Salesforce CEO Talks Vaccines, Taxing the Rich and More

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, more than a fifth of Americans have now received at least one dose of dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, with over two million people vaccinated every day. So, one of them that, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, chose to give something back. He used his 15 minute post-jab observation period for a socially distanced serenade for his fellow vaccine recipients. That was in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, bringing his cello to the vaccine place. Getting all those shots into all those arms is a massive logistical challenge. And now one corporation, Salesforce, is using its vast computing resources to help health agencies around the world track vaccinations. And the CEO, Marc Benioff, speaks with our Hari Sreenivasan about the many ways COVID-19 is changing the world for business and, of course, for all of us.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Christiane, thanks. Marc Benioff, thanks for joining us. An amazing feat of science happened in the last year. We developed a vaccine. There’s multiple versions all over the globe. Yet, here we are, the last mile seems to be a pretty significant hurdle, how to get that vaccine into people’s arms, especially in places like the United States, where it’s not one centralized sort of edict, but it is on a county-by- county or state-by-state level. And the refrain used to be, there’s got to be an app for that. So, now what is the sort of technology community’s responsibility and role in trying to make sure we get over this hurdle?

BENIOFF: Well, thank you. I mean, that is, really, I think, the question that has been on everybody’s mind, which is, how are we going to get these shots into arms? And the reality is, this is a — probably, I think, maybe the largest logistical and information technology problem that maybe the world has ever dealt with. Here, where I live in San Francisco, one in every four people already have the vaccine. And that is a case for optimism, that we’re rapidly moving towards that May 1 date, where we can open up the vaccine for everyone. And the vaccine is a miracle of science that we have it. And now we need to make that last mile connection, exactly as you said.

SREENIVASAN: Now, you guys have an initiative called the Vaccine Cloud. What is that?

BENIOFF: Well, over the last year, we have had to build a lot of software to help with the pandemic. First, we built contact management. That was a Herculean effort to make sure that we knew where the pandemic was happening and try to rapidly bring solutions to those areas. Now, here we are actually delivering the vaccine. We have built the Vaccine Cloud. This is an incredible piece of technology that we’re deploying to states, nation states, cities that help everything from scheduling your appointment, and keeping track of when you had it, any reactions you’re having to it, and then all of the reporting that needs to happen according to that schedule. So, this is something that we’re extremely focused on. It’s going very, very well. And we’re very optimistic that we will be able to accomplish our mission here.

SREENIVASAN: Is this something that’s free to local governments that are struggling with this?

BENIOFF: This is something that we actually have, in many situations, commercial relationships with these government customers. It can take on a lot of different cases. In some cases, it is free. In the case for example of Gavi that we run — that is the global vaccine initiative — we don’t charge them. That is a free initiative. So, for all of the developing nations and all the organizations that we’re rolling this out to who could never afford this technology, they would never pay. And I will just tell you, we run over 50,000 nonprofits and NGOs for free on our service. That’s part of who Salesforce is. And we deliver about $1.5 billion of free software every year to those NGOs. This is part of that program.

SREENIVASAN: There’s lots of other big tech companies that have some part of this as well. There’s the — Microsoft is part of this, workdays part of this. What makes the Vaccine Cloud different? Or are there just kind of multiple clouds doing what you’re talking about?

BENIOFF: Well, this isn’t the business that we’re in. We got here by accident. It turns out our product, which is customer relationship management — that is customer 360. We’re helping companies connect with their customers in new ways in sales, service, marketing and commerce, and that, when you buy an Adidas shoe, that’s Salesforce, or when you check into a Marriott hotel, that is Salesforce. So, we got here by accident. And what we all of a sudden realized was the technology that we were already using for companies like the Adidas and Marriott could be used to make it a lot easier to get this vaccine administered. And that’s when we went into action.

SREENIVASAN: What have you learned now, a year on into this pandemic, just about leading a company?

BENIOFF: That I had to throw everything out the window. I think that this has been a year unlike anything I have ever been in. I’m still at home. All of my 60,000 employees are still at their homes. We do have some offices open around the world, like I just saw some tremendous videos from our office in Sydney, Australia, where it’s remarkably normal. Some of our offices that have reopened, like in Tokyo, Japan, our employees are quite cautious about going back to the office. So we are still in very much the pandemic. We all are ready to go back to the new office environment, whatever that is going to turn out to be. We’re not there yet. But we are anxious to get there.

SREENIVASAN: At the beginning of the pandemic, you made a pledge. You said that we’re not going to lay anybody off for those first 90 days. And then, after that, you had about 1,000 layoffs. And how many of those people were you able to rehire? Because you have also gone out and acquired companies in that time.

BENIOFF: We have hired about 5,000 people, actually, this year so far. But, as we hire people, as we make changes to our organization, and we’re quite transparent in how we do this, we have had to make slight shifts in our company. And because we have so many employees, those slight shifts, like you mentioned, we actually changed about 1,000 jobs. Many of those people actually ended up in our company. Many of those people, we then were able to place in other companies. It turns out our industry is incredibly fast-growing. But it’s a difficult thing running a company in this environment, but you’re still running the company. So you have to be thinking about all your stakeholders, your employees, your customers, your partners, and even your shareholders. And that’s a critical part of doing the right thing in this very unusual year.

SREENIVASAN: As you have mentioned, if your 60,000 employees are at home, and that you have figured out that maybe not all of them need to be at the office at the same time at the same place, you have scaled back some of your sort of expansion efforts in San Francisco. I mean, you’re one of the largest employers in the city there. So I wonder, what happens when you multiply that by 1,000 other companies who have figured out the same thing? What happens to the downtown real estate, so to speak, of our major cities?

BENIOFF: Well, for me, I can just tell you, I just came back from my meditation practices, which is how I start my day. And I’m trying to cultivate a beginner’s mind. In the beginner’s mind, I have every possibility, but, in the expert’s mind, I have few. And this year, I have found — I run a very large company. I have offices and employees all over the world. i am doing large acquisitions. I’m making changes. I’m working on strategic customer success, like you mentioned, the Vaccine Cloud, and other major things as well that I could tell you about. But the thing that I have learned is that everything that I was doing just a year ago is gone. I cannot do what I was doing a year ago, and probably you can’t either. We have all had to change. And so I’m making those changes. And one of the changes that we’re making is how we’re configuring our real estate. We have learned that when we come back into the office that we’re going to have a different type of real estate footprint. Before, we were spending about 4 percent of our revenue on real estate. When we come back, we will probably be spending 2.5 to 3 percent of our revenue on real estate. That is a tremendous change in how we’re architected. Now, we’re growing very, very fast, as I mentioned. In fact, we’re the fastest growing enterprise software company ever. But, regardless, that is a big change.

SREENIVASAN: So, when you decide to spend less on office space in downtown, I wonder about kind of the mom-and-pop places around there that used to feed all of those office workers at lunchtime, right, all of the things that support those central cores. What happens to those businesses?

BENIOFF: Well, if we were having a conversation a year ago about San Francisco, the conversation would be a lot about, rent is out of control, real estate price is out of control, teachers not having the ability to have local housing, police and fire not having the capability to be able to live in the city that they’re serving. We were a city out of balance a year ago. The San Francisco gold rush that we were experiencing, if you will, I mean, this wasn’t the first gold rush that we had been through. It was out of control. And everybody knew that. We were trying to put some constraints in. Well, all of a sudden, here comes the pandemic. And everyone is out of their homes and they’re — they have moved or they’re changing, or we’re reconfiguring. Our city needed that in San Francisco. We needed to take a big, deep breath. We needed to really think about everything that we need to do to get back. Now, as everybody gets vaccinated, we need a new San Francisco. We need a San Francisco that is rebalanced. And as I said, this is not our first goldrush that we’ve been through. And if you look in the last goldrush or the other things that San Francisco has been through, our Summer of Love, you know, our huge festivals, you know, for gay rights. You know, as we come out of those major efforts, we have to reconfigure as a city to kind of prepare for the next level of innovation. We’re a city that’s known for innovation. It’s one of the reasons I love San Francisco. I’m a fourth generation San Franciscan, born on because on the busy narrow street. I understand the city very well. I can tell you one thing, San Francisco is a very innovative dynamic but also flexible city. And as it comes back, I have a lot of faith in our ability to come back in a successful away for everybody.

SREENIVASAN: You know, when you think about the type of office culture that you have built over these last 22 years, what does that look like in the next two or three? I mean, some of this — I mean, the urgency, for example, some of the banks have said, hey, we want to get people back in because there’s a lot of mentorship that happens informally. It’s — or, you know, Tony Hsieh from Zappos used to its sort of the creative collisions that happen in the hallway and he even design Zappos so that people from different departments would have to bump into each other. What happens when not so many people are bumping into each other, whether it’s a sales force or at thousands of the other companies that you have visibility into?

BENIOFF: Well, you are 100 percent right. You know, Tony made his memory be for a blessing. This idea that we are bumping into each other or that we need interaction with each other or we need to get together as groups to innovate, this is built into our DNA as human beings. So, that has to be part of the answer. Even now, I’m bringing small groups of our executives, employers together through the magic of axioms but also through the magic of PCR testing and other capabilities. We are — we’re able to — we are restarting how we collaborate in person. And what I anticipate is that — and if we start, as I mentioned from the beginner’s mind, we’re going to be able to create our company in an entirely new way. And I hope that we will take everything we learned from the past and then apply it to what can be, not what was. And that’s I’m optimistic about every single day.

SREENIVASAN: I know you made an enormous acquisition of slack at the end of the year, it’s an office productivity software for people who don’t use it. But you’ve also made some other big ones. I think just kind of a general company question, how do you make sure that these things all work together and serve your clients? I mean, sometimes the integration of these different pieces seems to be the hardest parts of these giant acquisitions that we hear about, and then three or four years we hear it later, OK, well, that was just kind of written off, that didn’t really work, you know, and shareholders are upset about it.

BENIOFF: Well, we’re mentioning that, that is like a major part of running a soccer company. You know, innovation comes from everywhere, you know that. And if you’re the CEO of a technology company and if you think innovation is only happening in your, you know, virtual florals, you’re making or radical mistake. Innovation is happening anywhere. And that means that you may want to bring innovation that’s not in your league in your company. We’ve acquired more than 60 companies, for example. And it’s a learned skill. Making those companies successful, bringing them together, bringing cultures together, bringing leaders together. It’s not perfect. It’s not going to work every single time but you have to do it. And that’s one of the reasons why sales force is one of the fastest growing enterprise software company ever. The reason why is because we value innovation, much like how we value trust that we value customer success or we even value quality. These are core values. And for me, I’m talking to people every single day and I’m hearing all these new ideas. And every now and then I’m like, oh, wow. That’s an idea that should be inside sales force. And I’m going to make sure that that is going to happen. And then my job is to make sure that’s for our customers.

SREENIVASAN: Do you think that innovation has been stymied by sort of increased concentrations of power, and I say that because there is now a little bit more of an interest, at least, in the Biden administration looking at more antitrust cut actions that the government could be taking across the spectrum especially focused on big social media platforms?

BENIOFF: It’s the history of our industry. If you look back at from when our industry first started, we’ve seen news waves of technology companies and innovation exactly like you said can stall. And it can stall if there is too much aggregation of power or control in any one particular company or segment. So, it is up to the government to regulate correctly you’re right. I’ve actually called for increased regulation in many parts of our industry, including on social media. We need — the government has a critical role to play and it’s important that they play that role.

SREENIVASAN: One of the things you have also famously called for is that the rich should pay more taxes. And we saw this year a staggering escalation of inequality in the United States where literally millions of people found themselves out of work, the wealthiest 100 Americans probably made somewhere close to $600 billion, an increase in their own wealth. And I’m wondering whether you would be in support of the propositions that are in Congress now, basically a wealth tax that for someone like you might cost you up to 3 percent?

BENIOFF: Well, I’m always looking at taxes and how do we use revenue streams to support those who have the least. You know, one of our core values I just mentioned is equality. One of the values — the opposite of that is inequality. So, in San Francisco, we have a tremendous (INAUDIBLE) problem. And so, I have advocated now for quite a few years that the top 50 companies each pay a very, very small part of their revenue, for the opportunity to, you know, work in the greatest city in the world but also take care of the homeless. We passed that pass (ph), it got passed by the Supreme Court. I think that’s an example of what you’re saying where those who have the most can always help the least. And this is very important and we have to make those connections.

SREENIVASAN: What keeps you motivated right now to keep this day job? I mean, look, it can’t be money any more, you have enough of that, right. You’re sort of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, most of those things are satisfied. I mean, I read in the press that you’re grooming your COO to take over for you. So, my question is, is kind of, how — is it true? And two, how long do you want to keep this day job if it’s not true?

BENIOFF: Well, as I mentioned before, this has been a year I’ve been very grateful to be the CEO of sales forces. I’ve been able to do a lot of good with my business. You know, I really strongly believe that business is the greatest platform for change, that these businesses properly architected with their — all their stakeholders, that is, as I mentioned, their employees, their customers, their partners, well, that we can really do good in the world. And talk to with many CEOs who are scaled companies now, like we’re a scaled company. So, when I talk to those CEOs, I tell them exactly that, that this is a great opportunity. An opportunity for them to take their companies, their titles, their positions of power is CEOs, do something good with it. You know, business is the greatest platform for change and we can use our businesses to make the world better.

SREENIVASAN: So, does that mean that you have to stay the CEO of sales force to do that good?

BENIOFF: Well, I am right now. So, that’s —

SREENIVASAN: All right. All right. I can see I’m not getting an answer from you on this. But, Marc Benioff, thanks so much for joining us.

BENIOFF: Thank you so much and I hope we’re about to see everything reopened and all of us get back to our beautiful lives.