Marc Benioff is a philanthropist, billionaire, and founder of Salesforce. The company which transformed IT consumption by innovating the SaaS model of software consumption for the enterprise. He was the real disrupter, moving users from old systems like Sibel to simple easy software with pay as you go model.
Marc bought a lot of his learning from the early days of his work at Oracle. He considers Larry Elison as his friend/mentor, apart from being his early investor. Larry made 200X return of his investment. 😀
In the book, Marc openly talks about his playbooks or we can say principles. As a founder, it is extremely important to have a set of principles. Ray Dalio in his book Principles has written in detail about the same.
The lesson he shares is similar to what every other successful founder shares in hiring, raising, competing above all keeping customers in the center.
Marc attributes a lot of Salesforce success to the community and listening to customer’s feedback. He mentions Amazon for its user interface and customer delight in the book.
Some learning:
- Hire right, trustworthy folks who believe in the vision of your organization.Â
- Have a set of principles and abide by it. Like a playbook (V2MOM)
- Keep customers in the center of all the product development.Â
- Create your own rule. The marketing tactics the end of Software.