Benioff, Founder Of Soft Camp: Innovation Is A Continuous Process.

Today, "cloud computing" is already a familiar technical word, but 15 years ago, I am afraid not many people knew about this Internet based IT service.

At that time, you need to use a software, you have to buy a CD and install it on the computer.

However, Mark Benioff (hereinafter referred to as Benioff) put forward a bold slogan - the end of software.

He believes that if you put the software on the network and do not need to install, maintain and upgrade the local computer, people from all over the world can use any device to log on to the website and use the software.

With this concept, in 1999, Benioff founded Salesforce.com and became chief executive, thus creating a new industry, "not selling software to sell services", which is known as "one of the pioneers of cloud computing".

In August, Forbes magazine published 2014 of the most innovative companies in the world, ranking first among soft companies, the company's top fourth consecutive year.

A. "software as a service" concept

It is the customer service management (CRM) software service provider in the Internet era. It uses the latest mobile communication, social media and cloud computing technology to help companies create a new way to connect with customers.

Users pay a certain fee every month to use all kinds of services on the website. These services involve all aspects of CRM, from ordinary contact management, product catalog to order management, sales management, etc.

Customers do not need to install software themselves, nor do they need to spend a lot of money and manpower on data maintenance, storage and management. All records and data are stored on the website of the soft camp.

By "mobile"

"Dongfeng" and other new technology Dongfeng, founded in 1999, the development of the soft camp is very fast.

Today, the company has 13 thousand employees, is one of the world's ten largest software companies, is also the world's largest customer relationship management company.

This year, the company's annual revenue is expected to exceed 5 billion dollars.

He is a Russian born, born in 1964 in California, a family full of entrepreneurial genes.

Grandfather, a lawyer, was also the inventor of the rapid pit system in San Francisco Bay, and his father ran a chain of women's clothing.

At the age of 15, Benioff, a middle school student, founded his first company, Liberty Software, to write and sell video games.

The game sold well, with a monthly income of 1500 dollars. Beneoff saved enough money for university tuition and bought a car.

Benioff went to University of Southern California to study business management. His mother graduated here.

During the summer vacation in 1984, Benioff began to work part-time as a programmer in the computer department of Apple Corp, where he met Jobs and became friends with him.

After Benioff started his business, Jobs also became his consultant.

For this reason, Benioff once said: "without Jobs, there would be no soft camp."

After graduating from university in 1986, Benioff entered the Oracle work of enterprise software company.

In the 13 years of Oracle Bone Inscription, he worked in sales, marketing, product development and other departments. He was named Oracle Corp's sales star with outstanding performance, and was appreciated by Oracle CEO Allison.

At the age of 26, Benioff was promoted to vice president of Oracle, with an annual salary of $300 thousand, becoming the youngest vice president in the company's history.

Oracle's experience gave Benioff a deeper understanding of management software and gave him the idea of subverting the traditional software industry.

Benioff put forward the idea of "software as a service". Under this service mode, software can be installed on the Internet cloud for customers to rent.

He wants to start a company and realize his own ideas.

Benioff told his boss Allison about the idea of starting a business. He did not think that the latter had no objection, but he was very supportive.

Allison invested $2 million and worked as a director of the soft camp board for some time.

After the establishment of the company, Allison suggested that Benioff would resign after 90 days' new financial stability. During this period, he could work in soft camp in the morning and work in Oracle in the afternoon. He even agreed to Benioff's employees who took 3 oracle bones.

Allison also told Benioff that if he failed in business, he could return to Oracle at any time.

However, as the soft camp grew, the relationship between Benioff and Allison became more and more complicated.

After the soft camp became the rival of oracle bone inscriptions, the relationship between the two began to deteriorate.

But because the two sides still have regular cooperation, the two maintain good friends in public.

B. "innovation is a continuous process".

As Forbes said, the rapid development and innovation of the soft camp are inseparable.

How did Benioff understand innovation? He once explained in an interview: the secret of innovation is to adapt to the environment and change the way you do things.

He said in an interview: "for many years, the soft camp has been seeking to carry out disruptive ideas in the company. These ideas often come from outside customers, partners and markets.

But turning these ideas into products or services depends on internal teams. "

Innovation sometimes needs a lot of work.

In 2011 and 2012, beneoff spent $1 billion to acquire two companies: social media monitoring company Radian6 and social marketing company Buddy media.

What prompted him to make such a big purchase is a network video.

This video introduces DELL's use of Radian6 to monitor social media users' comments on them.

DELL is one of the big clients of the soft camp. After seeing this video, Beni aoff immediately realized: "customers do what we should do for them."

Taking the two companies as the main body, the soft camp has set up a new Department, the "market cloud", the social media marketing platform, whose business is to help companies understand hundreds of millions of users on the social network to evaluate their products.

In fact, in order to consolidate its leadership in the cloud computing market, Benioff has been buying and expanding dozens of companies through acquisitions.

Benioff acknowledged that not all acquisitions were successful.

He can tolerate failure because "failure is a part of risk". Everyone is learning in this process.

"Innovation is a continuous process.

You have to focus on the development and pformation of the world.

Benioff said, "we want to create the future, the future is not the present, so you should be prepared for self subversion and constantly adapt to the new rules of the game."

In beneyoff's view, the next innovative point of view will be the field of smart phone.

At present, there are 5 billion mobile phone users, and the number of smart phone users will soon exceed 5 billion.

The power of smart phones lies in the fact that people get a real interactive experience and are willing to carry out e-commerce activities through this experience.

This means that you will have a customer base of up to 5 billion. "

Benioff said in an interview, "we have always referred to smart phone users as consumers, because they are consumers of content, media and products.

But we need to pform these consumer needs into customers and build this kind of customer relationship on the phone.

We need tools, services and capabilities to achieve this vision. "

C.1 - 1 - 1 charity model

Business Insider, an American technology blogger, called Benioff the most beautiful, most generous and heroic character in the technology industry, enjoying a colorful life as a self-made billionaire.

Benioff chose San Francisco as the headquarters of the soft camp. I live near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

He likes Hawaii very much, often wears Hawaii flower shirt to work, and also built a huge villa on Hawaii island.

Benioff is very particular about life style. He likes yoga and meditation, but at the same time he likes rock and roll.

He rented the San Francisco giant baseball stadium and invested $250 thousand to hold a grand banquet to celebrate a company's sales of $100 million.

He called the annual conference of the company "dream power". He used semi business meetings and semi music ceremonies, and invited rock stars to perform.

Of course, Benioff is not just a local tyrant, he also has a "do something for others" heart.

Less than a year after the establishment of the soft camp, Benioff founded the charity soft camp foundation.

In June 2010, he invested $100 million to build a children's Hospital at the University of Calif San Francisco.

In April this year, he donated $100 million to the children's hospital again.

At the end of May this year, University of Southern California returned Benioff as speaker of the school's 2014 graduation ceremony.

At the graduation ceremony, Benioff, a big faced and bearded man, called himself a big penguin.

In his speech, he said that when he founded the company in 1999, he decided to do three things: first, to set up a completely new technology mode, that is, cloud computing; second, to establish a new business mode, that is, to pay for software; third, to create an integrated corporate philanthropy mode, that is, the 1 - 1 - 1 mode, and use 1% of the company's shareholding, 1% profits and 1% employees' time for social charity.

His goal has now been fully realized, and what people care about is how he will subversion in the future.