Want to be successful like Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff? Don't get bogged down by failure

Salesforce is a 19-yearold cloud software company worth $85 billion, with 30,000 employees, that brought in $10 billion last year and hopes to deliver $60 billion in revenues by 2034.

But its success in its early days was hardly a given, cofounders Marc Benioff and Parker Harris said during an on stage interview at Sales force’s developer conference TrailHeaDX in San Francisco recently.

Sales force l aunched the company in 1999 at the height of the Internet bubble. About a year later, that bubble burst and the ‘dotcom’ startups — companies founded to sell stuff over the internet — found themselves running out of money, with nowhere to turn.


“If you look at our history, and it looks amazing, but there were some hard times. There was a lot of work. It wasn’t all easy,” Harris said. ‘You’ll never make it’ He told a story during those early days when a venture capitalist walked by his wife as she was pushing a stroller up the steep streets of San Francisco and shouted over his shoulder at her, “Oh, Salesforce is never going to make it.”

Salesforce provides software over the internet paid for on a monthly or annual subscription basis. That sounds normal today but back in 1999, the internet wasn’t very fast, safe or reliable.

Benioff said such things never worried him. “I have a lot of faith,” he said. What he learnt from those early hardships, as well as other struggles over the years, boils down to a couple of things, he said on stage.

Benioff’s four tips for success

1. Get ‘really clear’ about what you want.

Benioff said the times he struggles the most are when he’s not sure what he wants.

2. Set a positive intention for what you want.
Have faith that there is a path between where you are and what you want, you just need to see it, recognise it. Make sure that you are focusing on what you want to create (the positive outcome) and not what you want to avoid (the feared outcome).

3. Pay attention to what comes your way.
Once Benioff sets his intention, “I just notice that things start to show up in my reality to help me create my future.” That sounds like metaphysical woo-hoo (Benioff is into meditation and Buddhism) but in a practical sense, if you are focused on what you want, then you will start to recognise people, things and ideas that can help you. And then you will start to see the steps you need to take to get there. This will help you more easily dismiss distractions and fears.

4. Most importantly, build a support network.
“Surround yourself with people who do believe in you, who do believe you’re going to be successful because you’re going to have a whole bunch of people who are going to tell you that you’re not,” Benioff said.

As for the VC who snarked at Harris’s wife, Harris said, “I don’t know what he’s doing today, but we’re doing all right.”.