by Max Zahn: Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff has burnished his reputation amid the COVID-19 pandemic as an outspoken advocate for a “new capitalism” that improves social welfare…
and he has used his resources to develop contact-tracing technology and donate 1 million masks.
That commitment to “stakeholder capitalism” caught the attention of actor and investor Matthew McConaughey, who told Yahoo Finance that Benioff “inspired” him to embrace the notion that business ventures can both generate profit and promote the common good.
“I’m all for making money — I have good money. I’m all for fame — I’m happy to be famous,” says McConaughey, author of a new memoir called “Greenlights.” “But I’m inspired by looking at people like a [CEO] John Mackey with Whole Foods or Marc Benioff at Salesforce that go, ‘Hey, I have an idea that’s really good to do, even if it was for nonprofit, but let’s make profit off of it.”
McConaughey elaborated on the mentality embodied by Benioff: “I want to make money off this. I want to get rich off this. And how can we parlay that to being something like, ‘Oh, and it’s good for the most amount of people.”
“Those two are interchangeable and they don’t have to be a contradiction.” adds McConaughey, known for roles in movies like “Dazed and Confused” and “Dallas Buyers Club.”
McConaughey’s investment portfolio includes a membership-only medical facility called Forward, the subscription-based sports website The Athletic, and a Major League Soccer team in his hometown of Austin, Texas.
He served as a judge alongside Benioff in 2018 at a pitch competition at South by Southwest, where a financial education startup won the $100,000 top prize and Benioff added a $200,000 investment on top of that.
‘Horrifying inequality’
The push for a more socially conscious capitalism gained momentum last August when the Business Roundtable, a group then chaired by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon that represents CEOs at 192 firms, called on companies to balance the needs of shareholders with employees and community members. (A handful of the CEOs declined to sign onto the group’s statement, including Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and Alcoa CEO Roy Harvey).
