I am reading Marc Benioff’s book, Behind the Cloud and I came across this article that seemed worth sharing:
Whether he’s swimming with dolphins in the Pacific Ocean or drawing inspiration from rappers, Marc Benioff has broken the CEO mold while running Salesforce.com Inc. for the past decade.
Benioff, 45, wouldn’t be a billionaire and Saleforce.com wouldn’t have emerged as an even better investment than Google if he hadn’t been able to persuade so many corporate decision makers to change their ways.
Salesforce.com rents software for managing customer relationships and delivers its product exclusively over the Internet. The concept, often called “cloud computing,” is hot now, but it was considered a pie-in-the-sky notion when Benioff started Salesforce at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999.
There’s no such worry now. Saleforce.com has more than 77,000 customers, nearly 5,000 employees and steadily rising revenue that’s expected to hit $1.5 billion in the company’s current fiscal year.
His most impressive accomplishment of all: A $10,000 investment in Saleforce’s June 2004 initial public offering would now be worth nearly $84,000, based on the company’s July 21 stock price of $92.16. By comparison, a $10,000 investment in Google’s August 2004 IPO would now be worth about $56,000.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/economy/swimming-with-the-dolphins-helps-salesforcecom-ceo-make-a-splash-in-software-industry-99032689.html#ixzz0v0bziSfM
