The antidote to inequality is equality. The question is how do you achieve equality? I believe that, for business, which is where I can speak, we have to shift from shareholder maximization to stakeholder maximization.
Interpretation
Achieving equality requires prioritizing the interests of all stakeholders rather than just shareholders.
In this quote, Marc Benioff emphasizes that addressing inequality fundamentally involves promoting equality across different groups within society. He argues that businesses should transition from a focus on maximizing profits for shareholders to considering the needs and interests of all stakeholders, including employees, customers, and the community, to create a more equitable environment.
In practice
This quote can be used in a presentation about corporate social responsibility.
Once you know what you want and what is important for you to achieve, also define the values associated with it. What is important? That is something a lot of entrepreneurs pass by too quickly. For us, the things that were important were, No. 1, customer success. Nothing is more important to us than making sure every customer is successful in our service.
I strongly believe the business of a business is to improve the world.
The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.
I don't look at business as a zero-sum game. I don't. I've never seen it play out that way in our industry, and I think you innovate and you add value, deliver value back to customers, and you get value back from the world.
Although I loved working on technology - I've always been a computer geek at heart - my professors encouraged me to get a real-world job working with customers.
The only constant in the technology industry is change.
We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that, because we believe -- and we have to take this as an article of faith -- that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.
The best start-ups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful start-up are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
Investors are always biased to invest in things they themselves understand. So venture capitalists like Uber because they like driving in black town cars. They don't like Airbnb because they like staying in five-star hotels, not sleeping on people's couches.
The companies that survive longest are the one's that work out what they uniquely can give to the world-not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul.
I don't think a true company - one that builds sustainable value - can ever only exist online or remotely.
In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence.
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