Three Lessons in Entrepreneurship from Salesforce
History is littered with a great many examples of restless men; men who displayed enormous amounts of courage and a strong commitment to their ideas, took unfathomable risks, and defied all odds to become successful. Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com’s founder, was one such man, and the success of Salesforce is a good example for how, sometimes, having nothing to lose can actually become the biggest asset for a company.
Here are the three things Marc Benioff did during the early days of Salesforce that have led the company to take on the Goliaths of the industry and still come out on top.
Stay Hungry
Marc Benioff was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. A brilliant kid with a professed obsession for Computers and Software, Benioff founded Liberty Software at the age of 15. A one-man organization that sold games for the Atari 800 computer. A year later, Benioff was making $1,500 in royalties alone, good enough to cover his college expenses at that time.
Benioff joined Oracle right out of college, and by the age of 23, he was named Oracle’s “Rookie of the Year”. He quickly rose through the ranks, and at 26 Benioff become the Youngest Vice President in Oracle’s history, pulling in a cool $300,000 a year.
