Welcome - DF '18 Opening Keynote: "Dreamforce: A Celebration of Trailblazers" | Salesforce

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chairman and co CEO Salesforce Marc Benioff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, welcome to Dreamforce, everybody. What a great day. It is. What a great day. I have never been more excited about this Dreamforce and I am so excited that all of you are here with me today. This is an amazing community and it's just been a joy walking around today and being with all of you. All of our trailblazers, our customers, our partners, you know, it's like a family reunion, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. It's like a family reunion. I just really appreciate that. So thank you. I'm deeply grateful to all of you. Deeply, deeply grateful. And I'll tell you, we have been on the road. We have been on the road now for several weeks. And what we've been doing is we've been testing this. We've been testing this because you all know the key to success is your connection with your customers. And we walk our talk. We're out there and we're talking to all of you. We're listening for your feedback. We want to know what you think about this keynote. Getting our messaging right, understanding if we're able to communicate correctly. And it's been an awesome experience. You probably watched it on social media as we meet with all the incredible people all over the country and the world. And I'll tell you this. I'll tell you this. Every year we're kind of like, what are we going to call this Dream Force? Why is this dream force so special? What makes this day more important than ever? What about it? And we came to it. This is a celebration of all of you. This is a celebration of everything that you have done for us. It's amazing what you have done. This is a celebration of you, our trailblazers. And that is what this keynote is all about. It's a celebration of trailblazers. A celebration of everything that you are doing. It's an incredible moment. And I am here over the next 90 minutes now to inspire you, to excite you, to motivate you, to transform you, to energize you. But first, I need to thank you. I need to thank every single one of you. Thank you for everything that you do for us every single day. Allow me to express my sincere gratitude to all of our customers, our employees, our partners, our whole community, everybody that supports us. I want to express on behalf of Salesforce and myself personally how deeply grateful we are to all of you. And let me say this. This is the biggest and the greatest Dream force ever. There's no question about it. And let me tell you why. Each day, each day is dedicated to a key value that we are trying to work on and promote within ourselves and express back to our community. We're going to focus today on trust. We're going to move on tomorrow to innovation and artificial intelligence. We're going to be moving then onto Thursday to equality and sustainability. And then Friday, we're going to take a deep breath, relax, get into our mindfulness zone and have personal empowerment. It's going to be an awesome week and we couldn't be more excited to be with you for the next four powerful days. And we have amazing, amazing speakers now. Our team, in concert with all of you, have put together 2700 sessions and I expect you to go to each and every one of them. It is going to be an awesome show. 171,000 people are registered to physically be here with us. Incredible, isn't it? 10 million are joining us online. Awesome. So welcome to everybody. Welcome to everybody. And tomorrow night, my friend right here is going to play for his. Have you heard of his Bea Metallica. And we have a second band also. Who's going to join us? Janet Jackson. Have you heard of her? Absolutely incredible. Amazing. Thank you, Lars, for being here. So awesome. Great. So this is the biggest and greatest dream force ever. We're super excited to have all of you here. Our trailblazers. This is a very important time in the whole world. We all know that. It's a time when we are taking personal action to change the world. We know that we're not relying on our government leaders or we're not relying on just our NGO leaders. We're not relying just on our business leaders. We're doing it together. We're coming together. Well, this is appropriate. I'm right here with the monastics. Welcome to the monastics, helping us to come together with your mindfulness this week. Thank you. Each and every one of us has something to do. Each and every one of us knows we have a purpose deep inside us and that we hope will get further amplified and further expressed this week. And I can see that in all of you. I can see it in all of you. And we're in an incredibly moment time. Not just in business, not just for the economy, not just for all the things that we care about, but even for our environment. And that's why, for this Dreamforce, we're decarbonizing. Dreamforce. We just spent the last week here in San Francisco with our global Climate Summit focused on how are we going to decarbonize our companies? How are we going to decarbonize our industries sector by sector by sector? And we're working and we're working incrementally to make it better and better. And this Dreamforce is going to be an example of how to decarbonize your own companies as well. This is a critical time. And we've also united with 21 others, 21 other great technology companies have come together to sign the Step up declaration where we're going to decarbonize our companies and and our industry. It's a moment in time we're all going to take advantage of right now. We can come together as a community and do this. We are all moving forward. We know that we're all moving forward because we've been talking for several years. We're moving into the fourth industrial revolution. It's amazing. We're moving from the first revolution in steam to the second revolution of electricity. We moved into the third revolution with computers and now we're in the fourth revolution. The fourth industrial revolution is really among us and all over us. You can see it. You can see it at this show. You can see that everything is starting to get connected. But it's bigger than that. It's bigger than that. We are all deeply connected. We're all connected. We are all connected. We're all one. In the fourth industrial revolution, everything and everything is connected. You can see it. I just saw this. I was walking down. Did everybody see this great Lamborghini, that great connected car? Isn't that what you got me for my birthday today? I thought that that's what you got me was the Lamborghini that was in the lobby. Thank you for that. The connected car we just saw, Metallica is connected. We saw last year here how Adidas has connected everything in their company and their whole organization. We're about to see how Marriott, all of our companies are doing everything they can to connect all of their employees, their customers, their products. Everything is connected. But we know because we're here year after year at Dreamforce, not only are we all connected, but for us in business, that behind all of these things, behind all of these things is our customer. And that is why we've been working on our customer success platform. We have been building our customer success platform now for almost 20 years. So that great companies like the ones you just saw in the pre show, whether it's Metallica or whether it's United Way and all the companies who are here in this room and a whole world who are watching us. From sales to service to marketing to commerce, to engagement, from platforms and ecosystems and development environments to integration from analytics to industries, from communities to enablement to collaboration. Building with all of us as a community. Building with all of us as one trailblazer community. This customer360 to look inside our companies and to illuminate and express who we are and who our customers are. And that is what you're doing. And you have done this and you have guided us. And we want to say thank you for guiding us. Thank you for setting us in the right direction. Thank you for expressing to us what you want and who we are together. And through that, you've created this company. You have created this company that is doing well and doing good. That Fortune says is the number one best company in the world to work for. Amazing what you, our customers, have done and how you have expressed it to us. And how each and every day you guide us farther. You show us where we are going. You show us what we are doing. Now this is a moment in time where there are many things on the table that we are all looking at. And this is a moment in time when someone like me, a CEO and other CEOs, but really all of us have to ask the question, what is really important to us? What is really important to us? What is the most important thing? What are our values? What are we going to stand for? What do we really want? Like my great friend Will, I am is talking about in that amazing opening video that he did. Incredible what you did, Will. Inspiring. And I'm listening to you when you so don't forget about public education. Don't forget about the kids. Don't forget to bring everyone into the fourth Industrial revolution. And I'm hearing you deeply listening. But for all of us, what is really important to us? For each company, we have to listen. And we're watching. We're watching for companies who are not listening to their key stakeholders, not listening to their customers, not listening to their employees, not listening to the kids. And for then we watch the executives walk out, the employees walk out, the customers walk out as a vote of no confidence against their values. And as a community, we stand here and we say we are going to commit to a higher level. We are going to a higher level together to express our values. We know what the most important thing is to us and in this community and we've said it for years and we'll say it again. Our culture is built on trust. The fundamental trust that we have with you, the fundamental trust that we have with our key stakeholders, with our customers, with our employees, with our partners. Our trust is with you. And we take that very seriously. It's our highest value. And we ask every company to ask, what is your highest value? And in the world, when technology is taking us over, and in a world where technology through the fourth industrial revolution is grabbing us, realize that we all have a higher responsibility to ask that question. Especially you see the gambits that are unfolding really before us, especially as artificial intelligence gets released into the whole world. We must ask this question, what is truly important to us? And we've made a major change this year. We realize technology is not good or bad. It's what you do with it that matters. Technology is not good or bad. It's what you do with it that matters. We've restructured our company to have an office of ethical and humane use of the technology so that as our employees or our customers or our partners say, are we doing this? Are we aligned with our values? Are we moving forward? We can have a structured conversation, not just with our own employees myopically, but by bringing in the key advisors and supporters and pundits and philosophers and everybody necessary, everybody necessary to ask the question, is what we are doing today ethical and humane? And we're all going to have to ask that question in the technology industry. And every company and every CEO that better be ready to answer to that question through their values. And we're putting our values into action because our values create our behaviors. Isn't that right? And today we gave another $15 million to our public schools here in San Francisco and Oakland, bringing our total contribution. Thank you. Look, look, let's just stop. We all know I said it last year, too. Every single person in this room and watching me online. We all must adopt a public school. Nothing is preventing you from going down the street, just as I have done in my own neighborhood and knocking on the door and asking for the principal and asking a question, what can I do to help you? You all know our public schools need our support. This is a mission critical for our whole industry. How are we going to succeed and have our full actualization if we can't bring all of the kids with us? Think about it. And you can do it. We can all do it together. Public education. We've now given more than $50 million here. Locally, we're doing a huge amount of volunteerism and mentoring. Every one of my executives is responsible for owning their own public school. And you can do this in your own company. It's so easy. It's so easy. And we're halfway to our goal of $100 million in a few short years into our public education here in San Francisco and Oakland, trying to bring them up with our great superintendents. And we also agree that it's not just about public education, but that every man and woman must be paid the same in every company in this great country and around the world. That is gender equality, and that means equal opportunity. That means equal advancement. That means preventing sexual harassment. Gender equality is something that we're all more focused and more sensitized to than ever before, and each one of us has that responsibility, and that's why that power of equality. We went to Indiana to say we're not willing to allow our employees to be discriminated against if they are of the LGBTQ community. We will stand with you. We will stand with you, our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. And we will stand with all of our brothers and sisters, regardless of race, regardless of gender, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of religion, because we believe we have to bring everyone in. Everyone has to come in to the fourth Industrial Revolution. It's inclusive capitalism. Inclusive capitalism means we're all going together into the future. We are leaving no one behind. Nobody will be left behind. And everyone in this room, in our community, in our stakeholders. I know. I feel it when I talk to you all over the world, you're committed to this, just as I am. And we are committed now, as well, deeply to the environment. We're already net zero. We're already. You know, we can go higher. We already built this great tower you're going to see in San Francisco. It's the most sustainable tower. Black water. And all of these things that we can do that are so easy in today's world of this technology, we can take care of our oceans. Are we going to allow, as the World Economic Forum says, By 2050, to have more plastic in our oceans than fish? I say no. Are we going to allow every tree to be cut down on this planet and just be paved across with cement? No. We need those trees, we need that forest to suck up all the carbon that's coming out of our economy. We can all focus on this environment together. We can do this as a community. And that's what Dreamforce is all about. That's what you, our trailblazers, are all about. That's what your businesses are all about. Because we know that business is the greatest platform for change, isn't it? We know that you can do so much through your companies, through Your stakeholders, through your customers, through your employees, through your partners. You can do this. It's in you. The visions are in you. I talk to you. I know with confidence. I talk to you. I. All over the world, every city, all of our customers, they feel it and they are making the changes and the transformations. And with great partners like you saw with United Way, we can do so much more. Philanthropy Cloud integrating all of us together to unite our giving and our philanthropy and our volunteerism and mentoring. We can do this together. And Salesforce is trying to be a role model and an example. Over 3 million hours of volunteerism that we've done so far. A quarter billion dollars of grants so far. 37,000 nonprofits and NGOs running on our service for free. And let me say to you, you can do this too. The 1,1 1 model. You just go to pledge 1% org and commit your company to doing this. You are the trailblazers. It's coming from you. I'm just trying to reflect it back to you. I see it in your eyes. I see it in your hearts. You are the innovators. You're the disruptors. You're the shapers. You are our trailblazers. We're looking to you. Look at how you've organized. Look at how you've changed. Look at how you've transformed. Our MVPs, our community groups, our student groups. Vetforce, Women in technology. Amazing. Our ISVs, our SIS, our strategic technology partners. You have done this. This was not. You brought this to us and you said, this is important. This is important. And we're going to do this as a community. And we are trying our best to deeply listen to you. Not always. We're not perfect. We're not going to always get it right. Sometimes you have to take a big two by four and hit me over the head. That's how I lost some of this hair. I get it, okay? I get it. But listen, all of us are doing it together. We're trying to bring everyone along. We've even had incredible strategic technology partners join us like Google and Amazon and IBM. Thank you. And so many incredible organizations in this room. And our most recent partnership, thank you to Apple now for becoming a strategic partner with us. Thank you, Tim Cook. Thank you for your leadership. Tim Cook. Thank you for fighting for gender equality. Tim Cook. Thank you. Thank you for fighting for equality and love in our industry. You are somebody who we all can follow. Thank you, Tim Cook. And all of this, all of this is creating this amazing Salesforce economy. 3.3 million new jobs by 2022. 3.3 million new jobs. 10 million trailblazers by 2022. A trillion dollar GDP impact by 2022 in this room. And did you know? Did you know this? How many of you raise your hand. Have been on trailhead.com Raise your hand. One out of. Yeah, thank you. One out of every four of you who are on trailhead.com One out of every four of you on trailhead.com already have a new job. If you got on trailhead, you've upskilled, you've created, enhanced your career. You're creating a new vision for yourself by badging and certifying and becoming rangers. And it's amazing. I'm watching, I'm meeting you, and it's incredible what you've done. And there's so much more you can still do. It's all in front of us because there's so many more trailblazers coming. And your visions and how you see the future is inspiring me and inspiring all of us. And we want you to dig deep inside yourself and find that part where you know right now, this is who you really are. This is what you're going to contribute to this world, and this is how we're going to all do it together. And we have an amazing group in this audience who have done exactly that to inspire us even further. Let's take a look at Pep up Tech.

Into the Louvre and it was the same picture over and over and over again. Nobody would want to go there and see those paintings because this is the same damn picture. Diversification gives you a higher yield on your return. You already know that, so why wouldn't you do the same within your organization?

We don't consider ourself a charity. What we're doing is we're helping to uncover the opportunity that is there. Hubbup Tech goes out and finds all.

The different shades of color of people, and it brings them into the world of technology and we give them access and we introduce them to the people that we know. The students that are in our programs are told no a lot in their life. So to come into our program and for us to accept them for who they are, it helps beyond what we can even imagine.

I grew up in like really like extreme poverty, a lot of crime, a lot of violence in that area. I felt judged, I felt looked down.

A lot of people told me that I would amount to nothing. For people who live in poverty, life and death is a balance every day.

When I grew up, I met so many smart, incredible individuals. But, you know, they were limited by resources. So, like, for me, it always goes back to wanting more for people. Right. I said, okay, how can I find other people that are as motivated as me to build a nonprofit? And that year, I went to Dreamforce. Dreamforce is a very special conference, right? Everyone there, they're thinking about innovation and growth and how to change the world. So not so surprising that I met them at Dreamforce and established this friendship and then grew this organization under that friendship.

Being part of a consultancy was never something I would have considered before I.

Started working with Abel. So I sent Abel to go meet Patrick.

We don't hire someone based on how they were born. We hire somebody based on how they think. We build innovative applications on the Salesforce platform. Pep Up Tech trains these students, and so this is why it's a great relationship, because they can come here using these tools that they just learned.

Using Trailhead is a great way to.

Start writing your own code and create really innovative products. When you invest in people of color, you're opening your eyes to a whole different lens. You're widening your data set. Now you're getting, like, some sort of different cadence.

In the tech industry, we're trying to solve big problems. We need diversity of thought. We can't just have one type of person in the room making decisions for the entire population.

We need to hire people that push us to think differently. And you can't get pushed to think differently if you hire all the same type of people. A diamond is just a stone until that stone is unearthed. So what we try and do is we try and dig those diamonds out and polish them so people will take notice. Anytime that you share the knowledge and your experiences, you're blazing a trail for others to follow. You trailblazers do that. Like, sometimes we'll look at the path and be like, I'm. I'm gonna cut through the grass. I'm gonna make my own path. My students will say to me, you changed my life. You changed my life. I mean, it makes me wake up and go, I wanna do it again.

They helped me put myself out there.

And attain a job within the ecosystem.

So you have a job there?

Yeah. To me, I think Peplotech doesn't just give you opportunities.

It changes your life.

And that's what it did for me. Pepper Tech and Salesfor a whole new world for me.

Salesforce had this million people employed moonshot, and we were like, we are going to meet that moonshot, and this is how we're going to do it.

What a Film. What a film. What a film. What a film. What a dream. What an organization. What a community that would birth something is powerful. And the first time I heard about this, I was just blown completely away. I heard about the founder and I heard about this great woman, Selena. And you know, my great. My great grandmother here in San Francisco was also named Selena. And I said, wow, this is Ohana. This is our family. And I paid extra special attention. And then I met her and I said, wow, it's Selena. And she's here and she's got a message for us. And, Selena, welcome to Dreamforce. We're happy to have you back. Please give Selena Suarez a huge hand. Selena, welcome.

Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Thank you for being an ally. Thank you for providing this incredible platform for us to share our story. I am here with my four co founders, Rivi, Stephanie, and Shawna. Last year, we brought 10 students to Dreamforce. And this year, I'm so proud to say we have 75 students with us today. The four of us came together because we each overcame tremendous diversity, adversity. Sorry. In our own lives. And we really wanted to create a pathway for others to be able to succeed and learn and benefit from what we learned. There are so many communities across this country where there are bright, motivated people who would be tremendous, a tremendous asset to our entire industry, but they don't have the resources, they don't have support, they don't have the allies, the connections that they need to succeed in tech. And so what we have done is we've created a model, a model that works, a model for workforce development. And it works. And how do we know that? Because we're not just founders. We're also awesome admins, and we build great dashboards. So we're really appealing to you all today to help us reach our next goal. Our goal is to have, in one year, to have 1,000 students employed by Dreamforce 2019. And everyone here can help play a part in that. There are three ways that you guys can help us. One, if you or someone you know is hiring, consider interviewing a PEP Up Tech student. Secondly, bring your skills into our classrooms. We have opportunities for you to teach, mentor, volunteer, coach, both in person or online. And last but not least, you can reach out to us on the web, make a donation in support of pepup Tech, and join us in creating the workforce of tomorrow today. Thank you.

Selena. Selena. Selena. Selena. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, how about a huge hand? I mean, really, Isn't that inspiring? Thank you, guys. Everyone at PEP up, tech. Would you just stand up and be recognized? I mean, come on. This is amazing. Look at this over here. Thank you. Pep up, Tech. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you for inspiring us. Thank you for everything that you are doing to inspire us on a vision of diversity and inclusion. Thank you for reminding us that the future of capitalism is inclusive capitalism. Thank you to each and every one of you for everything that you are doing for us. Thank you.