Vote of Confidence

[Click here to read the Web-exclusive feature, How to Boost Your Confidence, offering tips for business athletes on how to stay on top of their game...]

I'm standing on second base at Pac Bell Park in San Francisco. It's a glorious day in the Bay Area, and all around me, civilians are living out their big-league fantasies. Sales managers don batting helmets and step up to the plate. Young product testers picnic in right FIeld. Five slithery dancers shimmy as a singer in a leopard-print tuxedo belts out an energetic version of Prince's "Cream." The event: an extravaganza for a dotcom that's celebrating its 5,000th paying customer and its latest product release. Our host, Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com, is at the mike, ready to deliver an Academy Award - worthy litany of thank-yous to all of the folks who made it possible.

Is this some sort of business flashback? Is the economy partying like it's 1999? I check my ticket stub. It's stamped 2002. The Nasdaq is at a six-year low, unemployment for college-educated workers is nearly as high as it was in the early 1990s, and there are new indictments every day on Wall Street. Yet here's a company with enough confidence to host a $100,000 bash for 1,400 people. As I'm leaving the stadium, a pudgy guy in a baseball cap grabs the elbow of the salesforce.com employee at my side. "You guys are one of the few bright spots in technology these days," he says. "Everyone is looking to you as a leading indicator."

The economic turmoil of recent years has taken a toll on jobs, stock prices, and venture-capital funding. But the most damaging toll may be psychological: indecisive CEOs, risk-averse companies, frightened frontline executives. What business needs is a vote of confidence: companies that aren't afraid to make big bets, executives who spend more time looking ahead than looking over their shoulders. That's why I went on a tour of America -- from New York to San Francisco and many cities in between -- searching for businesses and business leaders who have managed to thrive despite the economic meltdown, who have positioned themselves to grow even if the economy doesn't. Over the long term, the economy has nothing to fear but fear itself. I went out to find people and companies who aren't playing scared.

NEW YORK AND SAN FRANCISCO

THE LOOK OF A CONFIDENT CEO
It's three days before the party at Pac Bell, and I'm meeting Marc Benioff for lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel. He's had a grueling three days in New York. Customer meetings with Cablevision, RR Donnelley & Sons Co., and AOL Time Warner. Dinner with sales reps. Product demos. Sessions with analysts. Benioff flops his 6-foot-5-inch frame into a leather chair, polishes off two glasses of sour-apple lemonade, and launches into a recital of his company's recent triumphs: deals with Honeywell, Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts, and Segway LLC. Revenue that skyrocketed from $23 million last year to a projected $50 million to $60 million in 2002. No wonder this CEO exudes confidence the way most CEOs these days radiate misery.

Benioff launched salesforce.com in 1999, after 13 years on the fast track at Oracle. He was the company's top salesperson at 21 and its youngest VP at 25. At Oracle, Benioff worked closely with Tom Siebel, who eventually left the company to found Siebel Systems Inc. in 1993. Then, in 1999, Benioff announced that he would leave Oracle to form a new company to deliver sales-management services via the Web. Siebel, a friend, invited Benioff to develop his product at Siebel Systems. But Benioff declined and, with $2 million in backing from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, went out on his own.

Benioff's business model is simple and disruptive: Instead of installing software on each user's PC, salesforce.com rents out its service by the month for between $65 and $125 per user, depending on the sophistication of the application. That approach eliminates the up-front investment required by enterprise software. "We're a utility," Benioff says. "Everything is already installed, upgraded, and going. We are surrogate CIOs for 5,000 companies."

Today, Benioff, Siebel, and Ellison are fierce competitors, duking it out in a high-stakes (and acrimonious) rivalry. The day-to-day skirmishes involve competing for business. The real battle is about the future of software. "A lot of Siebel customers are coming to us because even if Tom Siebel gave you his software for free, you still couldn't afford it," Benioff says. "You'd have to hire the consultants to install it, buy the application and database servers, and train people to use it."