Ron Conway exits Salesforce Foundation board over CEO Marc Benioff’s call to deploy National Guard to SF – News

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway today resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation following comments made by Salesforce Inc. Chief Executive Marc Benioff urging President Trump to send the National Guard to San Francisco to police streets.

A day earlier, Trump spoke at a press conference, calling the city “a mess” and expressing that federal troops could be allocated to clean it up. Governor Gavin Newsom’s office hit back, stating that the murder rate was down in the city, with a spokesperson calling Trump’s measure “to militarize another American city” an act of “his own vanity and deranged fantasies.”

Trump has already deployed troops to Los Angeles, Washington, Chicago and Portland. On top of San Francisco, he has also previously mulled militarizing law enforcement in the cities of Baltimore and New Orleans, which has drawn considerable criticism from the left. Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener shared his views on the matter on X, writing, “Bottom line: Stay the hell out of San Francisco.”

Conway, who had been on the Salesforce Foundation board for close to a decade and has been friends with Benioff for 25 years, harbored similar sentiments. According to the New York Times, he fired off an angry email to Benioff, expressing his disgust, stating that their values were no longer aligned. “It saddens me immensely to say that with your recent comments, and failure to understand their impact, I now barely recognize the person I have so long admired,” he wrote.

Benioff, described as a titan of Silicon Valley with a net worth of over $8.3 billion, seems to have done a volte-face regarding what some consider his transformation from a progressive – “Tech’s woke CEO” – to a Trump ally. Conway was reportedly so rankled by Benioff’s remarks that the two had a meeting, with Conway coming away unimpressed.

“I have expressed candidly to you, repeatedly, in recent days, that I am shocked and disappointed by your comments calling for an unwanted invasion of San Francisco by federal troops,” Conway wrote in the email, “and by your willful ignorance and detachment from the impacts of the ICE immigration raids of families with NO criminal record.”​

Benioff had earlier made his views known in an interview with the Times when he said, “We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” referring to Trump’s wish to send in the Guard.

He said that the city should “refund” the police, expressing consternation that he has to hire “hundreds of off-duty law enforcement officers to help patrol the convention area.” He added, “I don’t think anyone has hired more people or given more money or supported San Francisco more than I have.” Indeed, he’s been called the “city father of philanthropy,” and after co-founding Salesforce, became the city’s largest private employer.

Benioff now spends a lot of time in Hawaii, where he has bought large tracts of land on Big Island. “It’s too bad we’ve lost him,” an insider told The San Francisco Standard.

But he denied turning his back on the city, telling the Standard he spends just as much time there as anywhere else, since he is usually on the road. “I am able to see more than other people, because I don’t think other people have traveled as much as I’ve traveled,” he said, “I’ve seen things in San Francisco that need to be directly addressed by police, and if the police cannot address it, then bring in whoever can.”

Conway may accept there are problems, but he disagrees with his friend’s proposed solution, writing, “San Francisco does not need a federal invasion because you don’t like paying for extra security for Dreamforce.”​

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