Salesforce Ventures Introduces $50 Million Australia Trailblazer Fund

New, dedicated fund will empower Australian startups to scale, invest in innovation and drive customer success

Unveiling of fund kicks off Salesforce World Tour Sydney

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Mar 04, 2019, 18:05 ET

SYDNEY, March 4, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced that Salesforce Ventures, the company's global corporate investment group, has launched the Australia Trailblazer Fund, a new $50 million fund to empower Australian startups in the Salesforce ecosystem. With this new fund, Salesforce Ventures deepens its commitment to the region by investing in local innovation and inspiring Australian entrepreneurs to create next generation technology that drives customer success across industries.

There is a phenomenal market opportunity to enable world-class startups across the country. According to Startup Muster¹, nearly half of Australian startups are actively trying to raise funds, and 45 percent identify as delivering Software as a Service (SaaS) products. If these startups can secure financing and scale, 25 percent of the Australian economy is likely to be directly impacted by software by 2025, which equates to $524 billion of GDP, according to StartupAUS².

Since 2012, Salesforce Ventures has been investing in innovative startups in Australia, such as Arxxus, Autopilot, Bugcrowd, Practifi, Socialsuite and Sqware Peg.

Arxxus: A leading innovative and independent Salesforce services partner with a focus on APAC, Arxxus leverages a cloud-first agile delivery methodology to ensure customer success on every engagement. They specialise in industry-leading Salesforce solutions across a range of verticals including: government, real estate and Not For Profit.
Bugcrowd: A leading crowdsourced security company with an award-winning platform that combines actionable, contextual intelligence to help leading organizations solve security challenges, protect customers, and make the digitally connected world a safer place.
Sqware Peg: One of Australia's first Salesforce partners and an established leader in advisory across all Salesforce solutions. Recently acquired by Simplus, a Platinum Salesforce Partner and a leader in Quote-to-Cash implementations, these two key portfolio companies have come together to create a multi-regional consultancy to support Salesforce customers.

Comments on the News:
"Digital transformation is impacting businesses around the world and companies need to innovate faster and smarter to meet customer expectations today," said John Somorjai, EVP of Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures. "Salesforce Ventures recognises the incredible opportunity to invest in Australian entrepreneurs to create world-class startups that will grow the opportunity within the Salesforce ecosystem and deliver customer success."

"Initiatives such as Salesforce Ventures' new $50 million Australia Trailblazer Fund provide the valuable support and investment needed for startups to scale, employ Australians, and see their great ideas become great businesses," said Simon Birmingham, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. "I congratulate Salesforce on its commitment to Australia with the launch of this new fund, and look forward to seeing the home grown startups it supports scale and succeed at home and internationally."

"It fills me with pride to see Salesforce stepping up into my home country like this. The establishment of Salesforce Ventures in Australia speaks volumes of the calibre of Australian entrepreneurs, as well as their forward-looking attitude," said Casey Ellis, Chairman, Founder & CTO of Bugcrowd. "Salesforce Ventures was an early investor in Bugcrowd, and is continuing to take to the global market. Alongside the capital, this move will deepen the availability of Salesforce's considerable technical and partnership resources to Australian entrepreneurs, which will help fuel the process of supporting Australia's talent and accelerate local innovations into the global market."

"We're excited by the opportunity to fuel Australia's startup ecosystem. We see significant opportunity through Salesforce Ventures to help Australia's smartest entrepreneurs and best business ideas succeed here and on the world stage," said Miguel Milano, President, International at Salesforce.

Driving Customer Success and Innovation with World Tour Sydney
The unveiling of the Australia Trailblazer Fund fund kicks off Salesforce World Tour Sydney, taking place tomorrow at The Sydney International Convention Centre. The Salesforce World Tour is a global roadshow where Trailblazers share how they are using the Customer Success Platform to create connected customer experiences, learn new skills, innovate at their companies and shape the future. World Tour Sydney will see Telstra and President and Chief Product Officer Bret Taylor featured in the keynote, with specialised breakout sessions for every role and industry and live demos of cutting-edge cloud-based technologies.

Additional Information:

Join Salesforce, alongside thousands of customer Trailblazers, at World Tour Sydney tomorrow live: https://www.salesforce.com/au/video/4776748
To learn more about Salesforce Ventures, please visit: www.salesforce.com/company/ventures/
Like Salesforce on Facebook http://facebook.com/salesforce
Follow @salesforceapac and @SalesforceVC on Twitter

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the global CRM leader, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit https://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

About Salesforce Ventures
Salesforce Ventures — the company's corporate investment group — invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. Portfolio companies receive funding, access to the world's largest cloud ecosystem and guidance from Salesforce's innovators and executives. With Salesforce Ventures, portfolio companies can also leverage Salesforce's expertise in corporate philanthropy by joining Pledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 300 enterprise cloud startups in 20 countries since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.

¹ Startup Muster Annual Report; provides an annual snapshot of the Australian startup ecosystem. Startup Muster, August 2018
² Crossroads report, StartupAus, December 2018

SOURCE Salesforce