I still am not sure why I read this book, but I just completed a book written by the founder of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff. The book was okay. It’s sort of a handbook for starting up a company, but it’s mostly about the importance of marketing. And Benioff seems to attribute his company’s success to all the cheesy stunts that he pulled when they were scrappy and little, which seems like a misattribution to me. The book was mostly interesting because of Benioff’s voice. He comes off as the epitome of the cheerfully self-absorbed Silicon Valley billionaire. I wouldn’t say that it’s odious or annoying. It’s just funny. For instance, the book starts with an anecdote about how he was inspired to start Salesforce when he was in India, where he had a conversation with the Dalai Lama. And there’s a whole huge part where he talks about the charitable arm of Salesforce and how wonderful he is, and he uses that as an opportunity to relentlessly namedrop Colin Powell. There’s something very fun about being plopped into a guy’s mind in such a naked way. That’s why I think self-absorbed people are the best people; everyone else is too guarded. With most people, you can never see their true self, but the self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing will show it to you freely, because they’re not aware that there’s anything to be ashamed of.