Salesforce.com Founder and CEO Marc Benioff revealed to Bloomberg that Steve Jobs had been a particularly helpful mentor to Benioff and his organization, and repaid the favor by giving Steve Jobs the App Store domain name and trademark.
Steve Jobs’ impacts have touched many lives, and his influence reaches far beyond Apple. Jobs has long been a friend and mentor to a great many people in Silicon Valley, often giving advice and guidance to those he found deserving.
Benioff had the following to say:
He [Steve Jobs] has probably given me more help and more advice than just about anybody. When I get in trouble, and when I get lost in my own vision, I’ve been fortunate to go and see him and he’s been able to show me the future a couple times when I got lost in the forest for the trees
Benioff then recounts that Steve Jobs encouraged him to build an ecosystem around the company’s enterprise applications. Salesforce designed a technology and infrastructure called the “app store” that gave the ability to buy the apps and run them in Salesforce.
When he heard Steve Jobs announce App Store at his famous iPhone keynote, however, Benioff remembered how much Steve Jobs had helped him, and promptly handed over the trademark and domain to the App Store as a gift with no strings attached.
It’s a pretty amazing story – to hear the whole tale in Benioff’s own words, check out the below video. Truly amazing.
