30 Inspiring Facts We Bet Your Never Knew About Marc Benioff

15 May 2019, 12:00 pm EDT By Ruby Karnick

Marc Benioff, the founder, chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce, an enterprise cloud computing company, is world-renowned for his contributions to various philanthropic causes, especially through The Salesforce Foundation. Here are some really interesting things to know about the American billionaire internet entrepreneur:

He was named as one of the Young Global Leaders by the members of the World Economic Forum in the year 2009.
He was ranked as one among the 50 World's Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine, for his commitment to equality for all and other social issues as a Chief Executive Officer in the year 2016.
He was voted as Businessperson of the Year by Fortune readers, and was also named as one of the Best CEOs in the World by Barron's. He was also the recipient of The Economist's Innovation Award.
He was awarded with an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Southern California on May 16, 2014.
His company Salesforce was ranked as one among the World's Most Innovative Companies, for a total of five years in a row by Forbes Magazine.
In the entire software industry, his company was named as the World's Most Admired Company for four years in a row, by Fortune Magazine.
Benioff was included in a business leaders' symposium organized by the Trump Administration during German Chancellor Angela Merkel's visit to the White House on March 17, 2017.
His company Salesforce was ranked as the Best Place to Work for a total of eight years in a row, by Fortune Magazine.
He was presented with the Excellence in Corporate Philanthropy Award by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy in the year 2007. The next year he was invited to become the director of the board.
He credits Mata Amritanandamayi with inspiring his philanthropic business models, claiming that it was she who introduced him to the idea, and possibility, of giving back to the world while pursuing my career ambitions.

He established the Salesforce.com Foundation in the year 2000, as a public charity, with the 1-1-1 model of integrated corporate philanthropy.
Through this 1-1-1 model of integrated corporate philanthropy, companies contribute 1 percent of equity, 1 percent of employee hours and 1 percent of product back to the communities it serves.
Till date, over 700 companies including Google, is said to have adopted parts of this 1-1-1 model of integrated corporate philanthropy, through the Pledge 1% movement.
Salesforce.com and United Way created Salesforce.com Philanthropy Cloud, a global platform that connects employees, customers and partners with charities, enabling them to streamline philanthropic investments and real-time reporting, in the year 2018.
He and his wife Lynne have been recognized as one of the top philanthropists in the "50 Top Giver" list by Forbes America since the year 2015.
The couple announced a $100-million gift to UCSF Children's Hospital in an effort to help build the new hospital while significantly advancing children's healthcare worldwide, in June 2010.
The Benioffs donated another $100 million to UCSF and Oakland Children's Hospital in the year 2014, following which both the hospitals were renamed as Benioff Children's Hospitals.
The couple have also donated to The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization developing technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic.
Since the year 2010, he along with his wife Lynne was ranked in the Philanthropy 50 list by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
He claims that businesses are the greatest platforms for bringing any change in the world, and that he follows the World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab's multistakeholder approach to leadership.

According to the approach, leaders should serve not only their shareholders but all stakeholders, including customers, employees, partners, communities and the environment, to make the world a better place.
Marc Russell Benioff was born on September 25, 1964 in San Francisco, California, in a Jewish family. He went to the Burlingame High School, graduating in the year 1982, before going to the University of Southern California.
At the University of Southern California, he received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in the year 1986. During his time there, he was a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
He is married to Lynne Benioff and has two children. The couple currently resides in San Francisco, California. He is also a distant cousin of showrunner and television producer David Benioff.
Benioff reportedly sold his first application, How to Juggle, for just $75, while he was still in high school. He founded Liberty Software, creating and selling games such as Flapper for the Atari 8-bit, when he was just 15 years old.
His works King Arthur's Heir, The Nightmare, Escape from Vulcan's Isle, and Crypt of the Undead was published by Epyx, and by the age of 16, he earned royalties of $1,500 a month, enough to pay for college.
While at the University of Southern California, he had internships as an assembly language programmer at the Macintosh division of Apple Computer. As per the advice of his USC professors, he joined Oracle Corporation after graduation in a customer-service role, where he served for 13 years in a variety of executive positions.
He was named Oracle's Rookie of the Year at the age of 23 years, and was promoted to be the vice president, just three years later. With this, he became the company's youngest person to hold that title.
In March 1999, he founded Salesforce, in a rented San Francisco apartment and defined its mission in a marketing statement as "The End of Software."
Benioff is the creator of the term "platform as a service" and has extended Salesforce's reach by allowing customers to build their own applications on the company's architecture.