Monday, May 21, 2007

Salesforce.com Announces Venture Initiative

Santa Clara-based Salesforce.com announced this morning that it has launched a new effort to target entrepreneurs and venture firms. The company said that its new AppExchange Venture Network will focus on helping entrepreneurs and venture firms to build software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. A number of venture firms have joined its new group, including Alloy Ventures, Battery Ventures, Bay Partners, Benchmark Capital, The Carlyle Group, Emergence Capital Partners, Granite Global Ventures, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, InterWest Partners, JMI Equity, Lighthouse Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Partech International, Pinnacle Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Sigma Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Trinity Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners and VantagePoint Venture Partners. The new network follows Salesforce.com's creation of its AppExchange Incubator initiative, a business incubation project around software-as-a-service companies. Salesforce.com said that more than $225M has been invested in two dozen companies on in its AppExchange program as part of the effort.