20VC: Marc Benioff on The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge? Marc Benioff's Five Step Process to Priorities and Why Money Does Not Make You Happy & Work From Home vs In-Person; How to Manage in Changing Worlds

Marc Benioff is Chair, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Salesforce and a pioneer of cloud computing. Under Benioff's leadership, Salesforce is the #1 provider of CRM software globally and one of the world's fastest-growing enterprise software companies. Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999, and it is now a Fortune 150 company with 70,000+ employees. Benioff is the owner and co-chair of TIME, and the founder of TIME Ventures. Benioff is the author of the New York Times bestseller Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change. Benioff was named “Innovator of the Decade” by Forbes and is recognized as one of the World’s 25 Greatest Leaders by Fortune. In Today's Episode with Marc Benioff We Discuss: 1. The Future of San Francisco: What would Marc do if he were in charge of San Francisco today? What would he change with regards to housing, policing and crime? Why does Marc believe there are doomsday proclaimers on SF? What do they have to gain? Will Dreamforce always be held in San Francisco? 2. Money and Ambition: The Mind Behind a $200BN Machine Does Marc believe that money makes you happy? How has Marc's relationship to money changed over time? How does Marc think about bringing children up in a more affluent home? What does Marc advise anyone who is seeking "happiness" today? 3. Mastering Decisions and Prioritisation: How does Marc assess his own decision-making framework today? Has it changed with time? What is Marc's 5 step process to understand your own priorities today? What does Marc believe are the three biggest priorities for Salesforce today? What are the single biggest blockers that would prevent Salesforce from achieving their goals? 4. Marc Benioff: AMA: What does great fatherhood mean to Marc? Who would win the cage fight, Zuck or Elon? What does a day in the life of Marc Benioff look like? What does Marc think about work from home?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Marc Benioff?

  We must enforce our laws. I don't think it's a lot to ask. We have to fund our police force. From the time that Gavin Newsom was mayor to today, we've gone from a little over 2,000 cops on the streets in San Francisco now to about 1,400. That's completely unacceptable and we need to now expand our police force. It's the most beautiful city in the world and the safest and the cleanest. And the dimly narrative, which is that there's like some doom going on, they aren't even San Francisco.

• 0:27Harry Stebbings?

  So today's show is a testament to persistence. I've wanted to have Mark Benioff on the show for the last eight years or 3,000 episodes. I cold emailed him, different cold emails, 53 different times, A B testing different effectiveness levels. Finally, we made it happen. So for those that want to give up, for those that do not think they will make it, just take the next step. So without further ado, I'm so, so proud and very honoured to welcome Mark Benioff, founder and CEO at Salesforce. But before we dive into the show today, this episode is brought to you by Tegus, the go-to research destination for bold investing. Tegus curates expert insights, analysis and financial data to give you powerful perspective for your investment decisions.

• 1:09Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:53Harry Stebbings?

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• 3:15Harry Stebbings?

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:17Harry Stebbings?

  Mark, I have been looking forward to this one for a long, long time. First, thank you so much for joining me today.

• 3:23Marc Benioff?

  It's always great to see you, Harry. Thanks for having me on your show.

• 3:26Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all. I'm very much looking forward to this. I want to start, we had Dreamforce last week. I want to start with a broad question, but tell me about your vision for AI. How do you see AI from this point forward?

• 3:37Marc Benioff?

  Well, I mean, we're going through an unbelievably great and exciting time for AI. I have to be honest with you, I thought this moment was going to happen about 10 years ago. I had a bit of an existential freak-out myself at that moment and ended up making a lot of major investments for Salesforce in AI, building our teams, acquiring a number of exciting companies, and then we built our Einstein platform. And that's kind of how we became the number one enterprise AI today. We're moving, obviously, and everyone knows, the new version of AI, which is beyond predictive and generative. And then we've got another big wave coming very, very close, which is going to be autonomous and agents. And then, of course, we'll get the AGI. And I think that these four waves-

• 4:20Marc Benioff?

  are all happening in a way simultaneously, in a way that I think far exceeded my expectations.

• 4:25Harry Stebbings?

  When you sit in the Salesforce boardroom, what are the reasons that Salesforce wouldn't win the next five to 10 years for AI? What are the hurdles you have to overcome?

• 4:34Marc Benioff?

  Well, we are in a remarkably good position. Number one, because we're in San Francisco, which is the number one AI city in the world. That's where all the talent is and all the great startups and companies. And it gives us a leg up on the ability to invest in these companies, but also to tap into the universities like Berkeley and Stanford, which have had such huge impacts on the AI world. So the other great thing about Salesforce is the nature of our product is that we command a lot of data. So we don't look at our customers' data, but we built our AI. In fact, we were really the first AI that was built where it was able to operate on the data without us seeing the data. And that's really the magic of Einstein is that Einstein operates with a complete trust layer.

• 5:16Harry Stebbings?

  Many people suggested that, you know, you mentioned SF being the center there. Many people suggested that you're in Hawaii. How do you respond to them? Is that fair? Is that not fair? Are they missing something?

• 5:28Marc Benioff?

  Um, I've always lived half and half, back and forth. I've just loved both places and I'm fortunate that I can go back and forth. It's a short flight. Last week, you know, I was in San Francisco all week. This week I'm in Hawaii. Next week I'll be back in San Francisco and so it goes. Usually I'm with customers. That's my number one place where I'm living. You know, people who say something like that, maybe they look at my life as being how they operate their life. But my life is not static. It's a quite a dynamic moment and every I'm constantly on the move.

• 5:59Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned SF being at the center there. If you're in charge of San Francisco today, what would you do?

• 6:04Marc Benioff?

  You know, the thing that I've noticed, especially on social media about San Francisco is that there is a, and this has always been true about San Francisco, is that there tends to be a bit of a political group who is trying to jockey for a certain level of power in the city. And by doing that, they kind of position San Francisco in a certain way, which is not true. If you look at any of the interviews that I did with Matthew McConaughey or with Gavin Newsom or with Sam Altman, you'll see I ask the audience constantly, how many of you are seeing a totally clean San Francisco? You'll see all the hands going up. On independent press interviews that are done, you'll see reporters asking that of people walking around the city. Part of that is there's this whole thing that they've created,

• 6:47Marc Benioff?

  this concept of this doom loop narrative. And the doom loop narrative, which is that there's like some doom loop going on. And Harry, you and I should come into San Francisco and walk around. And I assure you, you will not say that it's a doom loop. And in fact, to that point, real estate is on fire. We just subleased a quarter million square feet of space in one of our buildings to former Slack headquarters, to a company that didn't exist a year ago. And I think that San Francisco real estate will certainly be sold out again because of the huge amount of startups that are happening in San Francisco, but because of this kind of political group that has like trying to commandeer social media for a lot of different reasons. To eliminate taxes, to this, to that. They aren't even in San Francisco, by the way.

• 7:32Marc Benioff?

  And we can go into that. Why that is true, I'm not sure. But it's always been true in San Francisco that you end up with a group of people like this.

• 7:39Harry Stebbings?

  So what would you do if you were in charge?

• 7:41Marc Benioff?

  I have a 10-point plan I could walk you through. Or I'll send it to you, Harry. It'll be much easier and it goes through in detail exactly what I would do. And it's something that I evangelize with all these folks. We must enforce our laws. I don't think it's a lot to ask. We have to fund our police force. But we have a great police force in San Francisco. But from the time that Gavin Newsom was mayor to today, we've gone from a little over 2,000 cops on the streets in San Francisco now to about 1,400. That's completely unacceptable and we need to now expand our police force. It's the most beautiful city in the world and the safest and the cleanest. And we have the statistics to prove it. But sometimes it doesn't deliver the goods every single day. And it's kind of a funny thing about San Francisco,

• 8:24Marc Benioff?

  but it's also one of the reasons I love it so much.

• 8:27Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned Martin McConaughey there. People don't know this. I run every single day and I listen to his commencement speech on the 13 truths. I find it actually centers me. Fuck meditation, that's what I need. And he says one thing, he says, well, he says many things, but he says, "Life is not easy. Most things are more rewarding when you have to break a sweat to get them." And I was listening to this and I was like, I wonder what Mark would say to that when I ask him, "When you reflect on the immense success of Salesforce, what comes to your mind when you think about breaking a sweat to get it?"

• 8:56Marc Benioff?

  Well, he's one of my closest friends and we spent a huge amount of time together. And I'll just tell you that, you know, what he says is don't half ass it. And that really comes from his dad. This family is a family of people know who they they get it done. That's why I think he'd be a very good a mayor or governor or even a president. Because he's a get it done person. When he was working on his book, you're like, oh, I'm going to write a top book. I said, Matthew, you're going to write the number one book. And then he became the number one book. He like completely goes for it. And it's incredible how he lives his life. He's an amazing person. He's a father, he's a son, he is a CEO, he is a philanthropist, he is an actor, he is a writer. When it gets right down to it, he's an incredible person in all these things. Because he believes that he can do all these things.

• 9:40Marc Benioff?

  He will do all these things and he must do all these things and he does. And it's a incredible thing to watch. I've never really met anybody like him in my life.

• 9:48Harry Stebbings?

  When you think about the Salesforce journey, what was the thing you had to break a sweat for? How did that feel?

• 9:53Marc Benioff?

  You know, inspired by people like Matthew, I feel like I need to continue to work harder, do more, go to more places. Obviously, if Dreamforce is going to be successful like it was last week, I'm going to have to be there, be a huge participant. And that's true on a lot of things that I do all over the world. So you got to go there and make it happen.

• 10:11Harry Stebbings?

  I have to ask, when you were young, did you always have an inevitability of success about you? Did you know that you would be successful?

• 10:18Marc Benioff?

  I don't look at it as success. So maybe that's part of it. You know, when I was young and I worked very closely with my partner from my high school software company is one of our primary engineering leaders and architects, Steve Fisher. And when we started our software company in high school, we were both about 14, 15 years old. And we were writing software on Atari 800 and Commodore 64 and Apple II. And it was an amazing time because nobody knew what we were doing. We're building these entertainment software products and different titles and cartridges. And the thing that's cool about all that is that, you know, when we were doing all that, we were just entering the software industry. We're just doing it because we love software. That's what I love. I love talking about seeing software evolve, go forward.

• 11:00Marc Benioff?

  We talked about AI and also the other thing that I love philanthropy and giving back. And giving back to San Francisco, you know, where the Salesforce is the largest philanthropist in San Francisco. We've given more than a hundred million dollars to the public schools, more than a hundred million dollars to the public hospitals. That's a lot about giving back, not to mention a lot of other NGOs and nonprofits in the city. And all of the incredible mentoring and tutoring and volunteerism our employees do. Those are the two things that I love, I guess, software and philanthropy. And that's the the in and the end of my life that go back and forth that I do every day.

• 11:33Harry Stebbings?

  I just have to ask, when you think about the array of different options you always have at your disposal, you mentioned the different frontiers of AI, the different ways you can spend your time, how do you analyze your decision making framework today? And has it changed over time?

• 11:45Marc Benioff?

  How old are you now, Harry?

• 11:46Harry Stebbings?

  Twenty seven.

• 11:47Marc Benioff?

  Twenty seven. So when I was twenty seven at Oracle, I was already a vice president. I was actually just become about a senior vice president and I was inexperienced and I didn't have a lot of leadership skills. And I was working for an incredible CEO, Larry Ellison. He was awesome. And what I learned rapidly was I needed more skills, more capabilities. So I started to do a lot of personal development. There was no leadership training at Oracle. Oracle's leadership training was trial, life, fight. I was lucky to be able to hold my own because I was an engineer, but I also had business background, a sales background, a marketing background. So I started taking a lot of courses and a lot of personal development courses.

• 12:26Marc Benioff?

  And I'd be working at Oracle and it would not be a shock to find me in a Tony Robbins seminar, a Stephen Covey seminar, Deepak Chopra seminar. All of a sudden, I had this breakthrough thought, which was there were five questions that I needed to answer before I started any project. Because I am an ADHD person, maybe one of the first that I knew, it was hard for me to focus and get around a certain project. I wasn't ready to take any of the ADHD meds, so I came up with something else. The something else was called V2M. It was five questions that let me really focus on my company, myself, a product, a customer. And the first thing I do before I do anything is number one, I say, what do I really want? You know, like we just had Dreamforce. I want to have the biggest and best Dreamforce ever.

• 13:11Marc Benioff?

  And as part of that, I want a totally safe San Francisco. I want to release Salesforce's incredible new AI product lines. Number one is we want to have the number one AI CRM. Nothing is more important than that right now for Salesforce. Number two, we do want to have the best Dreamforce ever. And number three is, we want to have an incredible San Francisco. So let's get clear about our vision. Now, what's the most important value associated with those three things? It's got to be trust. Customers are coming to San Francisco. They want to learn about our new Einstein One platform, which is our amazing new AI platform that has not just our core applications, but our Einstein and our new data cloud, all integrated as one metadata platform. That's critical. There's

• 13:53Marc Benioff?

  nothing more important than that. They're going to have to trust it. They're going to have to find the success in that. They're going to have to find the innovation in that. But they're also going to have to find the safety of being in San Francisco as well. If they don't have safety, or they don't feel safe on the streets, we can't do Dreamforce. We're not going to be able to communicate all these things. So we need to get clear about what are our core values that are really going to guide Dreamforce last week? Trust, safety, innovation, customer success. By the way, it was the most sustainable Dreamforce ever, sustainability, equality, to make sure everyone is treated well. We've learned a lot at doing more than 20 Dreamforces about how we have to deal with every stakeholder group. So what do I want? What's important about it? How do I get it? What is preventing

• 14:34Marc Benioff?

  me from having it? And how do I know that I have it? And those five questions really are guiding me. That's my V2M process.

• 14:41Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned their priorities. It takes me to Matthew McConaughey's talk, where he talks about the different checks and balances in his life, where he has work, he has his marriage, he has being a good father, being a good friend, and his career. Can you take me to a time when your priorities have been out of whack? Something's gone wrong there? And what you've learned from it?

• 15:00Marc Benioff?

  Well, my priorities are constantly out of fact. So my priorities are like my spiritual health and wellbeing, my physical health, my family, my friends, my business, my ability to give back. It's a dance. When you have a dynamic life, I think it's a dance because different things are coming at you. It's the constant battle between the urgent and the important. In 1992, I started really to take meditation classes and work with people. That also has really kept me going down the straight and narrow and keep my head in the game. And also to really... Constantly consider the questions that you're asking me. What, what is important and what do I really want? And what is the prioritization? And is it in balance or is it out of balance? That's been an incredible part of my life.

• 15:44Marc Benioff?

  I'm so happy to have that as well.

• 15:46Harry Stebbings?

  You mentioned values. I know I was a fanboy, clearly. Matthew McConaughey says, we've financialized our values in society so much in his speech. I miss you. I had to look for word for word after about 4,000 runs. But my question to you is, Mark, how do you reflect on your relationship to money today? And does money make one happy?

• 16:04Marc Benioff?

  Well, money is never going to make you happy. And I guess that's one of the reasons that I'm so into philanthropy. I've given away more than a billion dollars to all kinds of organizations, mostly in San Francisco, mostly our university, mostly UCSF. I built two children's hospitals. I built an ocean program. I've done all kinds of things. Wherever I go or where I live, I make sure that I'm always giving back at scale to the community. Personally, I feel that too much is given, much is, you know, required. I want to build a great company, but I also want to give back. Now, I want to tell you why that's selfish, because it gets to your point. I'm not going to be happy unless I'm giving.

• 16:39Harry Stebbings?

  I've interviewed maybe 50 billionaires. The single biggest challenge that they have is how do you bring up children with the same tenacity, hunger, work ethic when brought up in very different financial environments? The university across the board, I actually analyzed it before this, 48 out of 50 said that was their biggest challenge. How would you say you do it? How do you bring children up to have that same hunger and tenacity in very different financial environments?

• 17:02Marc Benioff?

  Matthew McConaughey probably has said it best in his books, which is, you know, you have to pay attention to, are you spending time as a parent? Are you spending time? I'll say as a son, my mother also is still alive. So in many ways, I'm also still very much her child. And I saw her last week. She was in San Francisco. People come to Dreamforce Theater. She's in all of my programs. It's probably a better question for her. She's obviously still working on me. Fortunately, this, some of these questions about happiness aren't things that I have to wrestle with because I was able to cross those bridges so many decades ago.

• 17:37Harry Stebbings?

  If you could call yourself up the night before you had your first child and say, Mark, you should know this and give yourself some advice, what would that advice be?

• 17:45Marc Benioff?

  I think the number one thing that everyone needs to do is enjoy every moment. And I'll say to people the same thing and maybe it'll help you. Tell me, what are 10 things that make you very happy? Now let's make a list of 10 things that make you not so happy. Now let's look at these two lists. How about doing a little bit more of what makes you happy? And a little bit less of what makes you unhappy. Everybody knows what makes them happy and what makes them unhappy. But I think they have to have the permission to do less unhappiness and more happiness. And I think then you will be obviously happier if you're doing things that are making you happy.

• 18:19Harry Stebbings?

  I'm going there, Mark. Fuck it. It's very late in the UK, so why not? Something that makes people happy for the millennial generation, maybe I'm going to get in trouble for this, is working from home. My team want to work from home. I want them in the office. How do you feel about the, what if it's work from home that makes you happy? And how do we feel about the reversion back to work in office?

• 18:39Marc Benioff?

  Well, I think for different kind of workers, it's different. And I think like, start with our engineers. Our engineers only have to come in the office 10 days a quarter. You know, for our engineers, we want them to come together to collaborate and to hang out and to get to know each other. But they're very productive at home. I work mostly at home. I have for my entire life. I just never been able to work well and be successful in an office. I can't tell you why. Today, I think that there's a balance between working at home and working in person. I need to be with my customers all the time. Now, that could be digital, like I was just with a customer before we had this conversation. And I'm in my Zoom room here and I'm like hanging out today. And, uh, you know, last week I was with thousands of customers. And it has to be a balance of being in person and digital today.

• 19:23Marc Benioff?

  I think for everybody, it has to be a little bit different. I think that for our sales and marketing people, we tell them that four days a week, we want to see them, you know, in person with a customer. For our sales and for our marketing people and our G and A people, we like to see them in person three days a week. Obviously, I'm in an office right now. I'm not really at home. I have my chief of staff and other employees here, working on various things. Of my futurist was just here. We're doing a variety of things. I think there's a lot of benefits to being at home. I think there's a lot of benefits to being in person. And I think there's a lot of benefits to being with customers. I think you have to do all of those things.

• 19:57Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I want to move into a quick fire round. So I say a short statement and you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

• 20:03Marc Benioff?

  Sure, absolutely. Harry, has anything been off subject so far?

• 20:07Harry Stebbings?

  Mark, I have to go through your team and so I'm kind of like battling with the shit.

• 20:10Marc Benioff?

  Harry, I told you, everything's on the table and you shouldn't listen to my team. That was never part of any deal we had.

• 20:17Harry Stebbings?

  What does great fatherhood mean to you?

• 20:19Marc Benioff?

  You know, I look at my mom and I look at my dad and my dad was just one of the greatest people and I just am so fortunate. He passed away when he was 83. That was about 11 years ago. He died of prostate cancer. It's one of the reasons that I fund one of the largest prostate cancer research programs in the world at UCSF. My mom also is a cancer survivor. She's had cancer four times, breast cancer twice, lung cancer, kidney cancer, and skin cancer. That's one of the reasons why, you know, I fund oncology and breast cancer as well. I think about my dad. I think about incredible I C ad. That's my role model. So that's what great fatherhood is.

• 20:56Harry Stebbings?

  What's your biggest insecurity today?

• 20:58Marc Benioff?

  I guess trying to do it all. You know, I do try to get, as I kind of said before, making it happen. I've got that Matthew on a motion where I'm trying to do it all, being that every, being that every, you know, every season, every man, the Renaissance, it's not easy to try to do it all. It's not always working, but sometimes it is. When it is, there's nothing better. So it's a lot about, like you said before, staying in balance and keeping things in the right order.

• 21:24Harry Stebbings?

  What do you believe that fear around you believe?

• 21:26Marc Benioff?

  I believe I'm guided and, you know, that I'm part of something much larger, whether it's the universe, whether it's God, whether it's something on a spiritual basis. I feel that spirituality remains a major part of everything I do. Last night before I went home, I did, you know, an hour meditation and prayer.

• 21:44Harry Stebbings?

  If you could have dinner with anyone that are alive, who would it be and why them?

• 21:48Marc Benioff?

  Abraham is like the centerpiece of this week. It's the start of the world. And I would say that that is someone who I would really like to have a long conversation with. I think that we need more understanding from him to kind of come back together and unify our divisions in the world. That's somebody who I would like. Have a meal with if I could, that would be an amazing thing.

• 22:10Harry Stebbings?

  You gave me permission, so I'm going for it. Elon or Zuck, who would win in the cage match?

• 22:15Marc Benioff?

  I would say I know Elon much more than I know Mark and it seems like Mark is training really exhaustively. And I think Elon has, I won't go into it because it's not appropriate medical conditions that would prevent him from winning any kind of match.

• 22:30Harry Stebbings?

  Typical day for you as much as you can. So maybe make it in Hawaii where maybe it's more standard. But what does Marc Benioff's day look like as much as you can standardize it?

• 22:38Marc Benioff?

  I get up, I like to start my day with meditation and prayer. I like to have breakfast, do my email and texts and then get going. And it's not unusual for me to meet with customers like I did before this, be with my family. And also, you know, my mother still lives with me. And so that's an incredible part of my life. All of that is kind of how it kind of comes together every day. It goes pretty fast. Oh, there's a workout in there as well. Usually I try to get in the gym.

• 23:04Harry Stebbings?

  Why do you think you still need to improve as a leader?

• 23:06Marc Benioff?

  I just love innovating and love creating and love growth more than anything. I sometimes sacrifice things to grow the company, to grow innovation, to do new things. I love creativity. And so my team's job is to kind of keep me in the zone to bring me back so that we always have solid, balanced financials. Like we've had, for example, the last three quarters, especially at Salesforce, because that's where I really want to have my head. And where the world is going, not either where we are or where we've been.

• 23:39Harry Stebbings?

  Single biggest highlight moment from the Salesforce journey where you're like, I remember that moment, that moment when I did this, the first dream force, the first customer, the bringing your mother to the first dream force.

• 23:50Marc Benioff?

  It was really last week when I got on stage and I did one slide that said Salesforce is now San Francisco's largest philanthropist. And we've given more than a hundred million dollars to the children's hospital and more than a hundred and fifty million dollars to the public schools. I wasn't sure it was really possible. Probably the best decision we made was when we started Salesforce 25 years ago. We put 1% of our equity, 1% of our product and all of our employees' time, 1% of our employees' time into a foundation. And it was simple then, Ari, because we had no money, capital, you know, uh, boys. I always felt like if you just could take 1% of everything and let it scale, that it would be an amazing way to give back. Because while I love building

• 24:33Marc Benioff?

  product and I love innovating and I love creating and I love doing all that, I have to say that if that's all you're doing, you're not going to end up with a lot of fulfillment in your life. You're only going to get to the happiness and fulfillment if not only are you creating, but you're giving. You've got to give back and you have to find a way to give back at scale. And so many of my friends have, you know, they, they've died and when they've died, they've left these huge fortunes. And then when they've left their family to give back, you know, at that point. And that was kind of their motto. Well, I'm going to go until the end. And then at the end, that's when my family will have the money and they could do the philanthropy.

• 25:11Harry Stebbings?

  What's the hardest part of giving effectively? I was chatting to David Velez at New Bank the other day about this on the show. What's the hardest part about actually giving effectively?

• 25:19Marc Benioff?

  I think the number one thing that people must do is just start giving and find what works for them effectively. I know people who do very effective global philanthropy. That's not me. I've tried to do global programs. It's very difficult. I have a program called one t.org, the trillion tree program, trying to sequester 200 gigatons of carbon with a trillion trees. There's a lot of fulfillment and a lot of fun. And while building the AI version of Salesforce is amazing and all the things that are going on, never forget that you're going to ultimately get the most happiness and the most fulfillment is not, not just setting your intention for a great company with great products, but something that's going to give back and impact the world in a positive way.

• 25:59Harry Stebbings?

  You're famous for your shoes as well. What's your favorite entire shoes, Martin?

• 26:04Marc Benioff?

  It changes a lot. I have a lot of different customers. Today I'm wearing these shoes that Louis Vuitton just sent me. They're Air Force Louis Vuittons and they're extremely comfortable. And I'm wearing them today without socks and they're fantastic. They're size 14, very comfortable too. Highly recommend them.

• 26:21Harry Stebbings?

  Will Dreamforce always be in San Francisco?

• 26:23Marc Benioff?

  Well, I hope so. I mean, I had to kind of lay down the gauntlet. You probably saw that I had to threaten the city and all the leaders and say, you guys don't get your act together, we're not coming back. And they delivered. So we're looking at all the data. You know, there's only a few safety incidents. I'm allowing my team to make the decision. Um, we have a new CMO who moved the Oracle conference out of San Francisco and moved it to Vegas. So it's definitely on his mind that that's a real possibility. I'm going to obviously advocate for San Francisco, but I'm not going to make the final decision. I'm letting the team do that as I do. With most of the major decisions of the company, they were power washing the streets every morning. Now it's a small city. We're only seven square miles, so it's very easy to say, here's San Francisco.

• 27:07Marc Benioff?

  But those 40,000 people went out through the city and then came back and said, wow, this is the cleanest we've ever seen in any city. I'm like, why can't we do that every single day?

• 27:15Harry Stebbings?

  When we do this in 10 years time mark, if everything goes to plan with AI and Salesforce, where is Salesforce then in 2033?

• 27:24Marc Benioff?

  Today, we're the number one CRM, number one in sales, number one in service, number one in marketing and commerce and platform and all of these areas. And it's been an amazing thing, you know, working with companies, delivering their customer success. AI is the opportunity to take all that to another level. So we've done it for our customers with predictive. We've now turned over the generative platform to them. For a lot of companies, they want to use generative technology. But Harry, they don't have the tools to either build the apps or use the technology and make it easy or get the data together. We've packaged it together in Einstein one. I understand the problem very well where they're just given an LLM and said, oh, now make this success. And they're like, well, I don't, what do I do? We've been able to kind of put it together in a low code, no code way.

• 28:09Marc Benioff?

  That makes it easy for them wrapped in a metadata framework. So when they add a field, it populates through all the apps and into the data cloud and into the AI and everywhere, and then back into the core system. And that lets them build apps, deliver customer success, create innovation using this AI. You know, I put a demo on Twitter, you probably saw it on my feed over the weekend on the next generation of our platform. I'm pretty excited about what we

• 28:33Marc Benioff?

  We've done in the last nine months with generative it complements what we've already done with predictive and what's coming for agents and for economy with Salesforce will be amazing and where we're going with AGI well our future is Peter Schwartz who was just with me you know he wrote Minority Report and he wrote War Games so he's got a pretty good handle on the future he's an incredible visionary and has been for decades we worked on the Apollo mission as well and he's got some incredible plans for Salesforce in the AGI world so I'm excited about that we showed a vision of it with a video to our analysts at Dreamforce it's an incredible future.

• 29:07Harry Stebbings?

  Mark I've done 3000 shows we've had over 150 million downloads I've wanted to do this show since the beginning eight or nine years ago thank you so much for joining me and this has been a huge huge honour.

• 29:19Marc Benioff?

  Well I'm delighted Harry and I've wanted to come on the whole time it's been waiting for you to ask me and to make the moment I told you instead to fight a slot after Dreamforce and here we are this has been a lot of fun and I hope I you know delivered the answers you were looking for but I just tried to speak directly from my heart and tell you how I'm feeling every day.

• 29:41Harry Stebbings?

  I have to say that really was one of the biggest highlights of my eight year journey doing 20 VC Mark's been such a pioneer and an incredible figure in our business and so to have the chance to interview him was just a huge honour if you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes of course you can on YouTube by searching for 20 VC but before we leave you today this episode is brought to you by Tegus the go-to research destination for bold investing Tegus curates expert insights analysis and financial data to give you powerful perspective for your investment decisions with lightning fast access to over 60,000 transcripts across 20,000 companies you'll discover a wealth of unique insights to fuel your fundamental research gain perspectives synthesize information and even model outcomes all on Tegus as a 20 minute VC listener try it for free at tegus.com/growth and to be you tools we can't live without like Tegus there Mayfair helps companies protect and grow their cash automatically access up to $50 million of FDIC insurance and earn up to 4.72% interest on your

• 30:43Harry Stebbings?

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• 31:25Harry Stebbings?

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• 32:09Harry Stebbings?

  automate your security and privacy compliance with SecureFrame, and you can schedule a demo today at secureframe.com.

• 32:16Harry Stebbings?

  As always, I so appreciate all your support and stay tuned for an incredible episode this coming Wednesday with Chairman and trade shift Christian Lang.