On stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO and founder, only had good things to say about Facebook. “They have a great CEO, they have a great user base,” he said. But Michael Arrington tried to get him to say what Facebook could have done better. According to Marc Benioff, Facebook should have done its IPO two years ago.
But he believes that the company is still on the right track to become ubiquitous. He told the audience that only a few companies have had the potential to become as big as Google over the past few years. “Facebook has the opportunity to be the next Google,” Benioff said.
When it comes to giving a piece of advice to Facebook for the future, he stated that the company “needs to double down on their revenue growth.” Facebook shares are now trading at less than 50 percent of their original value when the company went public back in May 2012.
Benioff suggested that trading on the New York Stock Exchange could have been better for the company than going with the NASDAQ. He mentioned as well that he is probably not the best person to discuss about Facebook’s success because Facebook uses Salesforce for its sales operations and Salesforce-owned Work.com for human resources.
Facebook is often accused of putting too much emphasis on the product and not enough on revenue. It believes that if the product is very good, revenue will follow. Yet, many analysts and shareholders don’t agree with that mentality.