Salesforce Inc. CRM CEO Marc Benioff credits a pivotal 2010 conversation with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs for shaping the focused product strategy that helped build his company’s $270.8 billion market capitalization.
What Happened: Speaking at the 2024 All-In Summit with President Donald Trump‘s White House AI & Crypto Czar David Sacks, Benioff recalled how Jobs summoned him to discuss Apple’s product philosophy during the iPad’s development phase.
“After I started Salesforce, he gave me really key advice,” Benioff said. “It was 2010 and he calls me, ‘Come down here, I need to talk to you.’”
During the meeting, Jobs demonstrated two iPad prototypes before explaining his “one A Team” philosophy. “We only have one A Team here. One A Team. So we’re only focused on one thing at a time,” Jobs told Benioff, according to the Salesforce CEO’s account.
Jobs then placed five or six products on his coffee table, telling Benioff: “We will never have more products than can fit on my coffee table. One focus at a time. Remember that, Marc. That’s the way you need to run Salesforce.”
Why It Matters: This focused approach has proven successful for Salesforce, which generated an estimated $7.9 billion in Sales Cloud subscription revenue for fiscal 2026. BofA Securities analyst Brad Sills maintains a Buy rating with a $350 price target, citing the company’s core growth businesses and AI integration through its Agentforce platform.
Benioff, who worked as an assembly language programmer at Apple in 1984, has applied Jobs’ philosophy while expanding Salesforce beyond its original CRM software into what he calls “digital labor” markets. The company’s Sales Cloud maintains an estimated 25% share of the $39 billion Sales CRM industry, according to Gartner forecasts.
Salesforce Ventures, with $6.8 billion under management, recently scored approximately $600 million when Google acquired cybersecurity firm Wiz. The company’s $1 billion Generative AI Fund has invested in Anthropic and other AI startups, reflecting Benioff’s belief that “you must fund the chaos to harvest the miracles.”
Image Via Shutterstock
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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