Benioff says Dreamforce cleanup looks like city poured ‘fresh cement’

Dave Matthews stood on a stage in San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Tuesday morning and wished the crowd of onlookers well. Then he gave them homework: “I’ll let you, among other things, fix the homeless problem in San Francisco,” he said, to cheers.

Matthews was on duty to introduce Salesforce’s 2023 Dreamforce conference, helping to kick off CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote address on the first day of the event. His comments were a prelude to Benioff’s. After the Salesforce CEO talked about his company’s philanthropic efforts, as well as his own (he has donated millions to local public schools), Benioff said during his keynote that “this is now a moment where we hear about things like the homeless, or we think about public schools, or what’s going on in our local cities.”

“We all have a choice when we walk down those streets,” he said: to either ignore the problems or fight to improve things.

All week, Benioff has been positioning himself on the side of the fighters, even as he issued a high-profile threat to pull Dreamforce out of San Francisco next year. The conference is driving an estimated $62 million of direct spending in the city this year, the city’s travel association told the San Francisco Business Times, giving his threat some real weight.

On Tuesday, Benioff sat down with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle outside the bustling conference grounds, where he was pressed about his impressions of San Francisco and what he’d do about it. “Are you losing faith in this town?” Ruhle asked.

“I love it here,” he replied. “You can see, gorgeous day, everything is very clean and spick-and-span right now, it’s —” “Today,” Ruhle interjected. “Today,” Benioff agreed.

“I have said to the city that it’s very important for the next three days, need to go really well, and so far, we’re getting a good result from them,” he continued. “We want their attention on keeping it as clean and safe as possible. This is the most important thing any city government can do.” 

When Ruhle asked specifically what “worries” Benioff had about the city, he said the “No. 1 issue” is homelessness. “The city needs to directly address this issue. It’s not our only issue in San Francisco, but it’s our main issue,” he said. Pressed by Ruhle for specific solutions, Benioff put in a plug for law enforcement. “We must enforce our laws. … That’s something that tends to be a debate,” he said with a chuckle. “The second thing is we must be focused on funding and investing in our police force. We’re down to about 1,400 cops here from about 2,000 before the pandemic. … We’ve got to focus on our police force.” The city government puts the police force drop at fewer than 400 officers, though it has said there are around 600 cops fewer than “the recommended level.”

On Wednesday, during a promised appearance at the end of an otherwise mundane panel held by Salesforce’s AI leaders, Benioff once again talked up the company’s weight in the city. “We put a lot of pressure on the city this year,” he said in response to a question from a San Francisco Chronicle reporter. “When the city of San Francisco wants to look good and get shiny and clean and safe, it knows how to do it,” he said. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

After a quick back-and-forth with that reporter to establish that downtown looked cleaner this week, Benioff began to wax rhetorical: “If they can do it for Dreamforce, why can’t they do it every day?”

“If the city applies itself, it can be amazing,” he continued. “But unfortunately, the city doesn’t always take itself as seriously as it does during Dreamforce.” He reissued his plug for more cops and recycled the same stat he said to Ruhle about there being 600 fewer officers in the city than there were before.

Dreamforce does take place in one of San Francisco’s most visibly struggling areas, and its positive impact on foot traffic is extremely obvious (keep an eye out for all the lanyard-wearers spending money in usually empty cafes). Many restaurants nearby were booked solid for Dreamforce attendees, and venues around the conference were promoting private parties and corporate events in the evenings. The event also pulls an array of A-listers into the city; Viola Davis and Matthew McConaughey are scheduled to speak this year.

After the Wednesday press conference — in which Benioff also said that “every day should be Dreamforce” — the chief executive headed a few hundred feet away to host an onstage interview with California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The two men started their conversation with a familiar topic: homelessness in San Francisco. Referring to the sidewalks that he has deemed “spick and span” thanks to his company, Benioff quipped, “What did they do? Pour fresh cement?”