10. Marc Benioff
Co-founder, chairman and CEO, Salesforce – 1999-present
Salesforce’s much-celebrated founder and CEO makes the top ten on the back of five nominations from the channel leaders we approached (with four placing him in their top two).
Winning plaudits from our panellists for popularising cloud-based CRM, Benioff was named Chief Executive’s CEO of the Year in 2022.
Having sold his first application aged 15, Benioff worked at Oracle for 13 years before founding Salesforce in 1999. He has led the San Francisco-based software vendor, which last year turned over $31.4bn, ever since.
Leadership style
According to this Fortune article, Benioff’s leadership style centres on belonging, equality and inclusion. He has been vocal on issues such as homelessness, LGBTQ rights, gender pay and abortion, in 2021 offering to relocate any Texan Salesforce employees wishing to move after new abortion laws were tightened in the state.
Low points
Benioff was last January forced to lay off 10% of Salesforce’s workforce (around 7,000 employees) in response to global macroeconomic conditions.
Killer quote
“I don’t work well in an office. It just doesn’t work with my personality.” (taken from CNBC interview, 2023)
What our panellists said about Benioff
Larry Walsh, CEO and Chief Analyst, Channelnomics
“Benioff didn’t invent CRM or the SaaS model, but he did make it mainstream with Salesforce. He proved that a SaaS company isn’t just viable, but could lead the market. And he created many opportunities.” 
Rye Austin, CCO, Core Technology Systems
“With 24 years at the helm of Salesforce, Marc Benioff has proven to be an innovator in cloud-delivered services and SaaS, establishing himself as a visionary in the tech industry long before the ‘cloud’ and ‘SaaS’ were known labels. His forward-thinking approach has likely helped shape the cloud industry as we know it today.”
How did IT Channel Oxygen compile The Century’s Greatest Vendor Leaders? See here
View entire top 30 here
Who’s next in the countdown? See following page…
