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Marc Benioff

37 statements across 15 episodes · 15 bullish · 9 bearish · 10 people on the record · first statement Dec 5, 2016 by Scott Dorsey · said 310 times in 116 episodes since 2016 · across every show →

On the record as a speaker too: Marc Benioff's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.

Mentions by year

brought up most by Harry Stebbings (158), Jason Lemkin (53), Rory O'Driscoll (9), Richard Socher (7), Mark Roberge (6), Jason Calacanis (4), Ishan Mukherjee (4), Clay Bavor (4)

tap a year for its mentions
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0255020162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
002.52555020162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 103 mentions in 37 episodes 3 per episode
2025 109 mentions in 43 episodes 3 per episode
2024 36 mentions in 12 episodes 3 per episode
2023 31 mentions in 10 episodes 3 per episode
2022 3 mentions in 1 episode
2021 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 9 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
2017 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2016 10 mentions in 2 episodes 5 per episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Marc Benioff, oldest first

Dec 5, 2016 positive
Opinion
Dorsey: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is an excellent manager
“What most people may not know is he's actually an excellent manager.”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 7:20 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Jan 13, 2023 negative
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Marc Benioff just repeated his biggest admitted mistake by cutting sales
“Mark Benioff in his book wrote his biggest mistake in the last downturns was cutting sales. And what did he just do? Cut sales.”
Jason Lemkin Jan 13, 2023 ▶ 13:04 Jason Lemkin: WTF is Going On in VC? Are LPs Investing in New Funds? | 20VC #965 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 18, 2023 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Grimshaw: Founders will launch Benioff-style 'no more software' AI campaigns
“I think there'll be some entrepreneur or a few entrepreneurs, hopefully in the coming year or so, let's say, who channel maybe the Mark Benioff, 1999, like no more software, right?”
Miles Grimshaw Sep 18, 2023 ▶ 1:12:33 Miles Grimshaw: The 5 Pillars of Venture Capital & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strategy | E1061 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 neutral
Disclosure
Benioff has worked mostly from home his entire life
“I work mostly at home. I have for my entire life. I just have never been able to work well and be successful in an office.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 17:32 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023
Insight
Benioff: The five questions to answer before starting any project
“So what do I want? What's important about it? How do I get it? What is preventing me from having it? And how will I know that I have it? And those five questions really are guiding me.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 12:46 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 positive
Opinion
Benioff: Matthew McConaughey would make a great mayor, governor, or president
“That's why I think he'd be a very good, a mayor, or a governor, or even a president, because He's a get it done person.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 6:46 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 negative
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce threatened to pull Dreamforce until San Francisco leaders delivered
“I mean, I had to kind of lay down the gauntlet. You probably saw that. I had to threaten the city and all the leaders and say, if you guys don't get your act together, we're not coming back, and They delivered.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 26:05 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Benioff has personally donated over $1 billion to philanthropic causes
“I've given away more than a billion dollars to all kinds of organizations, mostly in San Francisco, mostly our university, mostly UCSF.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 14:35 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Marc Benioff splits his time equally between SF and Hawaii
“I've always lived half and half, back and forth.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 2:26 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 positive
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Benioff's 1t.org aims to sequester 200 gigatons of carbon
“I have a program called OneT.org, the Trillion Tree Program, trying to sequester 200 gigatons of carbon with a trillion trees.”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 25:05 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 25, 2023 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce team, not CEO, will decide Dreamforce's future in SF
“I'm allowing my team to make the decision. We have a new CMO who. You know, move the Oracle conference out of San Francisco and moved it to Vegas. So it's definitely on his mind that that's a real possibility. I'm going to obviously advocate for San Francisco,…”
Marc Benioff Sep 25, 2023 ▶ 26:22 Marc Benioff: The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge | E1064 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Oct 16, 2023
Assertion Partly supported
Russia sanctioned three tech CEOs together: Benioff, Prince, and Zuckerberg
“There's, there are three tech executives that that got sanctioned at the same time. Yeah, you already interviewed Benioff, who was one of them, it was me, And then, ah, and then Zuckerberg.”
Matthew Prince Oct 16, 2023 ▶ 15:29 Matthew Prince: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes | E1072 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 13, 2023 positive
Opinion
Steve Goldberg: Marc Benioff cultivated a culture of perfection at Salesforce
“He cultivated such a culture of, like, perfection, that people wanted to win for him, and he cultivated so many incredible leaders, And that company just had such an incredible sales process.”
Steve Goldberg Dec 13, 2023 ▶ 53:57 Steve Goldberg: Core Questions All CFOs Ask Today When Buying | E1094 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jan 24, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Stebbings Emailed Marc Benioff 52 Times Over One Year
“I emailed Mark Benny off 52 times once every single week with a different email every time related to a tweet that he sent in the prior week with like one of my comments on it.”
Harry Stebbings Jan 24, 2024 ▶ 54:48 Sean Murray: Why Discovery Today is F***** & How to Scale Into Enterprise Effectively | E1107 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Nov 1, 2024
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Vlad Tenev received crisis advice from Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Benioff
“You know, I never talked to Elon Musk before, but he kind of wanted to give me some advice on how to handle the situation. I talked to Zuck, Mark Benioff.”
Vlad Tenev Nov 1, 2024 ▶ 19:36 Vlad Tenev, Co-Founder & CEO @Robinhood: The GameStop Saga & The Future of AI | E1222 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Benioff Personally Invested in and Named AI Startup You.com
“Another incredible company that I'm personally an investor in is you.com company that I invested myself. I named it myself. The founder is the former head of Salesforce research.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 16:36 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 negative
What-if
Benioff: I Would Not Have Enjoyed Owning Twitter
“And I guess in a lot of ways I'm happy I didn't because I don't think I could, I would have enjoyed that part of it at all.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 34:36 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bearish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Marc Benioff Expects LLMs to Commoditize and Mature in 2025
“I think the, we're gonna hit the maturation of the LLM in twenty-twenty-five, so I'll say that. I believe that LLMs are becoming commodities and that we're cresting the LLMs, that they're getting incrementally more successful, but not exponentially more succes…”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 39:25 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bearish
Opinion
Benioff Passes on OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI Over Product Commoditization
“I don't know if I'd really want to invest in any of them right now because I think in those cases we're seeing all of them to being about the same kind of product. A lot of them are really becoming the same Technology.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 17:33 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024
Assertion Supported
Benioff Wrote Assembly Code in Apple's Macintosh Division in 1984
“I worked for him in 1984 in the Macintosh division when I was writing assembly language code.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 22:14 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Opinion
Benioff: Enterprise AI Advanced So Fast That Customers Cannot Comprehend It
“I think we are in such a new world right now in terms of what is possible today versus even just six months ago that customers do not understand This and what it can mean for them.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 19:08 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 neutral
Insight
Benioff: AI Advances in Cycles of Breakthrough, Commoditization, and Plateau
“In the last 60 years, the history of AI is a new model or a new technology will come along, and a bunch of folks will kind of get to the point where it becomes a commodity, and then we kind of hold until we wait to the next one, and then it goes on”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 14:05 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Disclosure
Benioff Personally Invested in Fei-Fei Li's AI Startup
“Even personally, I've invested in many amazing models. I've invested in an incredible new next-gen model company from Fei Fei Li, who ran AI at Stanford. Her husband runs research for me at Salesforce.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 15:55 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Benioff: Salesforce Is Focusing Exclusively on AgentForce Over Other Products
“When I just rolled out AgentForce, you'll notice that we're not going to talk a lot about all of Salesforce's products, which are amazing. You know, on the podcast, I'm going to keep coming back to AgentForce because that's all I'm focused on right now.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 23:18 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2027
Benioff: Salesforce Will Move Its Entire Company Onto Agentforce
“That I've moved my whole support infrastructure to the agentic platform. I will move my whole sales platform to the agentic platform as well. I'll move my whole company onto agent force for no other reason what to show my customers what is possible.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 18:50 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 bearish
Prediction Held up
Marc Benioff Predicts AGI Will Not Be Achieved in 2025
“I don't think we are in AGI in twenty-twenty-five, so I think that's an optimistic thought.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 39:21 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 positive
Insight
Benioff: Layoffs Are a Necessary Tool and CEOs Shouldn't Fear Them
“So layoff is an important tool for CEOs to be able to use, to be able to prepare for a company for the future. And nobody wants to hit the button. Nobody wants to take the action. No employee wants to hear the words. It sends chills down everybody's spine, inc…”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 21:14 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 negative
Insight
Benioff: Generic AI Companies Are No Longer a Viable Business Strategy
“I don't think being just a generic company is the right move anymore. You need to decide what vertical you're going to be in or what your best specialty is.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 17:55 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Dec 9, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Benioff: Salesforce Added Early AI Models But Didn't Pivot to Deep Learning
“I saw all those models too, and while I added it into Salesforce, I didn't pivot Salesforce entirely around deep learning.”
Marc Benioff Dec 9, 2024 ▶ 31:54 Marc Benioff, Salesforce Founder: Why Salesforce Isn't Hiring Software Engineers | E1236 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Feb 5, 2025 neutral
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Levchin: Pure LLMs are hitting efficiency limits; AI will expand beyond them
“Agree. But I don't think we are going to stay with LLMs forever. I think we're going to expand the systems that use LLMs.”
Max Levchin Feb 5, 2025 ▶ 50:57 Max Levchin, Founder & CEO @ Affirm:The Biggest Surprise Scaling to $18.7BN Market Cap · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jun 5, 2025 neutral
Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Marc Benioff has hired three co-CEOs attempting to exit Salesforce
“Mark Benioff's tried four or five times to get out too. He's hired three other co-CEOs, right? It just hasn't worked.”
Jason Lemkin Jun 5, 2025 ▶ 1:24:11 Is DPI The Only Thing That Matters? with Sam Lessin, Jason Lemkin & Rory O’Driscoll · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Jul 3, 2025 negative
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lemkin: Public CEOs Privately Expect AI to Cut Half Their Staff
“That's what every CEO talks about behind closed doors of a public company. I, they say, I don't know, I need to reskill 20 to 30% of my people, but they really think I might not even need half.”
Jason Lemkin Jul 3, 2025 ▶ 1:07:28 Figma’s IPO: The Full Breakdown & Why Melio’s $2.5BN Acquisition is “Discouraging” · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 bearish
Opinion
Benioff: Near-term AI and AGI progress is mostly hype and hypnosis
“I think that we have all been sold a lot of, you know, hypnosis around what's about to happen with AI and not that it couldn't happen one day.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 1:50 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 bullish
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2030
Benioff: AI will drive an order of magnitude increase in SMBs
“There is going to be a radical explosion of small and medium businesses like yours, because entrepreneurs like you can do more than ever. So while the enterprises are kind of trying to figure out, are they going to DIY it? And are they going to do this? Or are…”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 20:45 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Aug 28, 2025 positive
Opinion
Benioff: Claims that tech will stop hiring college graduates are false
“And also this narrative around that we're not going to hire any more kids out of college. This is also bullshit.”
Marc Benioff Aug 28, 2025 ▶ 24:52 Anthropic's $10B Round, Klarna's IPO, Inside a16z's 72 Deal Seed Investment Machine ft. Marc Benioff · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Sep 12, 2025 positive
Opinion
Bendov: Marc Benioff is pursuing the right AI agent strategy at Salesforce
“Well, I think he's doing the right thing. He's building agents. I think they also recognize the opportunity with AI, and they need to move fast, as fast as they can. So it's a formidable company, definitely capable, and it's impressive that the way that they h…”
Amit Bendov Sep 12, 2025 ▶ 7:19 20VC: Why AI SDRs are BS and Do Not Work | How to Use AI in Your Sales Team and Process to Win Today | What Skills Do All New Reps Need to Have in an AI First World with Amit Bendov, CEO @ Gong
Sep 3, 2026 neutral
Assertion Supported
Salesforce Agreed to Shift Its LLM Spending to Anthropic
“Dario is showing up because Mark agreed to move Salesforce agreed to move Their LLM spend to Anthropic.”
Jason Lemkin Sep 3, 2026 ▶ 56:14 NVIDIA Crushes Quarter | OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor | Instinct Hits $2.5B Valuation
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