Editor's note: Most folks would love to have millions of dollars in the bank...

But about 25 years ago, that much money couldn't buy happiness for one software-industry legend. So he took a break from his high-paying job... and went on a life-changing journey.

This weekend's Masters Series is adapted from the November issue of Stansberry's Investment Advisory. In it, analysts Bryan Beach and Mike DiBiase explain what the "Hugging Saint" told this young Silicon Valley millionaire during his sabbatical... what he did after that meeting... and how that spawned "the hottest sector in the market"...

How a Meeting With the 'Hugging Saint' Forever Changed the Software Industry

By Bryan Beach and Mike DiBiase, editors, Stansberry Research

In 1996, an encounter with the "Mother of Immortal Bliss" changed the course of Marc Benioff's life.

Mata Amritanandamayi, or Amma ("Mother") for short, has dedicated her life to easing the suffering of others. The Hindu spiritual leader is known as the "hugging saint" because she hugs everyone she meets. She has calluses on her face from hugging more than 34 million people.

Usually appearing draped in white saris and flower garlands, Amma travels the world espousing a philosophy of selfless generosity toward the poor and suffering. Through her charities, she has built more than 125,000 free houses for homeless people in India and Sri Lanka. She also cares for 500 children in an orphanage in her hometown of Kerala, India.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people also travel to her sprawling ashram in Kerala to hear her religious services... which culminate in the opportunity for everyone attending to get a hug from the guru.

But when Benioff met her in India, he wasn't sick or old or poor. And he wasn't looking for a hug. He was a young Silicon Valley millionaire looking for new direction in his life...

On the surface, the 32-year-old Benioff had it all. He had amassed several million dollars in savings as a software executive at database software giant Oracle (ORCL). At age 26, he had become the youngest vice president in the company's history.

Software came easy to Benioff. He sold his first program – "How to Juggle" – for $75 when he was 14 years old. A year later, he started a video-game company called Liberty Software. By age 16, he had earned enough in royalties to pay for college.

But by 1996, he was burned out and needed a change. So he took a sabbatical from Oracle. He spent three months living in a hut in Hawaii and dreamed of his next moves while swimming with dolphins. He spent two months in India with a friend, visiting various spiritual leaders.

That's where he had his awakening. Benioff and his friend met first with the Dalai Lama. "His Holiness" encouraged Benioff to find his calling in life and stressed the importance of serving the community.

But his meeting with the Mother of Immortal Bliss changed him forever. Amma was like nothing Benioff had ever seen. He describes their private meeting in his new book Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change...

With a chorus of Hindu chants and clouds of incense wafting over us... I told her about business goals and how, we suspected, they were connected to the existential confusion we both felt. Then Amma looked at us with her compassion and intensity, and said, "In your quest to make money and succeed, don't forget to do something for others."

As Benioff explained in his 2009 book Behind the Cloud, Amma convinced him he could give back to the world while at the same time pursuing his business ambitions. Ironically, the ascetic guru inspired Marc Benioff to build a new type of company... one that changed the course of capitalism and transformed the millionaire into a multibillionaire.

It's a type of business that's good for both the company and for customers. It allowed far more people to benefit from technology than ever before. In the past 15 years, shares of Benioff's business have increased 58-fold. But this isn't a story about Benioff or one business...

In fact, since 2004, nearly 70 different companies have gone public while emulating the model that Marc Benioff pioneered upon his return from India. Since then, these businesses have collectively become the single hottest sector in the entire stock market – by a wide margin.

We'll get into that over the next two days. But first, let's learn more about Benioff's brainchild...

Back when Benioff was meandering through India, the Internet was beginning to change everything. He saw how Amazon (AMZN) was revolutionizing the way people shopped. He knew it couldn't be long before the Internet disrupted the business world, too. As a veteran of Oracle, Benioff knew the software business best.

He was determined to deliver software in a new way... using the Internet. His goal was to "democratize" software, making it cheaper and easier to buy and use. He wanted to make software available to companies that couldn't afford to buy expensive licenses and hardware. His goal was to disrupt the entire industry.

In 1999, Benioff left Oracle and started Salesforce (CRM). Following his inspiration from Amma, he set aside 1% of the stock to be used in the future for people in need. His company would sell an application that every business needs... software to manage customer information and track sales leads and orders. He knew the business well... Oracle was a dominant player in the market.

But Benioff knew Oracle's software was expensive. It cost millions of dollars, and many of the software licenses customers bought were never used. On top of that, customers had to buy expensive computer equipment to run the software. Even though the software was expensive and a headache for customers to install and maintain, they still lined up to buy it.

Benioff started from scratch. He hired a small team of developers and built software designed from the ground up to run on the Internet. He called it "the end of software."

Instead of taking six to 18 months to install, companies could start using his Salesforce software immediately over the Internet. It had an attractive, simple user interface. But more important, customers no longer had to be tethered to their network computer to use it. They could access it on any device, anywhere in the world... as long as they had an Internet connection.

Benioff charged around one-third of the price that the big boys like Oracle charged. And customers would only pay for the licenses they used. That allowed customers to get a return on their investment in six to 12 months, rather than three to five years with legacy software offerings.

To say Salesforce disrupted the market doesn't begin to describe what a blockbuster success it was. The company went public in 2004 with sales of less than $100 million. Its sales have grown nearly 40% a year on average since then, to more than $13 billion in 2018. They're expected to be $17 billion this year.

Benioff had invented a new selling and delivery model for software, now known as Software-as-a-Service, or "SaaS."

Today, we take using the Internet to access software "in the cloud" for granted. But at the time, it was a radical idea.

Before Salesforce, software companies sold their software under what's known as a "perpetual license model." Under this model, the customer owns the software and pays a large, one-time license fee up front.

Customers then have to install the software on their own servers or computers. Since most don't have idle computers sitting around, they also have to shell out cash to pay for new equipment. In addition to the license and hardware costs, customers also have to pay for someone to install the software... and to train their employees to use it.

And the costs don't end there...

On top of the license, hardware, installation, and training fees, customers also pay for "maintenance." New software rarely works perfectly when it's first released. Maintenance fees cover the cost of troubleshooting the software... things like customer support calls and bug fixes. It also gives the customer the right to receive future software updates and upgrades as soon as they're released.

You can see how this all adds up. Buying and installing new software under the perpetual license model is an expensive and time-consuming process. But that's the way the industry operated for decades.

All that changed when Benioff introduced the SaaS model...

It's much simpler. Customers don't own the software, they just rent it. They pay as they use it. The software is stored on the vendor's servers, not the customers'. To the customer, the software is "in the cloud." That's where all the processing takes place. The Internet connects the vendor's computers with the customers'.

The SaaS model eliminates the need for the customer to buy and maintain expensive hardware and hire armies of information technology employees to maintain it. And it eliminates the need to pay expensive fees to have it installed.

In short, the SaaS model makes buying and using new software much more convenient for customers.

But it's also a great business... The lowest-margin parts of the old perpetual model are normally hardware and installation. The SaaS model got rid of both. Not only that, but almost all SaaS sales are recurring... So they pile up, year after year, as customers renew their contracts and new customers are added.

Salesforce's success caused other pure SaaS companies to begin popping up... Since Salesforce's initial public offering in 2004, around 70 other pure SaaS companies have gone public.

In today's essay, we've given you a lot of reasons why we love the SaaS business model. But the most important reason we love pure SaaS companies is that they outperform other software companies by a vast amount.

It's why we refer to this collection of companies as "the hottest sector in the market." And in tomorrow's Masters Series, we'll dive deeper into this outperformance... and share three reasons why Wall Street agrees with us.

Regards,

Bryan Beach and Mike DiBiase

Editor's note: We've been tracking this powerful trend at Stansberry Research for years, leading subscribers to incredible gains. For example, Shopify (SHOP) – the biggest winner – soared 256% in less than two years... and Okta (OKTA) gained 69% in just nine months.

And now, Bryan and Mike have found three new opportunities in the space... They believe these tiny SaaS companies could potentially soar as much as thousands of percent over the long run. Our publisher Brett Aitken just put together an urgent presentation with everything you need to know – including how to instantly get your hands on their research. Get the full story right here.