Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company—and Revolutionized an Industry

6.5. Play #68: Share the Model

We opened our first after-school technology center at the Embarcadero YMCA in summer 2000. It was incredible to have Colin Powell, the original inspiration for this effort, in attendance. I had the opportunity to speak at the launch, which gave me the chance to share our model and enlist others to join our crusade. I was amazed by the potential of others joining and the possibility of encouraging this on a massive scale. What would happen, for example, if a top-tier venture capital firm required its portfolio companies to place 1 percent of their equity into a foundation serving the communities in which they did business? It was phenomenal to consider the good that we could generate and the positive impact it would ...