have emissions so how do we reduce those emissions how do we bring them to zero how do we become Net Zero and then how do we Net Zero our whole supply chain as well and that is a big motion for a company and for a big company it’s a very big motion and also like for some I was just uh in the same event we had the CEO of one of the largest oil companies in the world that is a very big motion for him very complicated you know how do you go Net Zero but I think for each entrepreneur you know raise your hand are you Net Zero now are you net zero now or are you not Net Zero because we all can say we’re for the environment but you have to to say you’re for being Net Zero and if you’re not Net Zero when
[00:28:01] will you be Net Zero and this is a big motion because we have the tools we understand the principles and I think this is also what our employees want too and our stakeholders and our shareholders they want us to become Net Zero we have to bring Global emissions down we all know about the Paris Accord we all understand these Global emission targets so that means each one of us have to assume some level of Net Zero okay then you start looking at Carbon you know and what is the carbon math and this is the complicated part which is you know when we have so much carbon in the environment and we’re emitting carbon in the environment the number one vehicle for sequestration is right there on your screen the ocean the ocean is sequestering more carbon than it should and you know probably on the neighborhood hood of 2 to 300 gigatons why is that well you know what is the
[00:29:02] number one technology for sequestering Carbon on the planet you just saw Elon Musk just tweeted he’s going to have a carbon capture technology contest for $100 million his moonshot I don’t know if he’s doing it with you or some other organization you know the thing is is that that moonshot that idea carbon capture you proba if you follow the Tweet stream some folks came in and say oh I got the invention here the tree yes tree is there’s there’s other ideas but that’s one so by by the way just to the numbers I think uh if I’m correct Mark there’s about two trillion trees or there three trillion trees on the planet if you planted an additional trillion trees that would bring us back to pre-industrial CO2 levels in the atmosphere well you are right we used to have Six Trillion trees on the planet and each trillion tree sequesters a little over 200 gigatons of carbon now these dampy monocultures this has to be highly Diversified you know um planting
[00:30:03] it has to be it could be far it could be by the way it could be um old growth forests it can be uh regen and and far regenerative farmlands these things all add up but the reality is we need to get back to what is essentially one trillion more trees we have three trillions now we have lost half the trees on the planet we’ve gone from 6 trillion to 3 trillion and as we’ve burned those trees or they’re gone that where does that carbon go well guess what it goes into the atmosphere some of it gets sequestered back into the ocean that’s why the ocean is getting hotter I’m not a SC I’m not a climate scientist so I’m not the right person to do this lecture and then if we plant more trees we can sequester more carbon or maybe Elon Musk was going to invent the next carbon capture technology ology that would be very exciting too you know you see some other
[00:31:00] great entrepreneurs out there like Bill gross and others who are all trying to create carbon stores but yes we need to sequester carbon so one step is we need to go net zero so to reduce the emissions the second step is we need to sequester um that uh carbon that’s out there and then the third step I would also suggest is wow we’re going to have more plastic in the Ocean than fish by 2050 there’s nine rivers that are dumping the majority of plastic into the ocean you go into a lot of these developing countries you see the people in the village are there no other way for them to get rid of their trash they put it into the rivered the river comes at night the trash is gone it’s in the ocean we have ways that we can get that ocean out of that plastic out of the ocean one is get it out of the river first and so we’ve started to put River machines in these nine major rivers using technology like you’re talking about like AI robotics and we can start to uh make a difference but that’s a
[00:32:01] very serious issue also on my mind Mark are you willing to go to uh some Q&A with with the community now sure and I also just want to say Benny off ocean initiative we’re running you know crowdsourcing ideas on how to get ocean plastic so you can go there and submit your idea and we’ve been funding entrepreneurs with their ideas to get to address ocean plastics for example nice and and thank you for the work you’re doing hey everybody I hope you’re enjoying this episode I to tell you about something I’ve been doing for years every quarter or so having a FLOTUS come to my home to draw Bloods to understand what’s going on inside my body and it was a challenge to get all the right blood draws and all the right tests done so I ended up co-founding a company that sends a fonus to my home to measure 40 different biomarkers every quarter put them up on a dashboard so I can see what’s in range what’s out of range and then get the right supplements medicine peptides hormones to optimize my health it’s something that I want for
[00:33:01] all my friends and family and I’d love it for you if you’re interested go to myli force.com back/ Peter to learn more let’s get back to the episode let’s go to uh to Shan viz for the first question Sean first I’d like to say just a word of thanks for your Relentless pursuit of not only philanthropy but um also activism um both in Indiana in 2015 and um in my home city of California I think philanthropy can come easy for some people but activism kind of requires taking a stand and I respect how you advocated for your employees um my question is I’d like to talk about kind of what you think about the kind of local quote unquote Exodus of jobs and companies from the Bay Area uh given the new remote work and High Cost of Living uh you kind of hear these horror stories of Google and employees Moving to Wyoming and being able to
[00:34:00] outspend their local communities or even there was a uh one employe that worked at both Google and Facebook remotely and and was busted so what do you make of that well I think you know what we’re definitely in a new world which uh we call the cloud that’s a catchy term you know this Cloud boy you know I don’t know much about it you the reality is look everyone on this uh call everyone knows what the cloud is the cloud is is that you can basically do everything from your computer so you’ve got video you’ve got collaboration you can take your seminar from Peter or his friend Tony Robins whatever you want you can do it all in the cloud maybe we can do too much in the cloud we also need to have some human interaction and uh also we you know want to get out and be in in nature too but here we are in the cloud let’s just address that for one moment we’re in the cloud all right well can I start
[00:35:00] a company in the cloud can I run my company in the cloud well let me tell you for the last year I have a company that’s 54,000 people I have a second company Time Magazine we’re all in the cloud let me tell you funny story We a year ago exactly I basically called the guys at time I said guys pandemic is coming this is not going to be good you’re going to have to go go home and start producing the magazine and the mag Magazine’s amazing if you haven’t seen the magazine time.com subscribe it’s awesome and get my sales pitch in there because we’re trying to the importance of the Free Press and they they said you know Mark you know you don’t know what you’re talking about we can’t produce a magazine at home this is crazy we’ve never done such a thing time is 100 years old never produced a magazine at home I said go figure it out guys go figure it out I didn’t have to do very much more cu the next day the mayor of New York shut down New York and said everybody go home because we’re going to
[00:36:00] try to stop the pandemic so they’re on home now we’re all on Zoom hey guys W we’re all back on zoom we’re all in the cloud yes when’s the magazine come out well we have to produce by Thursday I’m like all right let me know how it goes guess what in my mailbox on Friday the magazine showed up it was the first magazine in a hundred years produced at home in the cloud if we can run a magazine of the cloud I also have a 54,000 person company called Salesforce that no one is in the office anywhere in the world so guess what we’re doing it all in the cloud we also make tools in the cloud we’re using Zoom like this in the cloud we have this thing called Salesforce works in the cloud I have a friend of mine Michael Dell called me said look I got a problem here in Austin Texas said what that Michael well we’re gonna have to call close our call centers tomorrow and we’re moving everyone into their home to answer all the questions I said no problem guess what you’re on sales for us boom you’re done so that idea
[00:37:01] that we’re in the cloud we can move now where do you want to work you can basically work anywhere we’re in a new world we’re in a digital world right look at you look at me right you’re not sitting on top of the procedo and say Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge behind you you’re at home with some background okay so we’re in the world we’re in the cloud this now is a whole new world we can do anything we can do it from anywhere I can work from and I can be anywhere and I can collaborate and I can use these basic tools that we’re talking about here the alignment tools they still work in the cloud you can still ask questions in the cloud you can still get congruence to your values in the cloud you can still align your methods in the cloud and when you do that all those same principles come together and you’re going to have success in the cloud as well so how will that be for San Francisco how will that be for the world well the whole world is going to reorganize and reassemble and that’s what’s happening right now and I think that that’s a great thing because look
[00:38:01] I’m all for you know things moving forward and that’s what we want we want things to move forward for San Francisco before this hit just speaking as a fourth generation San Franciscan I can tell you we were sold out there was no room for anybody we’re a small little city 7 Miles Square it’s a finite space it’s a tidy little space in the you know in Cali San Francisco and there weren’t enough Apartments there weren’t enough homes there wasn’t any commercial real estate it was sold out and so prices were going way up so could this help maybe renormalize the system and bring some equilibrium back to San Francisco well this isn’t our first gold rush in San Francisco okay this isn’t our first Summer of Love San Francisco is the home of gay rights we know how to create and innovate and change the world all right and this will be great for San Francisco it’s still the number one Tech economy in the world except for one other place is very popular right now the
[00:39:01] cloud thank you thank you Sean let’s go next to Jeffrey Branch Jeffrey congratulations on Proposition C um you raised 300 million now through through it how do you stay involved and get government to execute wow interesting all right well it’s 300 million a year which is amazing and very important because this is a hard problem in our city and the question is how is it governed so there’s a couple things that I did one is I didn’t architect all of propy but part of propy has a phenomenal thing called a governance committee that includes basically a number of people who are all critical stakeholders in homelessness a little bit of government some science homeless NOS homeless Advocates some people who have been homeless and they are the ones who decide where the money goes that’s very cool when we were fighting propy see it was all about people were saying oh you can’t you know we’re going to get this
[00:40:01] and the mayor can’t decide and this kind of the reality is all it’s all it’s a collaboration and then I did something else I gave $35 million to University of California San Francisco to create the Benny off homelessness initiative and the Ben off homelessness inative has scientists the best in the world medical doctors primarily phds who are running the clinical trials that are published in the major scientific journals around the world run by an incredible lady named Margot kushel and she basically and her team then can advise this committee on where the money should go to be directly addressed homeless and she has also addressed me you know basically addressed Mayors and all kinds of cities all over the world and help them solve homelessness this is an very solvable problem now we have the resource we have the intellectual capability let’s let’s get it done fantastic thank you let’s go next to Pierre LZ LZ just one question do you
[00:41:00] take a different leadership profile between leading your company and advancing your nonprofit agenda and if yes how do you think this profile beir it’s a great question you know and it’s kind of related to the last question about advocacy and uh and uh you know we you know we we did get a call from the state of Indiana Mike Pence who is just retired as vice president was the governor at the time and he had signed a law that basically discriminate discriminated against the lgbtq community and and many of our employees are part of the lgbtq community and contacted me and said we cannot work in a company in a state and be we the number one Tech employer in Indiana where they’re discriminating against the LGBT community and so we had to dispatch our lawyers and I knew Mike Pence very well I called him and said hey let’s work this out and we did we negotiated it which is how all things should get resolved through communication and
[00:42:00] collaboration I am not two people I am not Mark Ben off the philanthropist over here and mark benof the CEO over here I’m not talking to you One Direction saying let me tell about my company and everything we’re doing to create the world and then saying over here let me tell you all the things I’m doing to improve the state of the world I am one person one integrated human being and maybe this is the most important thing that we can all do is to say you know what you want to change the world you want to have a nonprofit agenda business is the greatest platform for change your business is your platform for change you want to change the world use your business and by the way what’s the platform to to manage your business you it’s not Two Worlds it’s not two Executives it’s not two people by the way people do this in their marriage too I’m one person in my marriage I’m one person in my company two different personalities I’m one person with my friends I’m one person in my company I’m
[00:43:01] one person in my church in my synagogue in my mosque I’m a different person in my company or at home no be one person be one integrated person remove your incongruencies let them surface and resolve be integrated you’re far more powerful if you come together as one self so for me I don’t have a nonprofit agenda my whole life is the same it’s one integrated purpose and if my business isn’t helping me to achieve my goals all my goals then what’s the point 99% of all my time is spent on my business just like everyone else’s you know so I want to make sure that the work that I’m doing with my business is improving the world not just I’m 99% making money and then over here when I get one hour a week I’m going to you know go call the homeless shelter and find out what I can do for them no I can have one integrated life and that’s what
[00:44:02] I recommend that’s beautiful great question PR thank you so much let’s go to Joe Honan next Joe hi Peter hi Mark um first of all thank you so much for what you do I’m a big fan of Salesforce and an even bigger fan now of the one trillion trees initiative my question for you is you know Salesforce has been helping other businesses reinvent themselves to the cloud but as a business with 54,000 employees and $21 billion of Revenue do you feel a need to reinvent Salesforce in a postco world and you know with assuming that is what amount of time what amount of capital do you think is a a a recommended or an acceptable percentage in pivoting your company for a postco world great question and um let me answer it in two ways first of all the beginning of every year I sit down and I do the exercise that I just
[00:45:00] went through with you I’ve done it for 21 years before I ask anyone in my compan to do it I have to do it I have to answer the question for Salesforce what do we want what are our values you know how are we going to get it and then I’m like and I’m doing and I want to do that from a position of a beginner’s mind forget Salesforce even exists forget anything we have ever done okay what do I really want forget the 21-year history of Salesforce what do I really want this year and then I start writing writing writing writing and I have that V2 Mom right in front of me of what I want to create for this year all right now boom that was January 2020 oh pandemic oh man PPE not on there contact tracing systems not on there vaccine Cloud not on there money for mental health for my employees not on
[00:46:01] there okay taking care of the small businesses in my community not on there whoa beginner mind boom new same process again right because the world changed so I need to change world is changing I am changing I’m not going to do the same thing it’s different world I need a new plan all right now here we are 2021 I’m about to launch my new fiscal year February 1 who are we everyone’s at home are we the work from home leader everyone’s rebuilding their relationship with their customers how are we going to build through customer 360 and deliver a single source of Truth whoa everyone is more focused on our stakeholders than ever before starting with how are we going to get everyone in California vaccinated how are we going to resolve all the cases how are we going to contact Trace how are we going to you know do everything necessary to resolve the pandemic so one two three new plan completely new
[00:47:00] plan as part of that plan I actually did an acquisition uh that you probably read about a month or two ago the second largest acquisition in the software industry largest applications acquisition ever which was the acquisition of slack I don’t know if you’ve heard of it it’s a it’s a collaboration amazing collaboration work from home company and then integrating Salesforce in slack means that all of our products can immediately become work from home I think work from home is not going away back to our previous questioner I think we’re in a new world I think work from home is a critical part of that and every single one of salesforce’s capabilities our sales Cloud our service Cloud our marketing Cloud our Commerce Cloud our core platform our analytics our ability to integrate they all need to be work from home first so it’s critical for us to either a take some existing technology we have and we’ve pioneered things in that area like something called Salesforce Chatter or B really go for it
[00:48:01] and say you know what we’re actually in a new world we’re in the new world where your corporate headquarter is this thing called the cloud that means we’re in a new Cloud it’s not Cloud one when I started my company was Cloud one which was Amazon and tabs and it was a basic UI on my computer then it was Cloud 2 was mobile and social and these incredible new capabilities we’re into Cloud 3 now Cloud 3 is the new work from home world you know Cloud 3 is the customers expect everything from me world and Cloud 3 is also we’re in a stakeholder based world where PE our communities expect more from us as CEOs than any ever before so we better be able to step up you know as CEOs As Leaders as entrepreneurs and give back not just create products and sell products but give back as well and so that’s why we really said okay we’re going to we’re going for it we’re going to buy oh we’re going to buy slack sorry about that we’re going to buy slack and
[00:49:02] we’re going to make this happen we’re gonna go next to Ross Thornley and then to George bandarian Ross and thank you very much for that question Joe hi Mark hi Peter thanks uh my question evolves around what you’ve just been talking about this pace of change where the context of yesterday is different by tomorrow and how are you preparing your Workforce and how do you see Society preparing the workforce for their different careers roles reskilling whilst maintaining positive mental health through all of those changes and Transformations and friction so I’m very interested in this because we measure adaptability as being a key component for future success you’re are right you know people need to be reskilled retrained they have to be able to really pivot and shift and move into new positions they need to be able to quickly skill themselves with new things great example mental health right how do I meditate how do I take care of myself during a pandemic I’m at home I
[00:50:00] don’t have the social infrastructure that I had before I need to talk to somebody you know what that’s why we built trailhead.com so we built to directly address for our employees and our customers a reskilling revolution we want to skill and certify and train and build community and give feedback to people and we’ve done all that through this trailhead.com and as part of that we it took it one step forward for mental health we’ve even started an incredible new series called be well together which you’ll find on YouTube started by the way at Salesforce I mean I could go through all the things that we did to try to survive the pandemic over the last year but one of them was wow our third of our employees were reporting mental health issues including me so I’m like whoa how am I going to make this happen where how am I going to go forward so we got some of the best people in the world world and we started to have dialogues with them and invite in our employees and say here are the
[00:51:01] things you need to do to M sure not that you have just physical health you know eating well working out getting checked out by your doctor but mental health because mental health and physical health are health so now when we look at that that’s a whole another level of training and capability that we have to provide as a company so we’ve been able to institutionalize that and be well together on YouTube and also in rail head it’s something that every company has to do so much so we start to get a lot of questions from our customers whoa we don’t have these resources we need these now we just open we just gave it all opened up all the doors and and gave it to everybody so fre very important going forward yep amazing thank you very thank you very much Ross next go to George mandaran hey Mark uh this is great so far uh the last two questions uh I want to just kind of double click off of so so emerging VC here in LA with a thesis around the future of work so I’m just
[00:52:00] curious to get your take on kind of what are the trends the inflection points what’s happening enterpr Enterprise kind of SAS B2B um we you’re talking about some of them but you know would love to get your perspective on you know what what would you advise me to look at as far as uh investing well I have my own little hobby which is Venture Capital myself so you know I probably get about an email a day from entrepreneurs they just email me at my either my corporate or my personal address and I see business plans and I’ve been very fortunate to invest and it’s become a far bigger thing that I could have possibly imagine some of the companies that I’ve invested in just went public and you know some of my friends like Max Levin at a firm or uh David Gerard at upstart Brian chesky at Airbnb I’m about to see some very exciting new um entrepreneurs very exciting entrepreneur in New York who’s
[00:53:00] started an amazing company called Compass about to go public so what I am doing is things like that’s what Salesforce is doing so that’s the Salesforce VC sun which has had some great outcomes with things like Snowflake and zoom but things that I like are number one like we just talked about digital health I think digital Health tella Health the ability to be healthy online using the things that Peter’s talking about artificial intelligence and others we are at the beginning of a digital Health Revolution there is no question another one you know Peter sitting on the moon during this conference here with this thing behind him space is obviously going to be very important you know I’ve been fortunate to be in invest in a few space type companies like SpaceX or swarm or Planet Labs or Astra I think space is an exciting category I think that’s another one that I’m very you know very interested in and the third one is biodiversity I think companies that are focused in biodiversity and healing the
[00:54:00] world using this technology I love this little company called Winward Winward is a company where they take geospatial information they’re able to use uh transponders on boats to identify who’s over fishing who’s illegally fishing they’re also able to provide information to insurance companies so people who have boats can get great policies because they can prove oh hey I did all the right things very exciting so those are really my big three categories that I’m I’m most most excited about right now wonderful thank you George let’s go to David Chu one of our Platinum 2020 members we want to thank you for all your Visionary philanthropy over the years uh you mentioned San Francisco is a small City it turns out I was my office was at 621 Street caddy corner from your new Salesforce Tower and about 15 years ago I remember that you announced the $100 million gift for the children’s hospital and we’re all stunned you are also well known for twisting the arms of a lot of the wealthy folks and forcing them to contribute question I have for you is
[00:55:01] that last year we heard Dr George Church say that if you can’t do the research and get through a first stage human clinical trial for less than $2 million you’re not smart enough to tackle the problem could you tell us how much you needed to fund the yamanaka research well Shin yamanaka is obviously one of the great you know Visionary scientists of our time winner the Nobel Prize he uh is half based at UCSF in San Francisco and half based in Kyoto University Kyoto probably being you know my second favorite city in the world after San Francisco and his yamanaka factors we’ve seen have been critical to us understanding cell regeneration and he can take normal St stem cells turn them into uh sorry normal skin cells turn them into stem cells and he’s even been able to show that you can put those in your eyes and get reverse demac vacular generation so we’re not that’s he’s a Visionary Beyond Visionaries and he’s is like focusing on really exposing the mechanisms of how that transformation works when you’re doing basic research
[00:56:02] like he’s doing we’re Beyond clinical trials that’s what I really enjoy I like basic research I just did some basic research investment in prostate cancer prostate cancer therapies are not moving fast enough I’ve invested in a prostate cancer team to just look at basic research the biome we all know how important our biome is our doctors will say to us well you’re taking antibiotics so you better go take probiotics which probiotics which ones actually work which how do I do that how do I reboot my Biome what is a synthetic biome basic research I just funded some basic research at UCSF in Stanford I love basic research that’s the area that really excites me and uh when it comes to getting to clinical trials and Drug trials and all that I would have to say I’m not your best person to talk to because I’m much more thinking about the really the beginning of it all thank you David appreciate that Mark if I can
[00:57:01] squeeze one last question in from uh Judy Fairburn Judy hey a real honor I’m a big slack user and love it I hope that’s going to be your main platform with everything else tied into it in the future um it’s so I’m a co- CEO of a purpose-driven business the 51 and uh women LED Capital investing in diverse Innovative startups so my question to you is in this time this terrible CH but opportunistic time how are you energizing and double dies double down on the women in your organization to really make a difference given all they have on their plate it’s a great question and I’ll tell you that uh this is something that’s been you know a major focus in our company now for several years and when we think about um women in our company there’s probably a number of critical issues uh one of course is opportunity and providing equal opportunity um another critical area is preventing sexual harassment I feel is extremely important and we have zero
[00:58:01] tolerance in that area three is equal pay for equal work this is extremely important and I think in regards to the pandemic you’re right it this is another level of complexity where you know we’ve tried to be as flexible as we can on uh work hours and times and teams and you know we’re still I think at the beginning of understanding how do we balance all of this together and I’ll give you I’ll give you a real answer a real challenge that I have which is I’m about to do a major presentation and the presentation is going to be at 4M it’s going to be three hours and one of our top female leaders said wait a minute I don’t know if you can do that because that’s going to put a huge burden on me and my family whoa you know that’s something that we have to kind of look at how are we going to handle that you know we cannot ask people then to participate in that presentation need to make sure that it’s recorded that they can view it that there’s no interactivity required to have respect
[00:59:00] for that time so these issues I think are you know front of mine for me and 10 years ago 20 years ago or look at when I went to college do you think I took a class on gender equality at USC no I did not did I do a class on equal pay I did not did I take a class on preventing sexual harassment I did not do I know you know did I hear about equal opportunity maybe that was the bumbling beginning of that in the 80s you know but we’re in a new world and so I think this kind of advocacy and bringing these issues forward one other area I think that’s extremely important investing in women ENT entrepreneurs in encouraging a women venture capitalist to make sure that we have impact funds set up specifically to address and impact women one of the uh companies I just mentioned to you that I’m very excited about swarm which is a tremendous satellite company it’s run by a phenomenal female entrepreneur very that’s very exciting you know from my my standpoint
[01:00:00] thank you so much Judy for that great question Mark uh grateful for your time I know you have a heart out right now purpose Bren drought values a beginner’s mind operationalizing it let’s hear it for Mark Benny off everybody thank you so much