facebook and its leadershiptaylors composure stems from his stable upbringing friends say his mother was a chevron corp executive eventually retiring to run wine country tours and his father was a mechanical engineer who often had computers set up around the house both went to stanford yearbook photos from high school in the 1990s show taylor was a longdistance runner wore a grunge band tshirt and had long hair today he lives with his wife and three kids a few miles from his own parentsafter facebook went public taylor again ditched his flashy bigcompany gig this time he pivoted to enterprise software and cofounded quip a company that let people collaborate on documents in the cloud at a time when the norm was saving files on a personal computerhe also accepted his first board seat at axon enterprise inc maker of taser stun guns and police bodycameras that role gave taylor his first lessons in boardroom diplomacy when axons directors had disagreements taylor was able to reframe the issue in simple language and move things forward said axon chief executive officer rick smith bret would be the guy that would say ok lets pause for a second take the emotion out of this and lets just put the factors on the board hadi partovi an early investor in bluechip firms like uber technologies inc and airbnb inc who was also on the axon board and recruited taylor recalls that taylor was preternaturally wise i think he was probably the youngest member of the board but also the one that folks most wanted to hear from he saidquip never gained mass adoption but had one huge fansalesforces benioff in 2016 the startup had plenty of cash in the bank but benioff made an offer that taylor couldnt refuse750 million for a company that had raised less than a 10th of that marcif youve ever met himis a really charming salesperson and convinced us taylor said in a podcast appearance last year the price tag was you know motivational as wellthe acquisition was widely seen as an expensive recruitment play benioff had been mentoring taylor for years by that point and had attended many of the dinners taylor regularly hosted with prominent company leaders venture capitalists and entrepreneurs after the deal some within salesforce took to calling taylor the 750milliondollar mantaylors software wasnt immediately embraced at salesforce the service was said to be so clunky at times that workers joked they were caught in quipsand some had reservations about taylor too especially after he was so quickly elevated to a senior leadership role salesforce was primarily driven by a sales and marketing culture and some staffers questioned whether the engineer and product expert could be the kind of bombastic evangelist that benioff is one former employee distinctly remembered taylors folksy manners incorrectly believing that taylor had grown up in indiana he was actually born in oaklandbut salesforce employees came around to taylors quiet confidencehes picked up many responsibilities from his mentor over