20VC: Salesforce Founder Marc Benioff on The Future of LLMs | The Future of Agents | The Future of Labour | Management Lessons from Steve Jobs
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2024
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Marc Benioff is one of the iconic founders and visionaries of our time. From the founding of Salesforce 25 years ago, Marc has in many ways created an entire industry. He has scaled the company to a market cap of $346BN, $38BN in revenue and over 72,000 employees.
Ask Me Anything with Marc Benioff:
The Future of Models:
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Why does Marc believe we are at the upper end of LLMs and they are commoditising?
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Why does Marc believe the future of models is many smaller, verticalised models specialised in different areas?
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OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Xai. Which would Marc buy and which would he short?
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What is the single biggest barrier to Salesforce winning the AI war in the next 10 years?
The Future of Agents:
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What does Salesforce need to do to prevent becoming a database in the next generation of AI?
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To what extent do agents hurt vs help Salesforce?
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What do very few people understand about agents that is very important?
The Future of Labour:
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Will Salesforce replace it’s human labour with digital labour? Will Salesforce be bigger or smaller in 10 years time, people wise?
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Why does Marc believe that layoffs are a crucial tool for CEOs to win?
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How will a future of digital labour change the pricing model of SaaS tools today?
Management Lessons from Marc Benioff:
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How did one meeting with Steve Jobs change how Marc views leadership?
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How does Marc analyse the required mindset to win as a CEO today?
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What has Marc changed his mind on most in the last 12 months?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We're doing our business plan for next year for 2025 right now. We're not adding any more |
| 0:04.7 | software engineers next year. We have increased the productivity this year with agent force |
| 0:09.8 | and with other AI technology that we're using for our engineering teams by more than 30% |
| 0:14.8 | to the point where our engineering velocity is incredible. And then we will have less support |
| 0:20.5 | engineers next year because we have an |
| 0:22.4 | agentic layer. But these current large language models, there's a lot of folks building those today. |
| 0:28.1 | And they're rapidly becoming a commodity. Everything needs to be about agent force at Salesforce. |
| 0:33.2 | This is the only thing that really matters today. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. |
| 0:40.3 | And the story of me and Mark Benioff is pretty special. He is one of my all-time heroes, and I emailed him 53 times before he agreed to do a show with me. |
| 0:47.3 | He did it, it crushed all records, and it was his first ever podcast. |
| 0:52.3 | Today, he is back on the show to discuss the future of agents, |
| 0:55.8 | the future of LLMs, Labor and the United States. This was such an honor for me to do. |
| 1:00.9 | To have Mark Back was incredible. But before we dive in today, we're excited to ignite your |
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... |
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