Silicon Valley stalwart Ron Conway has stepped down from the board of the Salesforce Foundation after a decade of service, sparking a rare public rift within the tech-philanthropy community.
The resignation comes in direct response to CEO Marc Benioff’s recent remarks expressing support for former President Donald Trump and the deployment of National Guard troops to San Francisco.
Conway — regarded as the “godfather of Silicon Valley” for his early investments in Google, Airbnb and others — is also a well-known Democratic donor and progressive civic activist. In his resignation email to Benioff he wrote:
“It saddens me immensely to say that with your recent comments, and failure to understand their impact, I now barely recognise the person I have so long admired.”
He cited the CEO’s support of federal intervention in the city and a perceived detachment from social issues such as immigration raids by ICE and community investment.
Conway and Benioff have been associated for more than 25 years. Their parting signals not just a personal rift but a broader philosophical divergence. So closely were they aligned that the resignation came as a shock across the Bay-Area tech community.
Benioff’s comments, made in an interview with The New York Times, suggested that San Francisco lacked sufficient policing and that federal troops could be needed — remarks that drew immediate backlash from city officials, civic leaders and progressive donors.
Mayor Daniel Lurie, among others, countered that homicides were at a 70-year low and drug-related deaths had declined — undercutting the notion of civic breakdown implied by federal troop deployment.
For the Salesforce Foundation, the departure of Conway — an influential board member and philanthropic figure — poses reputational risk. The Foundation, with nearly $400 million in assets and a large footprint in education and workforce-development grants, now faces a question of whether its leadership aligns with its stated values.
Meanwhile, for Benioff the incident highlights the tension tech leaders face in navigating political endorsements, civic policy commentary and public perception. A CEO publicly aligning with federal troop deployment into a liberal city like San Francisco is an unusual move for a company rooted in the 1-1-1 philanthropic model and progressive branding.
In financial markets, such corporate governance signals matter: board instability, value-alignment controversies and stakeholder mis-alignment can raise questions among institutional investors and ESG-focussed funds.
Benioff has since issued a public apology, stating that his previous comment “came from an abundance of caution” around the safety of the company’s annual Dreamforce conference and that he now believed the National Guard was not needed in San Francisco.
Salesforce has also reaffirmed its commitment to San Francisco via a $15 billion five-year investment plan. But the incident may have lasting consequences: activism and donor-backlash within tech is intensifying, and boards may face increased scrutiny over the political views of leadership.
