Salesforce Ventures has announced a new $50 million fund intended to accelerate the growth of “next-generation cloud consulting” startups that partner with the tech giant.
The SI (system integrator) Trailblazer Fund has already invested in companies such as 7Summits, a provider of consulting services for the social community space, Arxxus, an Australian company which offers Salesforce professional services, and ATG, a global Quote-to-Cash (CPQ) implementation and advisory business.
Along with the new fund, the corporate investment group will launch the SI Trailblazer Alliance Initiative, with the goal of empowering portfolio companies with a wide-range of concierge resources, training and tools. The selected Salesforce partners will gain access to an accelerated onboarding experience, marketing and sales mentorship and implementation guidance.
“These are different businesses that other venture capital firms often don’t invest in,” said Salesforce Ventures’ Matt Garrett, explaining the fund as a “big opportunity” that Salesforce will place “multiples bets” on.
The global leader in CRM says its consulting partners have seen their practices grow over 50% annually. As a result, they now have a greater need for new partners that can provide additional skilled capacity to allow their customers to fully leverage Salesforce offerings. In building up consulting firms, the new fund will work on a larger scale to support the “Salesforce ecosystem,” estimated by the IDC to drive more than $389 billion in new GDP impact and 1.9 million new jobs worldwide by 2020.
Outside of the new focused fund, Salesforce Ventures will continue to back a broader range of companies, particularly “enterprise cloud companies with the mandate of building the world’s largest ecosystem,” said Garrett.
