I've worked with a variety of presidents over the years on both sides of the aisle and congressmen and senators, so I'm not into trying to demonize anybody. It used to be that people would fight like hell on the floor of the house and they'd go have a beer together. Now it's like you're radioactive if you talk to the other side, which keeps us from getting anything done. I'm an independent personally, and I vote for who I believe will make the biggest difference.

Once you know what you want and what is important for you to achieve, also define the values associated with it. What is important? That is something a lot of entrepreneurs pass by too quickly. For us, the things that were important were, No. 1, customer success. Nothing is more important to us than making sure every customer is successful in our service.

We believe in the art of war. We are trying to get our competition to attack us with angry, virulent energy, so we can transform that into larger market share.

I’ve seen how important this concept is in business. To be truly successful, companies need to have a corporate mission that is bigger than making a profit. We try to follow that at salesforce.com, where we give 1% of our equity, 1% of our profits, and 1% of our employees’ time to the community. By integrating philanthropy into our business model our employees feel that they do much more than just work at our company. By sharing a common and important mission, we are united and focused, and have found a secret weapon that ensures we always win.

Although I loved working on technology - I've always been a computer geek at heart - my professors encouraged me to get a real-world job working with customers.

I have failed a lot in my philanthropy, where I will make philanthropic contributions and they just won't be effective.

Customers get vested in certain paradigms of computing, and those large vendors will try to keep those customers in those paradigms of computing for as long as possible. That's where you basically get the term cash cow.