Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, has opened up about the company’s 2023 layoffs, which saw the CRM leader cut its workforce by ten percent.
Speaking on the Behind the Founder podcast, host Lenny Rachitsky quizzed Benioff about a significant struggle or failure that he had endured throughout his career.
Despite more than 25 years at the helm of Salesforce, the CEO pointed to a relatively recent example, describing the process of initiating the layoffs in early 2023 as a “complete dumpster fire.”
Benioff detailed how the “last thing” he wanted to do was to introduce layoffs, but they were necessary due to the post-pandemic economic downturn that affected much of the tech industry.
Like many companies, Salesforce had scaled their operations too quickly during the pandemic-driven boom, leaving it overstaffed.
The CEO compared the situation to flying in an airplane. At first, everything is going great, and then suddenly, he discovers that the pilots and the emergency parachute are gone.
In doing so, Benioff hints that the sudden departure of former co-CEO Bret Taylor – shortly before the layoffs began – came as quite a shock.
Yet, more notably, he proved candid in admitting he could have handled certain aspects of the layoffs better:
“When we did the layoff, I’m trying to overcommunicate. I’m having all employee meetings. It’s a complete dumpster fire. It’s a nightmare.
I’m getting bashed in the press, on Twitter; everyone is shooting at me. It’s like, ‘Oh, boy.’
“If I had a thick skin, it got a lot thicker during that moment because it’s never going to go well no matter what, and it didn’t go well.”
However, the Salesforce man believes that those tough decisions positioned the company for the success that it’s currently experiencing – be that financially, structurally, or in terms of product innovation.
Benioff on AI Agents & The Competition
Away from his struggles, Benioff also dedicated some time to discussing the hot topic in enterprise tech: AI agents.
Salesforce proved instrumental in forcing the technology to the top of the agenda, in releasing Agentforce.
Yet, there’s significant competition, with the likes of Microsoft, Google, SAP, and Oracle making big announcements of their own.
“Everybody’s got agents, and good, that’s what we want,” Benioff explained.
We don’t want to be the only one. If you’re the only one and no one else is working on it, you’ve got a problem, actually.
“You don’t want to be the only one. You want to be in a market.”
The CEO linked this apparent desire for competition to the advice he got from Akio Toyoda, Chairman and Former President of Toyota, who said: “Better, better, better. Never best.”
Benioff believes that this philosophy of continuous improvement applies to agents and technology as a whole. Just as CRM evolved to automate more customer touchpoints and manage data, he views AI Agents as the next phase of evolution.
When Rachitsky posited that many in the sector may be frustrated at the fact they were only just getting used to AI and are now having to move to agents, Benioff vehemently disagreed: “No, no, no, no, no. That’s a mistake.”
He expounded on this point, arguing that founders should “want the mindset of, ‘Oh, the next thing is coming. I can’t wait for the next thing.’”
With technology constantly evolving – becoming cheaper, easier, and more automated – Benioff is firmly of the belief that if you’re not embracing what’s next, you’re going to get left behind.
More News from Salesforce
Having only gone live with Agentforce at the end of October of last year, by mid-December, Salesforce had already introduced Agentforce 2.0, branding it as “The Digital Labor Platform.”
This update highlights a shift beyond only automating flows within the CRM ecosystem. It’s enabling AI Agents to work within the broader enterprise, too, automating longtail workflows that employees would ordinarily perform.
Indeed, more than a simple rebranding, Agentforce 2.0 represents an expanded vision with enhanced features and capabilities, signaling a significant evolution in its functionality.
Elsewhere, Salesforce recently extended its Service Cloud to include a new HR-focused solution called Employee Service.
