Salesforce Looking To Invest $50 Million in Startups
Salesforce will now be investing $50 million into startups that use its Lightning app-building platform, otherwise known as the Lightning Fund. The company’s VC branch, Salesforce ventures will be managing this fund. This is in hopes that Salesforce will be able to foster an ecosystem of applications that use its cloud-computing platform.
In addition to funding relevant startups using the Lightning platform, Salesforce will be moving these startups to an incubator in San Francisco. The company is currently accepting applications, and will be taking off at the end of 2016.
This tactical move from Salesforce will not only increase the amount of users on its Salesforce ecosystem. It will also impact the growth of the company directly by App Cloud, Salesforce’s fastest growing segment.
While all of Salesforce’s past investments have been in companies using enterprise cloud computing, I can’t help but wonder if their VC branch will begin to invest in other sectors to see more growth.
Without a doubt, Salesforce has seen tremendous growth over the past few years and has been making wise financial investments. I would love to see how the Lightning Fund and incubator increases the company’s growth and what new cloud companies will emerge.