For the past 10 years, Salesforce Ventures has been investing in innovative enterprise startups across the globe. We now invest more outside of Silicon Valley than within it as part of our commitment to create the world’s largest ecosystem of enterprise cloud companies to fuel customer success. Just last year, we launched regional funds focused on Canada and Japan, expanding on the EMEA fund we announced in 2015. Today, we’re excited to announce we’re adding Australia to that list with the launch of our new $50 million Australia Trailblazer Fund.
Australia and APAC more broadly have experienced tremendous growth in recent years. The cumulative GDP of the APAC region is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, and the Salesforce business has benefited from those tailwinds. Creating a fund there is the logical next step.
Building On Earlier Success
The start-up ecosystem in Australia has benefited from the success of a few companies, such as Atlassian and Aconex. That success attracted new investment, and VC fundraising in the region grew from $155 million in 2013 to $1.5 billion by 2018. With investment comes the growth of necessary infrastructure: By one count, there are about 90 accelerators in Australia, focusing on fintech, big-data, and AI, among other sectors.
From this ecosystem, we’ve seen the emergence of amazing enterprise companies such as Canva, Deputy, Safety Culture, and Culture Amp. A combination of talent, capital, great research universities, and successful exits are creating a network effect, and Australia is beginning to capitalize on that.
Committing to Australia
In order to contribute to the evolution of the Australian tech ecosystem, Salesforce Ventures is excited to launch our Australia Trailblazer Fund. This $50 million fund builds on investments Salesforce Ventures has made in the region since 2012, including Arxxus, Autopilot, Bugcrowd, Practifi, Socialsuite, and Sqware Peg (which was recently acquired by Simplus). Through these investments, we have been witness to the momentum in the Australian enterprise-startup ecosystem for some time.
As part of this announcement, we’re also excited to share that Rob Keith and one of the first three employees on the Salesforce Ventures team, is moving from the San Francisco Bay Area to Sydney, Australia. There, he will oversee the fund and lead our investments in Australia. You can read more about Rob and his move on the Salesforce Newsroom.
With this new fund, we’re excited to deepen our commitment to Australia. By investing in innovation, we hope to inspire local entrepreneurs to create next-generation technology and thereby continue the evolution of this up-and-coming innovation powerhouse.
If you are an enterprise technology startup in Australia, we want to hear from you. Visit our website at www.salesforce.com/ventures to share your details with us and remember to follow us on Twitter at @salesforceVC or LinkedIn for the latest.
