#/ but also me vc: he's literally just a guy! hit him with your car!!

[soft-boi-eli]

Hello Hello!

I just wanted to say I love your fics!

ALSO!

Could I request a CC!SBI X Gn! Insomniac Reader! Where the reader is an insomniac (Obviously-) but is somehow a pro at MC!

Like they are basically god at the game! They also REALLY enjoy horror games! They don’t get scared easily and LOVE horror movies! They basically love anything horror/creepy-

ANYWAYS!!

The reader lives off of ramen and Monster energy drinks (For fun-)! They have a Twitch (Which has about 18 mil followers and 14 mil subs!) and a YouTube channel (Which has 20 mil followers!)

They mainly play horror games (Obviously-) and MC!

You can do headcanons or scenarios/images with the SBI! Maybe like playing a horror game together or MC? OR! Maybe some things they do together? Or when they meet up? Or-to many ideas Nightmare-

ANYWAYS!

I don’t really care! And don’t worry about taking too long on it!

ALSO!

Maybe we could be friends? Only if you want too!

Remember to eat, drink, and get enough sleep!

<3

Yes. I lovesthese ideas and I'm gonna choose headcannons due to they are a bit easierfor me to write.

And yes I'm perfectly fine with being your friend! I'm actually happy to make friends on this app so yeah!

Pronouns:nonbinary

Tw: cussing. Insomia, mentions of horror movies. Mention of horror games. Fluff.

SBI with a horror streamer friend head cannons.

*Ahem* tommy wanted to paly a game with you so you choose a game that didn't look like horror until the middle. He screamed at the jump scare and it made both of your chats so happy.

When phil decides to play with you there is literally a silence after a jump scare. Everyone thought he had a heart attack and honestly so did you until he spoke up about accidently hitting his mute button when he jumped.

Wilbur. He's a bit better then tommy but more scared then phil would be. Any little noise won't get him but when it starts to get noticeable the noiseless to him. The jump scare, he'd fall out of his seat and stay on the ground for a bit. You ask if he's good and he literally doesn't answer. He's dead. You killed him. Congrats.

Techno. He'd handle them a bit better then everyone else. Not as good as you but heisnt very paranoid. He literally runs at the noises trying to get jumpscared. While you run after him telling him to stop because if he doesn't then you'd lose and die. And technoblade never dies.

If you all play together both tommy and wilbur pussy out. Techno last the longest and phil the second longest. While you remain the ruler of horror games.

Now how you all met was dream invited you to the dream smp to add to the chaos. Needless to say it got extremely chaotic due to you being on almost 24 hours. You first ran into techno. He seemed confused and skeptical.

You both found eachothers love for potatoes. You set up camp quote close to techno but not too close.

Phil popped in when he needed something for a build and noticed a new name. Talked to you in chat and asked to join your VC. You both found each other talking for a bit.

Wilbur was next. Wilbur got curious over the new person and just hoppedinto the same VC as you techno and phil. He was quick to realize that you were a famous youtuber. Mainly for your horror videos and your extreme Parkcore skills.

In minecraft that is.

Tommy noticing that all of you were in the same VC joined in with shouting. He was low key jealous that everyone was obsessed with you. Then he saw why.

You literally cracked jokes at his shouting.

"Is that an angry pomeranian? Nah nah. It's an angry child. Even better an angry blonde!" - you.

He was shocked and immediately started joking and laughing with you. He wasn't fully angry for long.

Now about your diet. When they heard that you had only eaten ramen and drank angry drinks they were concerned. You lived quite close to techno so when you guys met up he was shocked that you looked as healthy as you did.

He hated the fact that you literally didn't eat anything else.

You told him occasionally you have something other then ramen but you were just too lazy to really cook anything and that you didn't feel like burning the house down.

One month phil, tommy, wilbur, and techno decided to organize a month long sleep over so that they could celebrate your birthday. Phil being quote the father figure cooked different, but easy dinners every night just so you didn't eat only ramen that day.

When they actually arrived though you got a text from Phil asking about your address in your dms. Not think much of it you just sent him your location.

You were going to take a small nap. Just to bost your energy before you went and streamed later that night.

As you were sleeping there was a car heading to your house.

Phil, wilbur, tommy, and techno were all just existing in the car. And when they arrived to your house they didn't expect to actually see a clean house.

You woke to a loud knock.

When you opened the door in your half dazed state you expected a package. But to see four people standing on your porch.

You nearly jumped out of your skin.

You were stuck there blinking at them.

Finally snapping out of it you let them in. Confused on why in the ever loving fuck they were here.

Phil explained they were here to celebrate your 21st birthday and they were here for a month.

You stared at them for a while. Confused on what to do since you haven't had people over in almost 2 years.

But you got use to it.

So when you got done streaming and smelled something other then ramen you were thrown off guard. Like what was that. I haven't smelled that in years.

But after the second day you got use to it too.

For your birthday phil literally made a feast.

Like he found your favorite food other then ramen and cooked it. With that he prepared everything you could dream of.

Your sleeping habits. Let's dig into those.

I'm in no place to talk as right now it's 3:05 in the morning. And here I am.

But when they are over they don't let you stay up till no 3-4 in the morning. They all know the importance of sleep.

But there are those nights where no once can sleep and it results in a late night stream. And streaming for hours none the less.

The amount of accidental all nighters everyone has pulled was immense. But that's what happens with jet lag, adhd, and insomnia.

Literally you get tired randomly. Sleep for only 3 hours. Wake up. Drink coffee, energy drinks, highly caffeinated tea. And don't sleep till late at night.

Pillow forts.

It's a must and it happens. Horror movies, pillow forts, and snacks. Like you all are in this massive fort, watching horror movies, one by one you all are falling asleep. You and techno were the last up due to technos active mind and your body not letting you sleep.

You two literally just vide there, changing the movies from horror to some silly animated movies, like how to train your dragon, frozen, Luca, and many others.

You two pull an all nighter and it's actually a bet to see how long anyone else takes to notice.

You bet an hour. Techno says all day.

You won. Philza notices the worse eye bags under both you and technos eyes and immediately starts scolding.

He is papa bird and he won't let anyone of his children neglect their needs.

"Did you even drink water at all? You guys should of been sleeping not binge watching horror movies all night!" -philza

You could only offer a smirk, along with a laugh.

"I think we did I just can't fully remember. Also we were watching animated films. Not horror. Surprised you didn't wake up to let it go." - you.

You turn to techno.

"You owe me 15 bucks pig boy!"-you again.

Handing you the money he rolls his eyes. "Yeha yeah. Rub it in." -techno.

Ah yeah they found a horror game that you were scared of surprisingly. It was actually surprisingly you hadn't played it yet.

Outlast.

You had been holding off that game until you finished your other one but here you were. Bored out of your mind.

So you decided fuck it.

That game teriffed the shit out of you. It was so good though.

When you screamed they all came rushing up due to the fact that you never scream.

They say you out of your chair, on the floor, blinking. They thought you were hurt.

But you sat up and looked at your computer.

"Damn. That was actually really good." When you looked behind you and found the boys all staring you smiled and waved.

"You need something?"-you

"You screamed. We heard a thud. We thought you fuckin died!" -tommy.

"No I'm alive. My soul almost divorced my body but it's still quite here."-you

That day made highlights.

The popular y/n actually got jump scared. The one person who never screamed at horror games screamed.

When they left you were sad yes but they were still your best friends. Ready to talk when ever you want.

Sometimes I think that you guys talk all through out the night. Them forgetting that you were actually in a different time zone.

Sometimes they pop into your streams, be it MC, horror, you just talking to your fans, or even the once in the blue moon, cheerful games.

They just pop in and start talking to you. And you talk back like they were there since the beginning.

Phil is now one of your moderators too. Along with tommy, wilbur, and techno. When they pop in they make sure no one picks on you.

And since you are now close to the SBI. You are now part of it.

You didn't choose the fans did. But they are your new family. No matter what.

Even if they disagree with your eating habit.

Or energy drink addiction.

Or insomnia.

Or you mainly playing horror games.

Or you basically living in your streaming room.

Or even the nearly 24 hour streams.

I could go on but I'm not gonna.

I'm tired. But I can sleep. 2 days and I get to have a tour of my new school.

And it took so long to finally get into it.

We have been going through a huge hassle even before school started to get me enrolled.

And then we had to get me into this program.

But now on Monday I get to go in. Get a tour. Then start either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Anyway hope you liked. It's now 3:50 and it's no proof read I'm sorry

[revelaare]

Shit said in the Crimson Discord & VC, taken out of context part 2, (the sequel)

Big NSFW warning, probably

his meat slid off and then slid right back on

[PRONOUN] can punch me in my uterus and make a hammock out of my ovaries

it’s one of the worst fucking things i’ve ever heard, and i’ve heard someone literally shit their pants

they tagged me and my ass clenched

this man just said “I want to eat ur ass and then kiss you” ok buddy

a man with a plan

my grandpa is texting his hoes from his flip phone

god my lawyer was a hit but idk if she will be the chosen one or not

hello give me your toenails

i'll touch you in a non-weird way

he was in that movie with the people, he was the human.

i want her to brush my hair

If we have dick glasses they have to be of the highest quality for the best experience

i don't wanna watch that white nonsense

i would throat him like a fine wine

these millenials can't live without ac? back in my day we lived on the sun

yall better put those goats on a wheel, tell them to start running

he looks like a bitch

yes or no, u wud punch the light bulb out of thomas edisons wrinkly pruned hand and asked him if he believed in god

still has skin and a working body

i needed to wait until my voice changes

you thought i was snacking on joe biden’s savory meat stick

barack guckin oglizzy, oguckma, barack osugma, Joe choden, OglchnnngggHHHYynnUUUnnghhma

why did i have a dream that i was taking the lid off my car

false gods require wine, real gods require coochiefice

fettucine wet ass pussy

that was all you sent me. the picture of a raccoon and then nothing

it isn’t hate, it is ‘continuously let down by’.

i never went to school who science

i’m gunna go peer pressure my mum into a shot

thank you for furthering my career at hot topic

i will suck the ingrown hair off of him

it has huge jackman in it

i chomped on this eggshell, got my calcium in for the day

i will take you to touch the mango

i want to see all the big things

[PRONOUN] has collar bones so deep you could hook a clothing hanger into it

no asscheeks in fucking family chat you animals

he will eat you alive and suck out your intestines like its a spaghetti noodle

[NAMES]’s Tiggle Biddie’s

dropped acid, cried the whole night.

my stomach is hooping and hollering, i’m about to eat some sleep

you want my throatsac ??

please dont know me as the toenail eater

you have to keep the skin on one side while you eat the other, thats basic mango physics

i mean he is some good sasuage

calm down dick Hannibal

respectfully, what the fuck is this

tbf i only eat my steaks where they need tampons

you committed acts of culinary terrorism

does your refrigerator whimper and cower in the corner when you approach it. that's your fridge trying to use echo location to locate a safe space

thundercuck

i almost met Jesus, I almost got an autograph. Almost got a greatest hits signed album.

respectfully, are you smoking fucking crack?

my left testicle could play better than you

i’ll eat him with ketchup

son of a biscuit eating bulldog!

now it’s back to me sucking, all is right in the world.

holy fuck weasels.

holy fuck, weasels!

why does the bad guy look like the Statue of Liberty?

this is a man that sometimes willingly dresses like a lumberjack

and me, being an emotional cripple, must make jokes about this.

hey my name is [NAME] i'm **definitely** who i say i am

[NAME OR PRONOUN] offered a back massage by calling it the “tickle thing”

i love a man who puts his parents in a nursing home.

my brain is going to take a hot shower

wait have u seen steve harvey's coochie

if it were me i would simply not be pregnant

look im not about to be out here saying i love [NAME OR PRONOUN] feet, but i am about to be out here saying that their feet are some of the nicest feet i've seen in a long time

i named my cloyster renesmee

[NAME] was texting me from the bathtub

you’re pregnant? That’s unfortunate.

do I say dumb shit? Perhaps. Do I take ownership? Perhaps.

i pay for things in blissful ignorance

i am an emotional vagrant

i am an emotional fragrance

to make a long motherfucking story short...

this enchilada tastes like asshole and sadness

you are not an ugly bitch, you’re just a bitch

that’s not a nut shot, buddy.

i’m sad because i sucked the meat off of this pumpkin spice latte

i want to make a blanket out of his eyebrows

what are you disgracing my Christian eyes for?

he be looking at that dick like why does it go so much to the left?

I want her to record an audio book for me so I can fall asleep listening to her voice.

Can I lick you like an ice cream cone? Asking for science.

like you're out to lunch with your bromie and you're eating some rubens or something and you wistfully look over the rim of your sunglasses and just: You ever buss 2 fast

my accent is flaccid

timotay chalamaymay’s sweet ass

on the bright side mcallister’s gave me 3 pickle spears. Almost enough to make a whole pickle.

you think they came from the same mommy pickle?

HIS DOODLE IS OUT

i thot that meant [NAME] wanted to...doodle his noodle

i don’t use commas, i don't respect u enough, fuck ur reading comprehension.

does australia have seasons

i want someone to embalm my body with mcdonalds sprite

his hermione grangina

purrrr my last email

its lore locked beneath 30 layers. u can only understand it if uve had a near death experience

LET'S GET FUCKY

i wanna have the heart of a stoner

his man titties look like little tattooed pillows

SWIGGITY SWOOTY COMIN FOR THAT BOOTY

there were no cheeks to shake. nothing to clap. no noise to be had from her literal slices of wonderbread

u ever just fuck around and ur tits fart

put a lil mint leaf on it for authenticity

alright brother god bless may u be fertile

i feel like im being advocated for something i shouldnt be advocating for

and i am adam with my fat pendulous balls lol

i’m making whuppie with whoopie godberg

theodore tits fart rex

yeah man do u also have the third toe on ur shoulder

the green spaghetti monster is coming for me and i can't blame him

today i learned starfish do not poop

that was nothing compared to some other things I saw

listen I'd willingly watch [NAME/PRONOUN] in a cell for 24 hours. Imagine that sounded less creepy

i'd lick a dirty flip flop off her abs

i’m tempted to show you all the gravity defining boobs, maybe tomorrow

my brain is on vacation

good morning! i ate breakfast and im ready to go to bed

tape the titty in

ive unironically had nightmares with [NAME] in them

the peanut in the auditory canal

so far this feel all comfortable, does this all make sense?

i know it's kind of a schlep to get through

nail polish or no nail polish for the shower?

and then he saw those big tt honkerz... and it all went down hill from there

can y’all stop chanting curses in the chat my furniture is stuck on the ceiling

EH?! CIAO? HELLO??

in Russia this is not ok 

i can’t buy pants here on Sunday either

IT'S LIKE TWELVE THOUSAND DOLLARS TO EAT ON A SOGGY PANCAKE

imagine me going up to [NAME/PRONOUN] and being like i love the way ur flesh smells

in a supermarket. The sickly blue light where humans congregate. Animal human masses. Nameless faces. Whole lives boiled into generalized categories like "asshole who definitely does need 4 boxes of cheerios". Yout hink and realize while stabding in line u didnt grab the bag of frozen peas...but its 2 late

its truly the only picture that gives me pure joy

are weasels real

my work mum just messaged me the phrase "use your booty call wisely" with no context

"let's bring u to the mustache chair"

If you’re not doing coke under the coke sign what is the point?

[archivedeunhee]

*Jisoo vc* IT’S ME! Hey guys, I’m definitely not a newbie here lol it’s Kim (Guanting’s mun) and this is a revamped version of my old muse, Eunhee. She’s had a lot of revamps and she’s had a lot of FC changes, but I think this version of herself is the best one yet. If you’re interested in any of her plots, you can find them here and if you see anything you like, you can click that heart bottom in the bottom righthand corner of this post and I’ll shoot you an IM! And before I forget, you can check out her profile here!

She was born in 1993 and was the only child for the first few years of her life

Then her brother came along

Her parents neglected her in favor of her brother, who did acting as a child

While they neglected her, she learned how to fend for herself and started developing talents of her own

She asked her music teacher to give her private singing lessons after school, and that went on for about four years

They weren’t aware that she could sing until she asked if she could audition for record labels

She was almost immediately offered a spot as a trainee at her first label, and her parents were shocked when she passed the audition, but signed the papers allowing her to become a trainee

She didn’t really speak to them during her time as a trainee, and only called her brother every once in a while when she knew her parents wouldn’t be around

She was a trainee for about fourteen months before she debuted as a soloist in September of 2008 when she was just fifteen years old.

She was on cloud nine at first, but then she slowly began to realize that the music she was given wasn’t what she wanted to perform. She didn’t feel a connection with the music, and she was left with an empty feeling whenever she performed.

After her contract with that label expired, she left and found a new home with Gold Star in 2009.

Her next few singles garnered her a small, yet loyal fanbase, and it wasn’t until she released Good Day that she blew up and everyone started to learn her name and fall in love with her. 

Gold Star capitalized on that, of course. They sent her on variety shows and pushed her on the public. Usually that would make people sick of someone, but the Korean general public loved it and their love for Eunhee grew and grew.

They forced her into taking on a supporting acting role in a drama in 2011, something she didn’t really want to do at first. Then she chose her own supporting acting role in 2013 and found out that she actually did like acting, not as much as singing, but enough for her to want to pick it up as a hobby when she had the free time and when she found a role that she connected with.

Eunhee was never really an outgoing or vivacious person. She was/is an introvert and likes to stay to herself. The only time she’s really outgoing or lively is when she’s onstage or when she’s acting (or when she’s drunk lol). She also has a horrible case of Resting Bitch Face, which doesn’t mesh well with an introvert. Some netizens began to push the narrative that she was a bitchy diva that was stuck up and thought she was better than everyone else, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Eunhee’s actually really, really sweet, she’s just quiet and shy and doesn’t speak much. 

Some trainees and idols avoid her because they hear that she’s a stuck up bitch.

In 2015, she was caught up in a dating scandal. He was a fellow celebrity that she had met earlier on in her career and they became close friends. She went over to a dinner party at his apartment and ended up falling asleep there after one too many glasses of wine, and she left the next morning wearing the same clothes. Dispatch snapped pictures of him walking her to her car and the netizens had a field day. It almost completely ruined her because her fans, mostly her male fans, felt betrayed by her “relationships”, some even going so far as to burning her merchandise and photocards. It took a lot of damage control and an issued apology from Eunhee herself for it to blow over, but her reputation still took a huge hit. Netizens still try to push her as a promiscuous girl to this day, which she hates because not only does she not date often, she hasn’t even slept with anyone, so it’s a major lie. What hurt her the most was the fact that the guy got away with it unscathed. 

Now that she’s over a decade into her career and she’s been at the top of the charts for over half of that time, she mostly has control over her music, which is why she doesn’t make releases often. She’s a perfectionist when it came to her art, and she only wants to release albums that she’s proud of because she wants the best for her fans (and because she doesn’t want to lose the public’s love and attention like she lost her parents’ love and attention when her brother came along.)

Fun Facts!!

She loves to cook and bake!! Let her fatten your muses up

She’s small (5′1″) although her official profile claims that she’s 5′3″

Don’t make fun of her height unless you want her to have a permanent frown saved just for you.

Out of the closet nerd. She loves anime and comics and all that good shit and she’s not afraid to admit it

A huuuuge supporter of the LGBTQA+ (as well as a member of it), and she often posts happy coming out day messages and stuff on social media

Can be lowkey crude, although it’s not really like?? outwardly crude. The type to make dirty jokes that people don’t pick up on as being dirty until a few seconds after the fact.

Seems emotionally constipated but she’s literally the most sensitive ass girl you’ll ever meet like wow she gotta keep a box of tissues on standby.

Bbibbi is her favorite song she’s written because it’s her polite way of telling netizens and the public to butt the fuck out of her private life. 

[unixcommerce]

Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to Be Uncomfortable

Shortly after the social protests broke out in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, I had a the opportunity to do a LinkedIn Live conversation with Dr Kamau Bobb – Google’s Global Lead for Diversity Strategy & Research, and Senior Director of Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Equity in Computing – on if this moment in time has the opportunity to lead to structural change and more opportunities for blacks to participate in executive positions in tech companies, given they only fill 2.7% of those positions currently according to a recent post from The Information.

The conversation with Dr. Bobb was as real and honest a discussion I’ve had recently, and left me wanting to get some additional perspective from Craig Cuffie, Salesforce’s Chief Procurement Officer and one of those 2.7% of black tech executives.  Salesforce has been a corporate leader in the areas of inclusion and diversity over the last several years, and Craig’s 30+ years working at the highest levels of a number of Fortune 500 companies provided me with unique insights that puts the current moment in perspective.

Interview with Craig Cuffie of Salesforce

Below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation.  Click on the embedded SoundCloud player to hear the full interview.

smallbiztrends · Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to be Uncomfortable

Small Business Trends: The protests and social unrest triggered by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota on May 25th show no signs of slowing up.  We’ve seen some signs of change in response.  But do you think this moment has the possibility becoming a real movement that not can change the justice system, but can also lead to changes in the tech industry that will significantly increase black participation in executive positions well beyond the 2.7% rate recently cited by The Information?

Craig Cuffie: I do. I do. And I sent a text shortly after the killing of Mr. Floyd to our COO. And I said, “I have never known tougher times.” I mean, and no matter where you’re from, if you watched the news, listened to the news, thought about what was going on, you have to take pause and go, “What is happening? What just happened? What did we witness?” And that single incident, video for eight minutes and 46 seconds, and then broadcast on the news globally, crystallized the movement. Not the moment, but the movement. And it was hard. I mean, I have been on the phone nonstop. I mean, I got a crazy big job anyway. So I’m on the phone nonstop and you throw all this on top of that, and then a bunch of other things we’re doing in the company to address it and really show up and do our part and make change. Everyone is demanding change.

So I said to my team, and it took a while to process this, to process the words. You know when something really bad happens, you have to put a schema in your head to think about it, because there are places, I think for its own self-preservation, the mind will not let you go. It just won’t let you go there. So it takes time for you to figure out what just occurred. And I said to my team when I was finally able to address them, I said, “Look, here’s what I believe, the way I can describe this. This country has an inch and a half of gasoline poured all over it, and the killing of George Floyd was a match. Will we let the country burn? Or will we save ourselves? Will we save ourselves?”

And so it’s not just tech. It’s housing. It’s voting rights. It’s all of those things. The systemic racism in all of its manifestations have changed. Tech, as an exemplar, we know what the answer is. We know the question because we ask that every day, and you’ll get 2.7% of executives from the VP level up to CEO are Black against a population in the country of 13%. 13% against your 330 million people, roughly about 30 million people give or take, and that has been the number that has been around since I was a kid. Sticks in my head. It hasn’t changed. Population has grown. Population has decreased. But when you think about an opportunity and throw this against one in three Black men between the ages of 18 and 50 are incarcerated. So you’re automatically taking people out of the slipstream that could become CEOs.

I had a profound conversation with a young man doing a startup. Grew up in Florida, awful circumstances. And he was moved to a charter school and he was saved by a math teacher that moved him to the charter school. He said, “You are gifted in math. I will talk to your mom. We will get you into this charter school.” And had that not happened, he goes, “Craig, I would have been selling drugs on the street.” His vision of success was to get a nice car, and a gun, and sell drugs on the street. So how many more of those and successful entrepreneur plugged into the VC community here in the Valley? I mean, that story is just amazing.

So if we don’t look at it, if we don’t think about it, if we don’t create the opportunity… No one’s asking for a handout, we’re just asking for an at bat. I just want to be able to swing, and people just want to be able to swing. And sometimes I hit the ball, and sometimes I miss the ball, but at least I got the opportunity to swing and that’s what people are asking for, not preferential treatment, just the same opportunity. And I think if we can create that same opportunity and the big tech companies have come out with statements, they’ve put money behind it.

We need to put points on the board because we know there are capable African American individuals at every level available to move in slots into corporate. Let’s be clear, this is a behavioral issue at its core. And it starts with behavioral changes in organizations that say, “I’m going to go against my nature.” So what normally happens and what I’ve seen in my 38 years in corporate is when you have a recruiting team and the schools that they tend to go to is probably where the chairman of the board went, the CEO went there, and you kind of go, “How many Black people are you going to find in some small university in the Midwest?” It’s just not going to happen.

So you have to force yourself, against your better nature, it doesn’t mean your nature’s wrong. We are all comfortable with what we like to do. It doesn’t matter what it is. I work for a guy who’s hilarious. He said, “Everybody says they love change. So go in your kitchen and move their silverware to a different drawer. They will lose their stuff.” Right? Think of that. Right? How many times do you walk in the door and someone has moved your stuff? So you have to get people to go, “You know what? How do you get comfortable with being uncomfortable?” I submit that being a Black executive in any company, you’re kind of uncomfortable all the time. And you will always recognize it. It doesn’t always manifest itself in a set of actions, but you find yourself with some level of discomfort because you know that you are the only, and you don’t want to be the only. We absolutely don’t want to be the only.

So it is literally doing moves like we did at Salesforce where we took recruiting, and recruiting now reports into our chief diversity officer, our office of equality, Tony Prophet. That’s a bold move, to make sure that we have programs and policies in place, and training in place to get away from that bias, that unconscious bias that we have as one thing, to make sure that we have a slate of diverse candidacy is another thing. And then three, make sure that we’re hiring them. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to get a home run every time we put a diverse candidate into a pool of candidates, but it means at least they got a look. And that’s all we’re asking when it comes to adding Blacks in tech.

Small Business Trends: I think a lot of the beginnings of tech companies, particularly at the startup and then they grow into something big. When you’re a founder of a tech company, you depend on the people you know best. I mean, you depend on your classmates, you depend on your family, you depend on your friends, and they become your core. And maybe the business starts really growing, and it grows exceedingly fast and you have to bring on people. And once again, you depend on your social circle.

And so if you’re lucky enough, your tech company grows to the point where you have to start hiring people that’s not in your circle. Maybe it gets to the point where you’re public, but the core and the foundation is built and it’s built on your social net, social circle. So when it comes time to extend it, that’s when they start having to purposefully try to do things. Before, it was natural. Before, it grew organically. And I think that’s a challenge for a lot of these tech companies who they start out with their friends, and family, and social networks, and the foundation of the business is set before anybody else is kind of involved. How do we infiltrate that? Because I think that may be one of the answers. How do we get them to expand their network at the time where we can have diverse voices be a part of that growing and building the business part?

Craig Cuffie: I think there’s a couple of things that hit me immediately Brent. One is, to me it’s less about infiltrating that. And as we know, the growing cadre of Black entrepreneurs is not duplicating that. One of my mentors and dear friends said to me years ago, it’s not earth shattering but it’s absolutely true, “A social system will create itself in its own image unless it’s checked.” It absolutely will do that, and that’s just natural for us to do. So I can’t fault the founder for doing what any founder would do with the opportunity in front of him or her, which is, “Who can I trust to go on this journey with me?”

I mean, that’s the fundamental question I believe that the founder starts with. “Who can I trust and go on this journey with me? Who knows me? Is it my family, or my friends, or my folks I’ve worked with who know me well, and I know I can trust them?”

I have a dear friend who recently retired, and she would say the mark of trust or her is, “I’ll let you babysit my kids.” Because that’s what you think about, that obvious level of trust. “I’m going to let him come in my home and watch my kids, not as a throw off. It’s because I trust you.” And so how do we become as a community inside that trust zone? And some of that is the opportunities that happen there. So again, the fear for me is that we do the same thing and forget the fact that a diverse team will always produce better outcomes than a non-diverse team, be that team be all White, or all White men, or all White women, or all Black men, and all Black women. Because we’re just not seen.

We perceive the world and translate the world in our heads very differently. You and I will probably have shared experiences, lots of them, but how we view that world based on our experience set will drive us to different outcomes given the same opportunity. So that’s the thing for me. We can’t say we want it and then not do it.

Small Business Trends: Salesforce has done the best job of any tech companies I know recently of being inclusive and being diverse. You mentioned Tony Prophet. He’s just one of a number of folks that I’ve met that I’ve been so incredibly impressed with that are at Salesforce and are in strategic positions, but are also very much about what we’ve just been talking about here, opening up opportunities for others.

But it starts with Marc Benioff. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what Marc has meant to this, and how he has set the stage for Salesforce to be what I consider to be a leader, at least particularly in the tech field, when it comes to inclusiveness and diversity and trying to set a path for increasing opportunities for Blacks in particular when it comes to executive leadership at tech companies.

Craig Cuffie: I’ve been with the company about three years. I’m going to give you my impressions of Marc when it comes to diversity, and inclusion, and equity, and fairness. There are scant few CEOs that I’ve met, and I’ve met many and worked for a handful of them, that are as forward looking and thinking around this issue as he is. One of the unique things about Salesforce is its culture, and it has codified that culture over the last 20 or so years, and this is dead smack in the middle of it. There are questions, and I’ve been around in the workforce for a long time. And there’s a, I don’t know what magazine or what school put it out, but the fundamental question, “Does a company have a soul?”

This company has a soul, and it’s embedded in, or is its culture. And then you have a CEO that lives it and the leadership team lives it, and it flows down and we all live it. And that’s really important. And he has been deeply involved with this issue long before it was an issue relative to diversity and inclusion and in indexing on the things that are right, and fair, and just. So this is a natural extension of what he does, what the company does anyway.

We started a task force, a racial equality and justice task force, and it’s modeled on a conversation we had with Melody Hobson. And so we said, “Melody, how do you think about this?” And Marc was doing the interview. Melody said, “I think about the three Ps. I think about people, purchasing power, and philanthropy.”

What are you doing with the people? Are we indexing in the right way? Or are we not indexing in the right way? And if not, why not? Let’s understand that. Oh, by the way, they’re just numbers, and don’t be afraid of them. If you go through all this and you say you got 2.7% of a population is all you have and against a population of 13.4%, I think is the number, you go, “That shouldn’t be such a big lift, knowing that they’re out there.” Purchasing power, where are we spending our money? I happen to be the chief recruitment officer. So that’s why I am on this task force. Where are we spending our money? Where are we investing our money?

So I partner with the ventures team. There’s the money that I manage for the company to procure goods and services, but then there’s the ventures team that have committed to spending a hundred million dollars over the next three years in a dedicated fund to find and fund Black entrepreneurs. And I’m going to spend a hundred million dollars, going to spend more than that over the next three years, as well as grow our diverse supplier numbers 25% year on year. Well by the way, that’s ensuring there’s a slate and making different choices at selection. Assuming all things are equal, why not?

Philanthropy. What are we doing? What are we supporting? Are we enabling? And then the last piece which we added, we added another P. So there are four Ps instead of the three. Policy. We stand up and we have stood up many times around policies. When you think about what we did in Indiana, and we said, “We’re not going to work there. We’re not going to go keep an office there if this is the law of the land that’s coming down. It’s completely counter to how we think about people, and culture, and our values.” So we’ve done that before.

So those are the things that, brain child of the CEO, unbelievably supportive. I’ve been doing this for the last five or six weeks with the leaders in each of those pillars. Tony Prophet has got the people pillar, Eric Loeb is the policy pillar, Ebony Beckwith has the philanthropy pillar and she runs our dot org and our foundation, direct report to Marc. So you’ve got the top African-Americans in the company on this task force with a subcommittee of people that are subject matter experts, and then about 50 folks at large driving this task force. Oh, by the way, coming out and putting points in the board and measuring yourself directly accountable to the CEO. So that’s what Salesforce is doing. That’s what Marc has, I can say, has been instrumental in creating, and he has been evangelizing this in every public forum that I’ve seen him in over the last five or six weeks.

Small Business Trends: In your capacity as the chief procurement officer, you are setting aside a certain amount of money to do business with Black or diverse organizations, you’re investing in diverse organizations. I mean you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. So A, this does not sound like a charity move here. You don’t do hundreds of millions of dollars for charity. You maybe do maybe a couple million, but you don’t do hundreds of million strictly for charity. This is for business.

Craig Cuffie: No, it’s not a charity move. We have a charitable arm of the company, and they don’t give out little millions of dollars. They give out tens of millions of dollars for various things. And Ebony Beckwith, my dear friend, leads that. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars over time. If you think about a group called the Billion Dollar Roundtable. The Billion Dollar Roundtable has been around, started by Bernard Tyson, God bless him, is no longer with us. But it’s companies that spend a billion dollars plus a year on diverse suppliers. So it would be very cool to be a member of that. And I’ve got them working in my team to figure out how we get there before I declare that. But it’s real. It’s a real commitment.

So I go back to Bernard Tyson. One of the things that he had started and is now almost near completion before he passed, was a new hospital down in LA in a pretty rough neighborhood. And he mandated that 20% of the employees will verifiably live within two miles of that hospital. And keep in mind, Kaiser Permanente, big long-term partner with Salesforce, Bernard was on our board of directors. When you think about health outcomes, which he was maniacally focused on, he knew that wealthy communities have better health outcomes. And so if you raised the standard of living in any community, the health outcomes will occur. And the phrase that was used for another task force, and a bunch of them, there’s other taskforces around this topic, was, “From counting spend to counting impact.” From counting spend to counting impact.

Why is that important? Chief procurement officers like me talk about how much spend that we have on our management. “Well, we’ve got this billion and that billion.” You know people like me. That’s what they talk about. Go through the bragging rights. How much spend do you have under management? And so when you think about counting impact, it creates a different dynamic around where those dollars go and the impact that those dollars have in the community. So I’ve been saying, and I’m pushing my team is to move away from counting spend to counting impact.

Small Business Trends: I love that because if it’s not having an impact, what’s the point? What are we doing?

This article, “Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to Be Uncomfortable” was first published on Small Business Trends

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Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to Be Uncomfortable

Shortly after the social protests broke out in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, I had a the opportunity to do a LinkedIn Live conversation with Dr Kamau Bobb – Google’s Global Lead for Diversity Strategy & Research, and Senior Director of Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Equity in Computing – on if this moment in time has the opportunity to lead to structural change and more opportunities for blacks to participate in executive positions in tech companies, given they only fill 2.7% of those positions currently according to a recent post from The Information.

The conversation with Dr. Bobb was as real and honest a discussion I’ve had recently, and left me wanting to get some additional perspective from Craig Cuffie, Salesforce’s Chief Procurement Officer and one of those 2.7% of black tech executives.  Salesforce has been a corporate leader in the areas of inclusion and diversity over the last several years, and Craig’s 30+ years working at the highest levels of a number of Fortune 500 companies provided me with unique insights that puts the current moment in perspective.

Interview with Craig Cuffie of Salesforce

Below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation.  Click on the embedded SoundCloud player to hear the full interview.

smallbiztrends · Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to be Uncomfortable

Small Business Trends: The protests and social unrest triggered by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota on May 25th show no signs of slowing up.  We’ve seen some signs of change in response.  But do you think this moment has the possibility becoming a real movement that not can change the justice system, but can also lead to changes in the tech industry that will significantly increase black participation in executive positions well beyond the 2.7% rate recently cited by The Information?

Craig Cuffie: I do. I do. And I sent a text shortly after the killing of Mr. Floyd to our COO. And I said, “I have never known tougher times.” I mean, and no matter where you’re from, if you watched the news, listened to the news, thought about what was going on, you have to take pause and go, “What is happening? What just happened? What did we witness?” And that single incident, video for eight minutes and 46 seconds, and then broadcast on the news globally, crystallized the movement. Not the moment, but the movement. And it was hard. I mean, I have been on the phone nonstop. I mean, I got a crazy big job anyway. So I’m on the phone nonstop and you throw all this on top of that, and then a bunch of other things we’re doing in the company to address it and really show up and do our part and make change. Everyone is demanding change.

So I said to my team, and it took a while to process this, to process the words. You know when something really bad happens, you have to put a schema in your head to think about it, because there are places, I think for its own self-preservation, the mind will not let you go. It just won’t let you go there. So it takes time for you to figure out what just occurred. And I said to my team when I was finally able to address them, I said, “Look, here’s what I believe, the way I can describe this. This country has an inch and a half of gasoline poured all over it, and the killing of George Floyd was a match. Will we let the country burn? Or will we save ourselves? Will we save ourselves?”

And so it’s not just tech. It’s housing. It’s voting rights. It’s all of those things. The systemic racism in all of its manifestations have changed. Tech, as an exemplar, we know what the answer is. We know the question because we ask that every day, and you’ll get 2.7% of executives from the VP level up to CEO are Black against a population in the country of 13%. 13% against your 330 million people, roughly about 30 million people give or take, and that has been the number that has been around since I was a kid. Sticks in my head. It hasn’t changed. Population has grown. Population has decreased. But when you think about an opportunity and throw this against one in three Black men between the ages of 18 and 50 are incarcerated. So you’re automatically taking people out of the slipstream that could become CEOs.

I had a profound conversation with a young man doing a startup. Grew up in Florida, awful circumstances. And he was moved to a charter school and he was saved by a math teacher that moved him to the charter school. He said, “You are gifted in math. I will talk to your mom. We will get you into this charter school.” And had that not happened, he goes, “Craig, I would have been selling drugs on the street.” His vision of success was to get a nice car, and a gun, and sell drugs on the street. So how many more of those and successful entrepreneur plugged into the VC community here in the Valley? I mean, that story is just amazing.

So if we don’t look at it, if we don’t think about it, if we don’t create the opportunity… No one’s asking for a handout, we’re just asking for an at bat. I just want to be able to swing, and people just want to be able to swing. And sometimes I hit the ball, and sometimes I miss the ball, but at least I got the opportunity to swing and that’s what people are asking for, not preferential treatment, just the same opportunity. And I think if we can create that same opportunity and the big tech companies have come out with statements, they’ve put money behind it.

We need to put points on the board because we know there are capable African American individuals at every level available to move in slots into corporate. Let’s be clear, this is a behavioral issue at its core. And it starts with behavioral changes in organizations that say, “I’m going to go against my nature.” So what normally happens and what I’ve seen in my 38 years in corporate is when you have a recruiting team and the schools that they tend to go to is probably where the chairman of the board went, the CEO went there, and you kind of go, “How many Black people are you going to find in some small university in the Midwest?” It’s just not going to happen.

So you have to force yourself, against your better nature, it doesn’t mean your nature’s wrong. We are all comfortable with what we like to do. It doesn’t matter what it is. I work for a guy who’s hilarious. He said, “Everybody says they love change. So go in your kitchen and move their silverware to a different drawer. They will lose their stuff.” Right? Think of that. Right? How many times do you walk in the door and someone has moved your stuff? So you have to get people to go, “You know what? How do you get comfortable with being uncomfortable?” I submit that being a Black executive in any company, you’re kind of uncomfortable all the time. And you will always recognize it. It doesn’t always manifest itself in a set of actions, but you find yourself with some level of discomfort because you know that you are the only, and you don’t want to be the only. We absolutely don’t want to be the only.

So it is literally doing moves like we did at Salesforce where we took recruiting, and recruiting now reports into our chief diversity officer, our office of equality, Tony Prophet. That’s a bold move, to make sure that we have programs and policies in place, and training in place to get away from that bias, that unconscious bias that we have as one thing, to make sure that we have a slate of diverse candidacy is another thing. And then three, make sure that we’re hiring them. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to get a home run every time we put a diverse candidate into a pool of candidates, but it means at least they got a look. And that’s all we’re asking when it comes to adding Blacks in tech.

Small Business Trends: I think a lot of the beginnings of tech companies, particularly at the startup and then they grow into something big. When you’re a founder of a tech company, you depend on the people you know best. I mean, you depend on your classmates, you depend on your family, you depend on your friends, and they become your core. And maybe the business starts really growing, and it grows exceedingly fast and you have to bring on people. And once again, you depend on your social circle.

And so if you’re lucky enough, your tech company grows to the point where you have to start hiring people that’s not in your circle. Maybe it gets to the point where you’re public, but the core and the foundation is built and it’s built on your social net, social circle. So when it comes time to extend it, that’s when they start having to purposefully try to do things. Before, it was natural. Before, it grew organically. And I think that’s a challenge for a lot of these tech companies who they start out with their friends, and family, and social networks, and the foundation of the business is set before anybody else is kind of involved. How do we infiltrate that? Because I think that may be one of the answers. How do we get them to expand their network at the time where we can have diverse voices be a part of that growing and building the business part?

Craig Cuffie: I think there’s a couple of things that hit me immediately Brent. One is, to me it’s less about infiltrating that. And as we know, the growing cadre of Black entrepreneurs is not duplicating that. One of my mentors and dear friends said to me years ago, it’s not earth shattering but it’s absolutely true, “A social system will create itself in its own image unless it’s checked.” It absolutely will do that, and that’s just natural for us to do. So I can’t fault the founder for doing what any founder would do with the opportunity in front of him or her, which is, “Who can I trust to go on this journey with me?”

I mean, that’s the fundamental question I believe that the founder starts with. “Who can I trust and go on this journey with me? Who knows me? Is it my family, or my friends, or my folks I’ve worked with who know me well, and I know I can trust them?”

I have a dear friend who recently retired, and she would say the mark of trust or her is, “I’ll let you babysit my kids.” Because that’s what you think about, that obvious level of trust. “I’m going to let him come in my home and watch my kids, not as a throw off. It’s because I trust you.” And so how do we become as a community inside that trust zone? And some of that is the opportunities that happen there. So again, the fear for me is that we do the same thing and forget the fact that a diverse team will always produce better outcomes than a non-diverse team, be that team be all White, or all White men, or all White women, or all Black men, and all Black women. Because we’re just not seen.

We perceive the world and translate the world in our heads very differently. You and I will probably have shared experiences, lots of them, but how we view that world based on our experience set will drive us to different outcomes given the same opportunity. So that’s the thing for me. We can’t say we want it and then not do it.

Small Business Trends: Salesforce has done the best job of any tech companies I know recently of being inclusive and being diverse. You mentioned Tony Prophet. He’s just one of a number of folks that I’ve met that I’ve been so incredibly impressed with that are at Salesforce and are in strategic positions, but are also very much about what we’ve just been talking about here, opening up opportunities for others.

But it starts with Marc Benioff. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what Marc has meant to this, and how he has set the stage for Salesforce to be what I consider to be a leader, at least particularly in the tech field, when it comes to inclusiveness and diversity and trying to set a path for increasing opportunities for Blacks in particular when it comes to executive leadership at tech companies.

Craig Cuffie: I’ve been with the company about three years. I’m going to give you my impressions of Marc when it comes to diversity, and inclusion, and equity, and fairness. There are scant few CEOs that I’ve met, and I’ve met many and worked for a handful of them, that are as forward looking and thinking around this issue as he is. One of the unique things about Salesforce is its culture, and it has codified that culture over the last 20 or so years, and this is dead smack in the middle of it. There are questions, and I’ve been around in the workforce for a long time. And there’s a, I don’t know what magazine or what school put it out, but the fundamental question, “Does a company have a soul?”

This company has a soul, and it’s embedded in, or is its culture. And then you have a CEO that lives it and the leadership team lives it, and it flows down and we all live it. And that’s really important. And he has been deeply involved with this issue long before it was an issue relative to diversity and inclusion and in indexing on the things that are right, and fair, and just. So this is a natural extension of what he does, what the company does anyway.

We started a task force, a racial equality and justice task force, and it’s modeled on a conversation we had with Melody Hobson. And so we said, “Melody, how do you think about this?” And Marc was doing the interview. Melody said, “I think about the three Ps. I think about people, purchasing power, and philanthropy.”

What are you doing with the people? Are we indexing in the right way? Or are we not indexing in the right way? And if not, why not? Let’s understand that. Oh, by the way, they’re just numbers, and don’t be afraid of them. If you go through all this and you say you got 2.7% of a population is all you have and against a population of 13.4%, I think is the number, you go, “That shouldn’t be such a big lift, knowing that they’re out there.” Purchasing power, where are we spending our money? I happen to be the chief recruitment officer. So that’s why I am on this task force. Where are we spending our money? Where are we investing our money?

So I partner with the ventures team. There’s the money that I manage for the company to procure goods and services, but then there’s the ventures team that have committed to spending a hundred million dollars over the next three years in a dedicated fund to find and fund Black entrepreneurs. And I’m going to spend a hundred million dollars, going to spend more than that over the next three years, as well as grow our diverse supplier numbers 25% year on year. Well by the way, that’s ensuring there’s a slate and making different choices at selection. Assuming all things are equal, why not?

Philanthropy. What are we doing? What are we supporting? Are we enabling? And then the last piece which we added, we added another P. So there are four Ps instead of the three. Policy. We stand up and we have stood up many times around policies. When you think about what we did in Indiana, and we said, “We’re not going to work there. We’re not going to go keep an office there if this is the law of the land that’s coming down. It’s completely counter to how we think about people, and culture, and our values.” So we’ve done that before.

So those are the things that, brain child of the CEO, unbelievably supportive. I’ve been doing this for the last five or six weeks with the leaders in each of those pillars. Tony Prophet has got the people pillar, Eric Loeb is the policy pillar, Ebony Beckwith has the philanthropy pillar and she runs our dot org and our foundation, direct report to Marc. So you’ve got the top African-Americans in the company on this task force with a subcommittee of people that are subject matter experts, and then about 50 folks at large driving this task force. Oh, by the way, coming out and putting points in the board and measuring yourself directly accountable to the CEO. So that’s what Salesforce is doing. That’s what Marc has, I can say, has been instrumental in creating, and he has been evangelizing this in every public forum that I’ve seen him in over the last five or six weeks.

Small Business Trends: In your capacity as the chief procurement officer, you are setting aside a certain amount of money to do business with Black or diverse organizations, you’re investing in diverse organizations. I mean you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. So A, this does not sound like a charity move here. You don’t do hundreds of millions of dollars for charity. You maybe do maybe a couple million, but you don’t do hundreds of million strictly for charity. This is for business.

Craig Cuffie: No, it’s not a charity move. We have a charitable arm of the company, and they don’t give out little millions of dollars. They give out tens of millions of dollars for various things. And Ebony Beckwith, my dear friend, leads that. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars over time. If you think about a group called the Billion Dollar Roundtable. The Billion Dollar Roundtable has been around, started by Bernard Tyson, God bless him, is no longer with us. But it’s companies that spend a billion dollars plus a year on diverse suppliers. So it would be very cool to be a member of that. And I’ve got them working in my team to figure out how we get there before I declare that. But it’s real. It’s a real commitment.

So I go back to Bernard Tyson. One of the things that he had started and is now almost near completion before he passed, was a new hospital down in LA in a pretty rough neighborhood. And he mandated that 20% of the employees will verifiably live within two miles of that hospital. And keep in mind, Kaiser Permanente, big long-term partner with Salesforce, Bernard was on our board of directors. When you think about health outcomes, which he was maniacally focused on, he knew that wealthy communities have better health outcomes. And so if you raised the standard of living in any community, the health outcomes will occur. And the phrase that was used for another task force, and a bunch of them, there’s other taskforces around this topic, was, “From counting spend to counting impact.” From counting spend to counting impact.

Why is that important? Chief procurement officers like me talk about how much spend that we have on our management. “Well, we’ve got this billion and that billion.” You know people like me. That’s what they talk about. Go through the bragging rights. How much spend do you have under management? And so when you think about counting impact, it creates a different dynamic around where those dollars go and the impact that those dollars have in the community. So I’ve been saying, and I’m pushing my team is to move away from counting spend to counting impact.

Small Business Trends: I love that because if it’s not having an impact, what’s the point? What are we doing?

This article, “Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to Be Uncomfortable” was first published on Small Business Trends

source https://smallbiztrends.com/2020/07/craig-cuffie-salesforce-interview.html

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT KID

Suppose you realize there is nothing new our startup can teach us about funding—or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of energy released. They know they want to invest in the earliest stages, will invest based on a two-party system ensured sufficient competition in politics. Your prestige was the prestige of the institution you belonged to. There are no generally accepted standards. He knows the world; she knows, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. When a startup spends and how fast it grows. I feel kind of bad that we've transformed these guys from lighthearted to grimly determined. In fact, here there was a triple pressure toward the center.

As one VC told me: If you were talking to a guy four feet tall whose ambition was to play in the NBA, I'd feel pretty stupid saying, you can at least take comfort in the thought that the same thing: that they wasted so much time. If Galileo had said that people in the 1950s they paid associates far less than firms do today. Time gives us such distance for free. Why? Someone responsible for three of the biggest threats to a startup that's been operating for more than 8 or 9 months, the first thing I want to know is almost always the same. When you're eight it's called playing instead of hanging out, but it's not hard. Working at something as a day job as a waiter. By the standards of the rest of the conversation depends on the answer. If you get a call from a VC firm, go to their web site and check whether the person you talked to is a partner. Now companies increasingly have to pay employees upstream of it.1

Which further accelerated the fragmentation. These speakers would do better to say simply, don't give up on your dreams to what someone else can do, you can do. 8 option pool 200 16. Another powerful motivator is the desire to be better than other people at something. It's tantalizing to think we believe things that will later turn out to be a time when you have no immediate financial worries, and few responsibilities. Not so much from specific things he's written as by reconstructing the mind that produced them: brutally candid; aggressively garbage-collecting outdated ideas; and yet driven by pragmatism rather than ideology. If we could look into the past to find big differences. Probably because startups are so small. What they are, functionally, is a way of life that was literally uniform. Most startups operate close to the margin of failure, and the result is what we can't say. That realization hits most people around 23. VCs'.

That may not be so naive as it sounds, however. You don't have to wait to be an adult. What was novel about yuppies was that they wanted market price for labor. We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of ideology that prevents people from viewing it with as cold an eye as they would something like consulting during the Bubble. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. Within companies there were powerful forces pushing people toward a single model of how to look and act varied little between companies. But also it will tell you what we all wish someone had told you in high school, they nearly all say the same thing: that they can take the very same kid and make him seem a more appealing candidate than he would if he went to the local public school. Occasionally startups go from seed funding direct to acquisition, however, and I stopped watching it. Great cities attract ambitious people.

There's an A List and you want to please people who are most in demand right now, and they're expected to spackle over the gaps with gratuitous transitions Furthermore. Cadillac stopped being the Cadillac of cars in about 1970. So don't get demoralized. Henry Ford started out doing. The reason the new model isn't delayed.2 You should always have a plan B as well: you should be richer. The iPhone isn't so much a phone as a replacement for don't give up on your dreams. That would seem offensively curt. The degree of courage of past or present union leaders are somehow inferior.

But I don't write to persuade the actual reader, someone who doesn't will seem arrogant. Now I have enough experience to realize that those famous writers actually sucked. Also they find they now worry obsessively about the status of their server. If total war was the big political story of the 20th century there were more and more a seller's market. You want to be, but a leading indicator. I was surprised recently when I realized that all the worst problems we faced in our startup were due not to competitors, but investors have you by the balls. I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But I think the solution is to work for Henry Ford, but not to be. Beneath that the message there is: you should be richer. They want to know first whether a startup is the feeling that what you're doing, you're now on a path labelled get rich or bust. Kids are curious, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid curiosity. One of the dangers of taking investment from individual angels, rather than through an angel group or investment firm, is that one of our teachers was herself using Cliff's Notes, it seemed par for the course.

And in every field there are probably heresies few dare utter. It seemed to people at the time. Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end seems especially far away. Suppose in the future, but just look at the machinery of fashion and try to plug the holes. The startup didn't have enough money to reach the speed where you can discount your own bad moods. Both Blogger and Delicious did that. But because they have this force behind them. Plenty of famous people do; in the short term, the quality of one's work is only a small component of fame. Odds are you just think whatever you're told. If you listen for it you can also watch real doctors, by volunteering in hospitals. Relief.

They raise their first round fairly easily because the founders seem smart and the idea isn't hard to understand, you could probably make them more airtight. Mainly because it's easier to read than a regular article. Another way of saying that is that half of you are going to die. People in Florence weren't genetically different, so you start to believe it will. Ditto for most of what happened in finance too. And the relationship between the founders what a dog does to a sock: if it can be pulled apart, it will have to happen piecemeal. Hipness is another thing you wouldn't have seen on the list 100 years ago, it turned out not to be. The classic Bubble incubators, most of the other differences between startups and what passes for productivity in big companies. The picture we give them of the world. Their investors agree.

Notes

The philistines have now missed the video boat entirely. A deal flow, then used a TV for a monitor. One VC who got buyer's remorse, then they're not influenced by confidence.

You can't be buying users for more. At the moment; if their kids rather than giving grants. That's probably true of nationality and religion as well.

[unixcommerce]

Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to Be Uncomfortable

Shortly after the social protests broke out in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, I had a the opportunity to do a LinkedIn Live conversation with Dr Kamau Bobb – Google’s Global Lead for Diversity Strategy & Research, and Senior Director of Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Equity in Computing – on if this moment in time has the opportunity to lead to structural change and more opportunities for blacks to participate in executive positions in tech companies, given they only fill 2.7% of those positions currently according to a recent post from The Information.

The conversation with Dr. Bobb was as real and honest a discussion I’ve had recently, and left me wanting to get some additional perspective from Craig Cuffie, Salesforce’s Chief Procurement Officer and one of those 2.7% of black tech executives.  Salesforce has been a corporate leader in the areas of inclusion and diversity over the last several years, and Craig’s 30+ years working at the highest levels of a number of Fortune 500 companies provided me with unique insights that puts the current moment in perspective.

Interview with Craig Cuffie of Salesforce

Below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation.  Click on the embedded SoundCloud player to hear the full interview.

smallbiztrends · Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to be Uncomfortable

Small Business Trends: The protests and social unrest triggered by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota on May 25th show no signs of slowing up.  We’ve seen some signs of change in response.  But do you think this moment has the possibility becoming a real movement that not can change the justice system, but can also lead to changes in the tech industry that will significantly increase black participation in executive positions well beyond the 2.7% rate recently cited by The Information?

Craig Cuffie: I do. I do. And I sent a text shortly after the killing of Mr. Floyd to our COO. And I said, “I have never known tougher times.” I mean, and no matter where you’re from, if you watched the news, listened to the news, thought about what was going on, you have to take pause and go, “What is happening? What just happened? What did we witness?” And that single incident, video for eight minutes and 46 seconds, and then broadcast on the news globally, crystallized the movement. Not the moment, but the movement. And it was hard. I mean, I have been on the phone nonstop. I mean, I got a crazy big job anyway. So I’m on the phone nonstop and you throw all this on top of that, and then a bunch of other things we’re doing in the company to address it and really show up and do our part and make change. Everyone is demanding change.

So I said to my team, and it took a while to process this, to process the words. You know when something really bad happens, you have to put a schema in your head to think about it, because there are places, I think for its own self-preservation, the mind will not let you go. It just won’t let you go there. So it takes time for you to figure out what just occurred. And I said to my team when I was finally able to address them, I said, “Look, here’s what I believe, the way I can describe this. This country has an inch and a half of gasoline poured all over it, and the killing of George Floyd was a match. Will we let the country burn? Or will we save ourselves? Will we save ourselves?”

And so it’s not just tech. It’s housing. It’s voting rights. It’s all of those things. The systemic racism in all of its manifestations have changed. Tech, as an exemplar, we know what the answer is. We know the question because we ask that every day, and you’ll get 2.7% of executives from the VP level up to CEO are Black against a population in the country of 13%. 13% against your 330 million people, roughly about 30 million people give or take, and that has been the number that has been around since I was a kid. Sticks in my head. It hasn’t changed. Population has grown. Population has decreased. But when you think about an opportunity and throw this against one in three Black men between the ages of 18 and 50 are incarcerated. So you’re automatically taking people out of the slipstream that could become CEOs.

I had a profound conversation with a young man doing a startup. Grew up in Florida, awful circumstances. And he was moved to a charter school and he was saved by a math teacher that moved him to the charter school. He said, “You are gifted in math. I will talk to your mom. We will get you into this charter school.” And had that not happened, he goes, “Craig, I would have been selling drugs on the street.” His vision of success was to get a nice car, and a gun, and sell drugs on the street. So how many more of those and successful entrepreneur plugged into the VC community here in the Valley? I mean, that story is just amazing.

So if we don’t look at it, if we don’t think about it, if we don’t create the opportunity… No one’s asking for a handout, we’re just asking for an at bat. I just want to be able to swing, and people just want to be able to swing. And sometimes I hit the ball, and sometimes I miss the ball, but at least I got the opportunity to swing and that’s what people are asking for, not preferential treatment, just the same opportunity. And I think if we can create that same opportunity and the big tech companies have come out with statements, they’ve put money behind it.

We need to put points on the board because we know there are capable African American individuals at every level available to move in slots into corporate. Let’s be clear, this is a behavioral issue at its core. And it starts with behavioral changes in organizations that say, “I’m going to go against my nature.” So what normally happens and what I’ve seen in my 38 years in corporate is when you have a recruiting team and the schools that they tend to go to is probably where the chairman of the board went, the CEO went there, and you kind of go, “How many Black people are you going to find in some small university in the Midwest?” It’s just not going to happen.

So you have to force yourself, against your better nature, it doesn’t mean your nature’s wrong. We are all comfortable with what we like to do. It doesn’t matter what it is. I work for a guy who’s hilarious. He said, “Everybody says they love change. So go in your kitchen and move their silverware to a different drawer. They will lose their stuff.” Right? Think of that. Right? How many times do you walk in the door and someone has moved your stuff? So you have to get people to go, “You know what? How do you get comfortable with being uncomfortable?” I submit that being a Black executive in any company, you’re kind of uncomfortable all the time. And you will always recognize it. It doesn’t always manifest itself in a set of actions, but you find yourself with some level of discomfort because you know that you are the only, and you don’t want to be the only. We absolutely don’t want to be the only.

So it is literally doing moves like we did at Salesforce where we took recruiting, and recruiting now reports into our chief diversity officer, our office of equality, Tony Prophet. That’s a bold move, to make sure that we have programs and policies in place, and training in place to get away from that bias, that unconscious bias that we have as one thing, to make sure that we have a slate of diverse candidacy is another thing. And then three, make sure that we’re hiring them. It doesn’t mean that they’re going to get a home run every time we put a diverse candidate into a pool of candidates, but it means at least they got a look. And that’s all we’re asking when it comes to adding Blacks in tech.

Small Business Trends: I think a lot of the beginnings of tech companies, particularly at the startup and then they grow into something big. When you’re a founder of a tech company, you depend on the people you know best. I mean, you depend on your classmates, you depend on your family, you depend on your friends, and they become your core. And maybe the business starts really growing, and it grows exceedingly fast and you have to bring on people. And once again, you depend on your social circle.

And so if you’re lucky enough, your tech company grows to the point where you have to start hiring people that’s not in your circle. Maybe it gets to the point where you’re public, but the core and the foundation is built and it’s built on your social net, social circle. So when it comes time to extend it, that’s when they start having to purposefully try to do things. Before, it was natural. Before, it grew organically. And I think that’s a challenge for a lot of these tech companies who they start out with their friends, and family, and social networks, and the foundation of the business is set before anybody else is kind of involved. How do we infiltrate that? Because I think that may be one of the answers. How do we get them to expand their network at the time where we can have diverse voices be a part of that growing and building the business part?

Craig Cuffie: I think there’s a couple of things that hit me immediately Brent. One is, to me it’s less about infiltrating that. And as we know, the growing cadre of Black entrepreneurs is not duplicating that. One of my mentors and dear friends said to me years ago, it’s not earth shattering but it’s absolutely true, “A social system will create itself in its own image unless it’s checked.” It absolutely will do that, and that’s just natural for us to do. So I can’t fault the founder for doing what any founder would do with the opportunity in front of him or her, which is, “Who can I trust to go on this journey with me?”

I mean, that’s the fundamental question I believe that the founder starts with. “Who can I trust and go on this journey with me? Who knows me? Is it my family, or my friends, or my folks I’ve worked with who know me well, and I know I can trust them?”

I have a dear friend who recently retired, and she would say the mark of trust or her is, “I’ll let you babysit my kids.” Because that’s what you think about, that obvious level of trust. “I’m going to let him come in my home and watch my kids, not as a throw off. It’s because I trust you.” And so how do we become as a community inside that trust zone? And some of that is the opportunities that happen there. So again, the fear for me is that we do the same thing and forget the fact that a diverse team will always produce better outcomes than a non-diverse team, be that team be all White, or all White men, or all White women, or all Black men, and all Black women. Because we’re just not seen.

We perceive the world and translate the world in our heads very differently. You and I will probably have shared experiences, lots of them, but how we view that world based on our experience set will drive us to different outcomes given the same opportunity. So that’s the thing for me. We can’t say we want it and then not do it.

Small Business Trends: Salesforce has done the best job of any tech companies I know recently of being inclusive and being diverse. You mentioned Tony Prophet. He’s just one of a number of folks that I’ve met that I’ve been so incredibly impressed with that are at Salesforce and are in strategic positions, but are also very much about what we’ve just been talking about here, opening up opportunities for others.

But it starts with Marc Benioff. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what Marc has meant to this, and how he has set the stage for Salesforce to be what I consider to be a leader, at least particularly in the tech field, when it comes to inclusiveness and diversity and trying to set a path for increasing opportunities for Blacks in particular when it comes to executive leadership at tech companies.

Craig Cuffie: I’ve been with the company about three years. I’m going to give you my impressions of Marc when it comes to diversity, and inclusion, and equity, and fairness. There are scant few CEOs that I’ve met, and I’ve met many and worked for a handful of them, that are as forward looking and thinking around this issue as he is. One of the unique things about Salesforce is its culture, and it has codified that culture over the last 20 or so years, and this is dead smack in the middle of it. There are questions, and I’ve been around in the workforce for a long time. And there’s a, I don’t know what magazine or what school put it out, but the fundamental question, “Does a company have a soul?”

This company has a soul, and it’s embedded in, or is its culture. And then you have a CEO that lives it and the leadership team lives it, and it flows down and we all live it. And that’s really important. And he has been deeply involved with this issue long before it was an issue relative to diversity and inclusion and in indexing on the things that are right, and fair, and just. So this is a natural extension of what he does, what the company does anyway.

We started a task force, a racial equality and justice task force, and it’s modeled on a conversation we had with Melody Hobson. And so we said, “Melody, how do you think about this?” And Marc was doing the interview. Melody said, “I think about the three Ps. I think about people, purchasing power, and philanthropy.”

What are you doing with the people? Are we indexing in the right way? Or are we not indexing in the right way? And if not, why not? Let’s understand that. Oh, by the way, they’re just numbers, and don’t be afraid of them. If you go through all this and you say you got 2.7% of a population is all you have and against a population of 13.4%, I think is the number, you go, “That shouldn’t be such a big lift, knowing that they’re out there.” Purchasing power, where are we spending our money? I happen to be the chief recruitment officer. So that’s why I am on this task force. Where are we spending our money? Where are we investing our money?

So I partner with the ventures team. There’s the money that I manage for the company to procure goods and services, but then there’s the ventures team that have committed to spending a hundred million dollars over the next three years in a dedicated fund to find and fund Black entrepreneurs. And I’m going to spend a hundred million dollars, going to spend more than that over the next three years, as well as grow our diverse supplier numbers 25% year on year. Well by the way, that’s ensuring there’s a slate and making different choices at selection. Assuming all things are equal, why not?

Philanthropy. What are we doing? What are we supporting? Are we enabling? And then the last piece which we added, we added another P. So there are four Ps instead of the three. Policy. We stand up and we have stood up many times around policies. When you think about what we did in Indiana, and we said, “We’re not going to work there. We’re not going to go keep an office there if this is the law of the land that’s coming down. It’s completely counter to how we think about people, and culture, and our values.” So we’ve done that before.

So those are the things that, brain child of the CEO, unbelievably supportive. I’ve been doing this for the last five or six weeks with the leaders in each of those pillars. Tony Prophet has got the people pillar, Eric Loeb is the policy pillar, Ebony Beckwith has the philanthropy pillar and she runs our dot org and our foundation, direct report to Marc. So you’ve got the top African-Americans in the company on this task force with a subcommittee of people that are subject matter experts, and then about 50 folks at large driving this task force. Oh, by the way, coming out and putting points in the board and measuring yourself directly accountable to the CEO. So that’s what Salesforce is doing. That’s what Marc has, I can say, has been instrumental in creating, and he has been evangelizing this in every public forum that I’ve seen him in over the last five or six weeks.

Small Business Trends: In your capacity as the chief procurement officer, you are setting aside a certain amount of money to do business with Black or diverse organizations, you’re investing in diverse organizations. I mean you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. So A, this does not sound like a charity move here. You don’t do hundreds of millions of dollars for charity. You maybe do maybe a couple million, but you don’t do hundreds of million strictly for charity. This is for business.

Craig Cuffie: No, it’s not a charity move. We have a charitable arm of the company, and they don’t give out little millions of dollars. They give out tens of millions of dollars for various things. And Ebony Beckwith, my dear friend, leads that. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars over time. If you think about a group called the Billion Dollar Roundtable. The Billion Dollar Roundtable has been around, started by Bernard Tyson, God bless him, is no longer with us. But it’s companies that spend a billion dollars plus a year on diverse suppliers. So it would be very cool to be a member of that. And I’ve got them working in my team to figure out how we get there before I declare that. But it’s real. It’s a real commitment.

So I go back to Bernard Tyson. One of the things that he had started and is now almost near completion before he passed, was a new hospital down in LA in a pretty rough neighborhood. And he mandated that 20% of the employees will verifiably live within two miles of that hospital. And keep in mind, Kaiser Permanente, big long-term partner with Salesforce, Bernard was on our board of directors. When you think about health outcomes, which he was maniacally focused on, he knew that wealthy communities have better health outcomes. And so if you raised the standard of living in any community, the health outcomes will occur. And the phrase that was used for another task force, and a bunch of them, there’s other taskforces around this topic, was, “From counting spend to counting impact.” From counting spend to counting impact.

Why is that important? Chief procurement officers like me talk about how much spend that we have on our management. “Well, we’ve got this billion and that billion.” You know people like me. That’s what they talk about. Go through the bragging rights. How much spend do you have under management? And so when you think about counting impact, it creates a different dynamic around where those dollars go and the impact that those dollars have in the community. So I’ve been saying, and I’m pushing my team is to move away from counting spend to counting impact.

Small Business Trends: I love that because if it’s not having an impact, what’s the point? What are we doing?

This article, “Craig Cuffie of Salesforce: This Moment Can Be a Movement If We’re Bold Enough to Be Uncomfortable” was first published on Small Business Trends

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