What’s Disrupt SF Without A Fireside Chat Between Marc Benioff and Michael Arrington?

Marc Benioff, the outspoken founder and CEO of Salesforce, will take the Disrupt stage with Michael Arrington again this year at TechCrunch Disrupt SF.

Since last year, his company has seen solid growth, and it announced that it will be moving into what will be the tallest building in San Francisco, which will of course bear the company’s name. Benioff himself has continued to be one of the Valley’s most prolific philanthropists and recently started calling out other Bay Area companies to give back more. Simply put, we’re thrilled to have him back.

Benioff is considered to be one of the pioneers of cloud computing, and has enabled businesses to connect with customers, employees and partners in new ways. He founded Salesforce in 1999 with a vision for an on-demand information management system that would replace traditional enterprise software technology. Salesforce’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) API extends the usefulness of Salesforce by allowing the CRM product to integrate with solutions offered by other companies. These partnerships have helped Salesforce become one of the top CRM products in the world.

Salesforce went public with an IPO in July 2004, where it raised $110 million on a $1.6 billion valuation. Today, it has a market cap of around $32.5 billion (as of June 12). The company recently partnered with Microsoft on a product-integration agreement that brings Salesforce and the Microsoft Windows, Office and OneDrive services more closely together.

Entrepreneurial talents aside, Benioff has also emerged as one of San Francisco’s greatest philanthropists, recently encouraging members of the tech community to make stronger commitments to give back to their local communities. As a company, Salesforce gives back 1 percent of its profits to charity, and 1 percent of its employee time (about 20 hours per employee per year) goes to community service.

Prior to launching Salesforce, Benioff was a Senior Vice President at Oracle, a role he was in for over 13 years. Before his time at Oracle, Benioff was an assembly language programmer in Apple’s Macintosh division. He also founded an entertainment software company, Liberty Software, in 1979 when he was just 15 years old.

This will be Benioff’s third consecutive appearance on the Disrupt SF stage. Last year, he joined TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington to talk about the lingering influence of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, as well as the necessity of giving back. In 2012 he argued that Google squandered its enterprise opportunity.

Come see what Benioff has in store for us at Disrupt SF, which will take place September 8-10 at San Francisco’s Pier 48. If you’re interested in joining us, tickets are now on sale at extra early bird pricing levels. And if you’re interested in sponsoring the event, reach out to our sponsorship team for more info.

Anthony Domanico contributed to this article.