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Billionaire Marc Benioff takes swipe at tech companies over data use
By Cara Waters
The world and technology industry is at "a key moment in time" and needs to focus on trust, says Salesforce co-founder and tech billionaire Marc Benioff.
In his keynote address at the sales platform's annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Mr Benioff said the company’s culture is “built on trust” and appeared to point to technology companies like Facebook which have faced a backlash over their use of data.
Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce at Dreamforce on 26 September 2018. Credit: Jakub Mosur
“We are watching for companies that are not listening to their key stakeholders, not listening to their employees, not listening to the kids and for them we watch the executives walk out, the employees walk out, the customers walk out as a vote of no confidence against their values,” he said.
While Mr Benioff did not name Facebook, his speech came just one day after Instagram's founders left the platform.
Salesforce's reach
Mr Benioff isn’t a household name like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg but Salesforce is used by businesses around the world for its cloud-based management software and has a market capitalisation of $US120 billion ($165 billion).
Salesforce won’t reveal how many users it has in Australia but it claims the platform, its partners and users will add $US29 billion to GDP in Australia by 2022 out of the $US859 billion in new business revenue it expects to add worldwide.
On the stage at Dreamforce, Mr Benioff was a towering presence at six foot five tall and he has cult-like status among Dreamforce’s 170,000 attendees.
The former Oracle vice president started Salesforce 16 years ago offering a cloud based alternative to the enterprise software companies that dominated the marketplace at the time.
Mr Benioff’s personal wealth is estimated to be $US6.7 billion and the tech entrepreneur gained more widespread attention with the announcement last week that he and his wife, Lynne Benioff, had bought Time magazine for $US190 million.
With this move Mr Benioff followed in the footsteps of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who bought the Washington Post in 2013.
Mr Benioff said trust is key to Salesforce's culture. Credit: Jakub Mosur
Technology's impact
Mr Benioff told the conference as Salesforce has grown he has become increasingly concerned with the impact of technology.
“We realise technology is not good or bad, it is what you do with it that matters,” he said. Mr Benioff said he had restructured Salesforce to have an office of ethical and humane use of technology.
“Is what we are doing today ethical and humane?,” he said. “We are all going to have to answer that question in the technology industry and every CEO and every company better be ready to answer that question through our values.”
Mr Benioff said he wanted to see a move towards "inclusive capitalism”.
"Inclusive capitalism means we are all going together into the future, we are not leaving anyone behind,” he said.
As Mr Benioff spoke protesters at the conference highlighted Salesforce's supply of services to United States Customs and Border Protection which has been criticised for its enforcement of President Donald Trump's immigration policies and family separations.
Mr Benioff said "we are not perfect, we don't always get it right".
The reporter travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.