Marc Benioff

Benioff was raised in a Jewish family[5][6] in the San Francisco Bay Area.[7] He is the grandson of Marvin Lewis, a California trial attorney and once-time member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who championed the creation of the BART system.[8][9] Benioff grew up in Hillsborough[10] and graduated from Burlingame High School in 1982.[11] 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.[11][12] Benioff is a second cousin of showrunner and television writer David Benioff, known for Game of Thrones.[13] He is married to Lynne Benioff and has two children. The family lives in San Francisco, California.[3][11]

While in high school, Benioff sold his first application, How to Juggle, for $75.[11] 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.[11][14][15] Royalties from these games helped Benioff pay for college.[11][16]

While at USC, Benioff had an internship as a programmer at Apple.[17] He joined Oracle Corporation in a customer-service role after graduating.[11] Benioff worked at Oracle for 13 years in a variety of sales, marketing, and product development roles.[3] 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.[3]

Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999[18] in a San Francisco apartment and defined its mission in a marketing statement as "The End of Software."[19] 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.[20] Benioff extended Salesforce's offerings in the early 2000s with the idea of a platform that allowed developers to create applications.[21]

Benioff also serves on the World Economic Forum's board of trustees and USC board of trustees.[3][7] On September 16, 2018, Marc and his wife Lynne bought Time for $190 million.[4] In 2019, Benioff started Time Ventures, a venture capital fund that has invested in multiple companies, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Universal Hydrogen and NCX.[22][23][24][25][26] In 2021, two companies Time Venture backed, Planet Labs and IonQ, went public.[27][28][29] Benioff is a member of Business Roundtable, an advocacy group of CEOs, and the Business Council.[30][31] In November 2021, Benioff became co-CEO of Salesforce when Bret Taylor's promotion to co-CEO was announced.[32] One year later, Bret Taylor stepped down as Salesforce co-CEO, leaving Marc Benioff as the sole CEO again.[33] As of February 2022, Benioff had an estimated net worth of US$8.31 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.[34]

Benioff during the WEF 2013

In 2003, President George W. Bush appointed Benioff co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee.[38] In 2009, Benioff was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and is a member of its board of trustees.[39][40] In 2012, he was named one of the "Best CEOs in the World" by Barron's[41] and received The Economist's Innovation Award.[42] In 2014, Fortune readers voted him "Businessperson of the Year."[43] In 2016, Fortune magazine named him one of the "World's 50 Greatest Leaders."[44] In 2019, he was recognized as one of the 10 Best-Performing CEOs by Harvard Business Review[45] and as the CNN Business CEO of 2020.[46]

Marc Benioff in 2009

In addition to founding Salesforce in 1999, Benioff also founded the Salesforce Foundation. The foundation uses a "1-1-1" approach to corporate philanthropy, where the company gives one percent of employee time as volunteer hours, one percent of its product and one percent of its revenue to charitable causes.[47][48][49]

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 2019, the Benioffs donated $25 million to UCSF to create the UCSF Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine; $10 million to Stanford for the Microbiome Therapies Initiative;[50] and $35 million to establish a Prostate Cancer Research Initiative at UCSF.[51]

In 2016, Benioff announced a $10 million donation to the University of California - Santa Barbara to establish the Benioff Ocean Initiative.[52] In 2017, the Benioffs partnered with the US National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to form the Pacific Islands Research and Conservation Programme.[53] 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.[54] In January 2020, Benioff announced that he and his wife would provide financial backing for 1t.org to support a global initiative to plant and conserve 1 trillion trees over the next decade.[55]

In March 2020, Benioff procured 50 million pieces of personal protective equipment for hospitals and COVID-19 first responders in the United States.[56] In April 2020, Benioff donated more than $1 million to Give2SF COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund.[57] In April 2021, Benioff and Salesforce sent a plane filled with medical supplies to India to help the country handle the COVID-19 pandemic.[58]

In October 2020, Marc and Lynne Benioff were founding partners of Prince William's Earthshot Prize, a program for finding solutions to environmental issues.[59] In October 2021, Benioff pledged a $200 million donation to plant trees and fund ecologically focused entrepreneurs.[60] Salesforce also donated $100 million to the same causes.[60][61] In 2021, they were founding members of the World Economic Forum's Friends of Ocean Action initiative, providing approximately $11 million in funding.[53] Marc and Lynne Benioff have been included in lists of top givers by Forbes and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.[62][63][64][65]

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.[66] 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.[67]

In April 2015, Benioff announced that he would review salaries at Salesforce to ensure men and women were paid equally.[68] 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.[69] The governor vetoed the bill.[70]

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.[71] 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.[72] In September 2021, Benioff announced that Salesforce would relocate any Texas employees who wanted to move after an abortion law went into effect.[73][74]

• Colin, Chris (December 11, 2019). "The Gospel of Wealth According to Marc Benioff". Wired.

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• Official company biography