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Salesforce continues to build a social good movement within the technology sector.
Since it was founded in 1999, the cloud computing giant and its CEO, Marc Benioff, have been trailblazers in redefining "corporate social responsibility," with philanthropy baked into the company's DNA.
Now it's taking that mission even further, using its powerful position in tech and its dedication to social change to fund startups with social impact at their core.
Salesforce announced Tuesday that it's launching the Salesforce Impact Fund, a $50 million initiative to accelerate the growth of startups that are using Salesforce technology to address some of the world's biggest problems. Through the fund, Salesforce will invest in these companies, furthering each one's goal of driving positive change.
"We're really just excited to launch the Impact Fund ... to make the world a better place and a more equal place."
As part of Salesforce Ventures, the company's corporate investment group, the Impact Fund will focus on four key areas: workforce development and education, equality, environment, and the social sector.
The first class of startups to receive funding from the Salesforce Impact Fund span these areas of interest.
In the equality category there's Ellevest, an investing platform started by Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck that's designed for women and aims to solve the gender investment gap. For the environment, there's Angaza Design, a pay-as-you-go tech platform that helps manufacturers and distributors make clean energy devices more affordable for off-the-grid consumers.
In the social sector category is Hustle, which offers peer-to-peer text messaging that enables nonprofits, educational institutions, and advocacy groups to connect with donors and constituents on a scalable basis. And in workforce development there's Viridis Learning, which uses machine learning to match skill deficiencies in the workforce with local employer needs.
Image: Courtesy of Salesforce
"We're very excited about all four of these investments," said John Somorjai, Salesforce's executive vice president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures. "Overall, we're really just excited to launch the Impact Fund ... to make the world a better place and a more equal place."
"Salesforce Ventures is investing in companies that are not only creating innovative solutions, but they're also improving the state of the world."
Somorjai explained that Salesforce Ventures, which has grown into the third-largest corporate VC in the world (behind Intel and Google) since it launched in 2009, has about 200 active investments today. Since the beginning of this year, Salesforce announced two other $50 million funds — one to invest in cloud consulting startups and another to encourage AI startups.
But now the group is trying to bring the company's overall goal of giving back to its portfolio.
"With the new Impact Fund, Salesforce Ventures is investing in companies that are not only creating innovative solutions, but they're also improving the state of the world," Somorjai said. "These are strategic investments that are aligned to our goals around building the world's No. 1 cloud ecosystem for our customers."
Suzanne DiBianca, executive vice president of corporate relations and chief philanthropy officer at Salesforce, said the Impact Fund's first four startups were chosen, in part, because they're just good businesses.
"First and foremost, we're looking for excellent companies — really solid companies, great entrepreneurs, proven track record, great vision, fantastic products," DiBianca said.
She added that Salesforce has been working with lead partners over the past six months, including Omidyar Network, Kapor Capital, Google Ventures, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Emerson Collective.
"We've been looking to a lot of these lead partners that were investors in earlier rounds to source some of their best companies," she said.
Ellevest CEO Sallie Krawcheck speaks during the Women in the World Summit at Lincoln Center in New York on April 6, 2017.
Image: AP/REX/Shutterstock
Impact investing obviously isn't a new concept in the tech world — Omidyar has been investing in social change startups for years, and Bill Gates even launched a $1 billion clean energy fund with other tech heavyweights in late 2016.
But DiBianca said she doesn't know of any other corporate ventures arms that have taken such an intentional strategy around impact investing.
"There's a huge opportunity for us to make a difference here, with our corporate capital, in the for-profit sector," she said.
And it's true. Salesforce is uniquely positioned to facilitate real growth and impact in this space, in part because as a company it already has.
If there's one tech giant in a good position to raise startups in its own image, it's Salesforce.
Benioff's mission in 2009 was to create a new kind of company that makes philanthropy a core part of its founding tenets. Its integrated 1-1-1 model, in which Salesforce leverages a percent of its tech, people, and resources to give back, has inspired 3,000 other companies to adopt the same model. It's also led to $170 million in grants, more than 2 million volunteer hours, and 30,000 nonprofits and educational institutions using the Salesforce platform.
And its own company culture reflects its values. Salesforce has nine employee resource groups, regularly assesses its own equal pay gaps (and spent $6 million to adjust salaries of more than 26,000 employees), and achieved its net-zero carbon emissions goal earlier this year.
Salesforce was also one of the first companies to stand against discriminatory legislation targeting queer and trans communities in Indiana, Georgia, and North Carolina. It proved that social justice is no longer off limits in business and corporate social responsibility efforts, and pushed other corporations to do the same.
If there's one tech giant in a good position to raise startups in its own image, it's Salesforce.
"It's really designed to support a whole new generation of companies focused on driving positive social change through technology," DiBianca said of the new Impact Fund.
The Salesforce Impact Fund will work like the current venture program. As deals happen, and as rounds of funding come together, Salesforce Ventures will be evaluating them. That means it will invest in startups on a rolling basis. The goal is to fully deploy the $50 million from the fund within the next two years.
"There is good news coming out of the venture community these days, and [it's] happening through action, not through words," DiBianca said.
"But more importantly, there's just a lot of great entrepreneurs out there, and we're really excited to get to know them, to meet them, and to help power their business ideas on the Salesforce platform and within our ecosystem."
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