Marc Benioff

Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, an enterprise cloud computing company. In September 2018, Benioff acquired ''Time''.

Early life and education

Benioff was raised in a Jewish familyJerusalem Post: "Jews take 5 of top 6 spots in annual list of top US givers" By JACOB BERKMAN
September 2, 2011 in the San Francisco Bay Area. He graduated from Burlingame High School in 1982.San Francisco Gate: "Marc Benioff, CEO, makes philanthropy a priority" by Casey Newton
July 24, 2011 Benioff received a Bachelor of Science in business administration from the University of Southern California, where he was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, in 1986.

Benioff is a second cousin of showrunner and television writer David Benioff, known for '' Game of Thrones''. He is married to Lynne Benioff and has two children. The family lives in San Francisco, California.

Career

While in high school, Benioff sold his first application, How to Juggle, for $75. In 1979, when he was 15, Benioff founded Liberty Software, creating and selling games such as ''Flapper'' and ''King Arthur's Heir'' for the Atari 8-bit. Royalties from these games helped Benioff pay for college.

While at USC, Benioff had an internship as a programmer at Apple. He joined Oracle Corporation in a customer-service role after graduating. Benioff worked at Oracle for 13 years in a variety of sales, marketing, and product development roles. At 23, he was named Oracle's Rookie of the Year. Three years later, he became the youngest person in the company's history to earn the title of vice president.

Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999 in a San Francisco apartment and defined its mission in a marketing statement as "The End of Software." This was a slogan he used frequently to preach about software on the Web, and used as a guerilla marketing tactic against the dominant CD-ROM CRM competitor Siebel at the time. Salesforce was the first company to offer software as a service, which allowed people and companies to rent software over the internet instead of installing the programs on machines. Benioff extended Salesforce's offerings in the early 2000s with the idea of a platform that allowed developers to create applications.

Benioff also serves on the World Economic Forum's Board of Trustees and USC Board of Trustees.

On September 16, 2018, Marc and his wife Lynne bought ''Time'' for $190 million.

Co-written work

Benioff has co-written four books about business and technology. In 2004, he co-wrote ''Compassionate Capitalism: How Corporations Can Make Doing Good an Integral Part of Doing Well'' with Karen Southwick. In 2006, he co-wrote ''The Business of Changing the World: 20 Great Leaders on Strategic Corporate Philanthropy'' with Carlye Adler. In 2009, he co-wrote ''Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company and Revolutionized an Industry'', also with Carlye Adler. In 2019, he again co-wrote ''Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change'', with Monica Langley.

Influence and honors

In 2003, President Bush appointed Benioff co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. In 2009, Benioff was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and is a member of its Board of Trustees. In 2012, he was named one of the "Best CEOs in the World" by '' Barron''s and received ''The Economist''s Innovation Award. In 2014, '' Fortune'' readers voted him "Businessperson of the Year." In 2016, Fortune magazine named him one of the "World's 50 Greatest Leaders."

Philanthropy

Benioff founded the Salesforce Foundation in 2000. Marc and Lynne Benioff have been included in lists of top givers by Forbes and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

In 2010, the Benioffs donated $100 million to UCSF Children's Hospital. In 2014, they donated an additional $100 million to the hospital and $50 million to fund research on premature birth.

In October 2020, Marc and Lynne Benioff were founding partners of Prince William's Earthshot Prize, a program for finding solutions to environmental issues. In October 2021, Benioff pledged a $200 million donation to plant trees and fund ecologically-focused entrepreneurs. Salesforce also donated $100 million to the same causes.

In 2019, the Benioffs donated $30 million to the Center for Vulnerable Populations for the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative to study the impacts of homelessness, housing, and health.

Social activism

In March 2015, Benioff announced Salesforce would cancel all employee programs and travel in the state of Indiana after the passing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill that would allow companies and individuals to choose not to serve LGBT individuals based on religious beliefs. Benioff led an effort of business leaders fighting back against the legislation, leading to a revised version of the bill being signed into law that prohibited businesses from denying services to someone based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

In April 2015, Benioff announced that he would review salaries at Salesforce to ensure men and women were paid equally.

In February 2016, Benioff announced that Salesforce would reduce investments in Georgia and cancel a conference if HB 757, a bill that would allow businesses to decline services to same-sex couples, was passed. The governor vetoed the bill.

In an October 2018 interview with ''The Guardian'', Benioff criticized other technology industry executives for "hoarding" their money and refusing to help the homeless in the San Francisco Bay Area. In November, Benioff announced his support for San Francisco's Prop C measure that would increase taxes on large corporations to aid unhoused residents in the city.

In September 2021, Benioff announced that Salesforce would relocate any Texas employees who wanted to move after an abortion law went into effect.

References

Further reading

*

External links

Official company biography

{{DEFAULTSORT:Benioff, Marc
1964 births
Living people
Salesforce
20th-century American businesspeople
21st-century American businesspeople
American billionaires
American computer programmers
American Internet company founders
American software engineers
American technology chief executives
American technology writers
Apple Inc. employees
Businesspeople from San Francisco
Jewish American philanthropists
LGBT rights activists from the United States
Oracle employees
People from Burlingame, California
Marshall School of Business alumni
Writers from San Francisco
Giving Pledgers
21st-century American philanthropists