John Somorjai's guest appearances

John Somorjai

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Unvalley

Max Yoder

Tim Kopp

Sameer Dholakia

Kleiner Perkins

John Doerr

Jack Altman

Mathilde Collin

Jon Stein

Leah Busque

Jyoti Bansal

Olof Mathé

Scott Belsky

Jenny Blake

Ryan Smith

Robert Harris

OwlTail

John Somorjai is Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and head of Salesforce Ventures.Salesforce has over 3,000 partners and 150+ enterprise cloud and SaaS companies in their current investment portfolio. They’ve also had 30+ exits and five IPOs (on top of the 150!)You can look up more about Salesforce, its acquisitions, and investments at Salesforce.com. They’re @Salesforce on twitter, but also have various other handles including @SalesforceVC, and @MarketingCloud. But you can find John at @jsomorjai on twitter. He’s extremely smart and definitely worth a follow, so give him a shout.One of the things we didn’t get to discuss in this interview is that Somorjai has his JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley. I think that’s interesting context for how he got to where he is at Salesforce and how he might think in evaluating startup companies for potential investment. He was a senior director of corporate development at Oracle for almost 5 years before taking on a VP of Business Development role at Ingenio, a high growth company that was eventually acquired by AT&amp;T. Somorjai then joined forces with Marc Benioff at Salesforce, and since 2005, John has led the evaluation, deal execution and integration for all mergers and acquisitions, and investments at Salesforce. His team has helped bring the company into insane growth areas through acquisitions including Demandware, Exact Target, Radian6, Buddy Media, Heroku, the list goes on and on….Here’s what we discuss in this episode with John Somorjai EVP at Salesforce and Salesforce Ventures:1.) How John progressed through his career to eventually lead investments with Salesforce Ventures2.) How Salesforce investment has helped nurture growth in the ecosystem of enterprise cloud  companies.  3.) Lessons from Salesforce’s expansion into European markets, and how the set themselves apart from  other Corporate VCs4.) Why Salesforce embraces corporate philanthropy and the 1/1/1 model  5.) Key strategies Corporate VCs for potential investment and maximizing the opportunities they offer6.) What makes an attractive investment for a Corporate VCDownload show notes and transcripts at www.powderkeg.coThis episode of Powder Keg is brought to you by DeveloperTown. If you’re a business leader trying to turn a great idea into a product with traction, this is for you.DeveloperTown works with clients ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies who want to build and launch an app or digital product. They’re able to take the process they use with early stage companies to help big companies move like a startup.So if you have an idea for a web or mobile app, or need help identifying the great ideas within your company, go to developertown.com/powderkeg.Thanks again to everyone who has shared an episode of Powderkeg, subscribed to us on iTunes, or left us a review. It’s the only way we’re going to spread this message and reach new people and we could do it without you.We’re coming out with new episodes every Tuesday, so make sure you subscribe on iTunes or at powederkeg.co/itunes

John Somorjai is Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and head of Salesforce Ventures. Salesforce has over 3,000 partners and 150+ enterprise cloud and SaaS companies in their current investment portfolio. They’ve also had 30+ exits and five IPOs (on top of the 150!) You can look up more about Salesforce, its acquisitions, and investments at <a href="http://Salesforce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Salesforce.com</a>. They’re @Salesforce on twitter, but also have various other handles including @SalesforceVC, and @MarketingCloud. But you can find John at @jsomorjai on twitter. He’s extremely smart and definitely worth a follow, so give him a shout. One of the things we didn’t get to discuss in this interview is that Somorjai has his JD from the Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley. I think that’s interesting context for how he got to where he is at Salesforce and how he might think in evaluating startup companies for potential investment. He was a senior director of corporate development at Oracle for almost 5 years before taking on a VP of Business Development role at Ingenio, a high growth company that was eventually acquired by AT&amp;T. Somorjai then joined forces with Marc Benioff at Salesforce, and since 2005, John has led the evaluation, deal execution and integration for all mergers and acquisitions, and investments at Salesforce. His team has helped bring the company into insane growth areas through acquisitions including Demandware, Exact Target, Radian6, Buddy Media, Heroku, the list goes on and on…. Here’s what we discuss in this episode with John Somorjai EVP at Salesforce and Salesforce Ventures: 1.) How John progressed through his career to eventually lead investments with Salesforce Ventures 2.) How Salesforce investment has helped nurture growth in the ecosystem of enterprise cloud  companies.   3.) Lessons from Salesforce’s expansion into European markets, and how the set themselves apart from  other Corporate VCs 4.) Why Salesforce embraces corporate philanthropy and the 1/1/1 model   5.) Key strategies Corporate VCs for potential investment and maximizing the opportunities they offer 6.) What makes an attractive investment for a Corporate VC Download show notes and transcripts at <a href="http://www.powderkeg.co" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.powderkeg.co</a> This episode of Powder Keg is brought to you by DeveloperTown. If you’re a business leader trying to turn a great idea into a product with traction, this is for you. DeveloperTown works with clients ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies who want to build and launch an app or digital product. They’re able to take the process they use with early stage companies to help big companies move like a startup. So if you have an idea for a web or mobile app, or need help identifying the great ideas within your company, go to <a href="http://developertown.com/powderkeg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">developertown.com/powderkeg</a>. Thanks again to everyone who has shared an episode of Powderkeg, subscribed to us on iTunes, or left us a review. It’s the only way we’re going to spread this message and reach new people and we could do it without you. We’re coming out with new episodes every Tuesday, so make sure you subscribe on iTunes or at <a href="http://powederkeg.co/itunes" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">powederkeg.co/itunes</a>

#6: The Power of Corporate VC and Startup Philanthropy w John Somorjai at Salesforce Ventures

To Commemorate the 3 month anniversary of the best conference ever, SaaStr Annual 2016. We thought we would take a trip back to the conference with one of our favourite discussions featuring Jason Lemkin, Founder @ SaaStr and John Somorjai, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development &amp; Salesforce Ventures. Salesforce Ventures invests in the next generation of enterprise technology. The Salesforce Ventures portfolio includes companies such as Box, DocuSign, Dropbox, Evernote, GainSight, MongoDB, MuleSoft, Stripe, SurveyMonkey, Twilio, and Xactly. Salesforce.com has invested in more than 150 enterprise cloud startups in 11 countries since 2009. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:  What have been the fundamental determinants for the growth and acceleration of Salesforce in the last few years? What gave Salesforce the conviction to deploy $500m back into startup investing? With the success of Salesforce Ventures, how have John’s investing goals changed since 2009? Why should founders raise with Salesforce, what is the value add? What is John attitude to the recent pessimism in the valley? How does John approach the dichotomy of growth and reducing burn?  If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here:  Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr John Somorjai 

To Commemorate the 3 month anniversary of the best conference ever, SaaStr Annual 2016. We thought we would take a trip back to the conference with one of our favourite discussions featuring <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonlk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jason Lemkin</a>, Founder @ SaaStr and <a href="https://twitter.com/jsomorjai" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John Somorjai</a>, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development &amp; Salesforce Ventures. Salesforce Ventures invests in the next generation of enterprise technology. The Salesforce Ventures portfolio includes companies such as Box, DocuSign, Dropbox, Evernote, GainSight, MongoDB, MuleSoft, Stripe, SurveyMonkey, Twilio, and Xactly. <a href="http://Salesforce.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Salesforce.com</a> has invested in more than 150 enterprise cloud startups in 11 countries since 2009. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: <ul> <li>What have been the fundamental determinants for the growth and acceleration of Salesforce in the last few years?</li> <li>What gave Salesforce the conviction to deploy $500m back into startup investing?</li> <li>With the success of Salesforce Ventures, how have John’s investing goals changed since 2009?</li> <li>Why should founders raise with Salesforce, what is the value add?</li> <li>What is John attitude to the recent pessimism in the valley? How does John approach the dichotomy of growth and reducing burn?</li> </ul> If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: <ul> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/jasonlk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jason Lemkin</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harry Stebbings</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/saastr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Saastr</a></li> <li><a href="https://twitter.com/jsomorjai" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John Somorjai</a></li> </ul>

SaaStr 020: What Do Salesforce Look For In Potential Investments with John Somorjai, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development & Salesforce Ventures