- Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has no shortage of stories about the late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs.
- Benioff interned at Apple in college and got to know Jobs as he moved on to Oracle and Salesforce.
- On a recent podcast episode, he recalled advice Jobs gave him when he had “entrepreneur’s block.”
Ask a major tech CEO for a Steve Jobs story, and you’ll probably get one.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff certainly has his fair share of stories about the late Apple cofounder.
Benioff interned at Apple while in college, and the two got to know each other as Benioff moved on to Oracle and ultimately cofounded Salesforce.
On a recent episode of “Lenny’s Podcast,” Benioff recalled some advice Jobs dispensed when Benioff was going through “entrepreneur’s block.”
He recalled Jobs telling him that there were “three things you need to do right now.”
First: “Your company, it better get 10 times larger than it is now in 24 months or it’s over.”
Second: “You better sign a huge customer for this Salesforce automation product, like Avon.” (Benioff added, “The CEO of Avon was on his board at the time, so that was on his mind.”)
And finally: “You better go build an application economy.”
Benioff recalled being confused. He said he asked Jobs what he meant by that, to which Jobs responded, “I don’t know, but you’re going to go figure it out.”
Benioff described the conversation as “like meeting with your guru and getting a Zen koan or something where now you have a puzzle I have to solve.”
“I literally went away, and I had all the notes from the meeting,” he said. “I went through it over and over again. And then finally I’m like, I think he wants me to build an app store.”
Salesforce launched AppExchange, its apps and services store, in 2006. Apple launched its app store in 2008. Benioff later gave Apple the App Store trademark and the appstore.com domain as a gift.
Benioff said he was “very grateful to have that relationship” with Jobs, adding that it “dramatically influenced me in my career and my whole life.”
