San Francisco Billionaire Tells The Tech Industry: Don't Be 'The Wolf Of Wall Street'
Tech companies are paying record high wages these days. That has caused housing prices to skyrocket. And that has led to some pretty scary protests.
On Friday, Benioff and the nonprofit Tipping Point announced a new plan called SF Gives, reports the San Francisco Chronicle's Joe Garofoli.
SF Gives aims to raise $10 million over the next 60 days to fund Bay Area antipoverty programs. In a few days of working the phones, Benioff says he's already raised $5 million from companies like LinkedIn, Google, Zynga, PopSugar, IfOnly, Jawbone and Box.
The gist is to convince 20 tech companies to contribute $500,000 apiece immediately, but he's hoping to grow if from there, to a $100 million endeavor.
He told Garofoli:
"We still have some pretty epic companies here who have had IPOs and aren't giving - and aren't part of this and won't join.
We don't want to be the industry that looks like 'The Wolf of Wall Street.' ...
... if you come to San Francisco, you need to also be committed to giving back. ... You can't just take from our city."
Benioff grew up in San Francisco and his 12,000-employee company is headquartered there. Recently, companies like Pinterest, Twitter, Google and Mozilla opened up big offices there. Plus employees of other tech companies have moved to the city, suppored by private corporate buses that ferry them to their offices located elsewhere in the Bay Area.
The money will be spent on programs throughout the Bay Area, not just in the city of San Francisco. Largely thanks to the tech industry, the whole area is an extremely expensive place to live.