People Type: Our Team
Zak Kokosa
Zak Kokosa is a Senior Associate at Salesforce Ventures on the investment team. He joined in 2020 following a three-year stint in investment banking, where he was split between New York and San Francisco, and focused on mid-market M&A. Since joining Salesforce Ventures, Zak has spent much of his time across application software, data, infrastructure
Trista Myers
Trista leads events for Salesforce Ventures’ global events program, where her team hosts 20+ events annually for the Salesforce Ventures brand and portfolio, including flagship events such as Elevate, Cloud 100, Cloud Gives Back, Founder Summit, and Salesforce Ventures’ presence at Dreamforce. Prior to joining Salesforce Ventures, Trista was on the Dreamforce production team helping
Sarah Browne
Sarah joined Salesforce in 2017 and the Salesforce Ventures Operations team in 2021. She leads financial reporting and accounting for Salesforce Ventures, where she focuses on supporting the growth of the portfolio. Before joining Salesforce Ventures, Sarah spent four years on the corporate Finance & Strategy team at Salesforce focusing on the long-range financial plan.
Rob Keith
Rob Keith is a Partner at Salesforce Ventures, which he joined in 2014 to focus on early-stage to growth-stage investments in Vertical SaaS, Security, and AI / ML companies. In 2019, Rob relocated to Sydney to help launch Salesforce Ventures’ Australian and broader APAC investment arm. After moving back to the US in 2021, Rob
Paul Drews
Paul is Managing Partner at Salesforce Ventures. Paul focuses on application and infrastructure software investments across all stages. He is currently a board observer or actively involved with our investments in Airbyte, Anthropic, Astronomer, Databricks, Lyra, Runway, Starburst, Vercel, Vivun and VNDLY (acquired by Workday) Prior to joining Salesforce Ventures, Paul was a partner at
Olivia Donatelli
Olivia joined Salesforce Ventures in 2019. Her role on the Operations team encompasses analytics, research, and process. She manages key performance indicators and analytics for the portfolio, performs sector-specific research, and has built out many workflows and cross-functional processes that keep the group running smoothly. Olivia joined Salesforce Ventures following several years in consulting. She
Laura Rowson
Laura joined Salesforce Ventures in 2020. She invests across multiple stages in the US and EMEA, with a focus on the application layer, vertical SaaS, and the data stack. Some of Laura’s investments include Airbyte, Blockdaemon, Cerby, Genesis Global, Mews, Popmenu, and Sixfold AI and Writer AI. She is engaged in multiple efforts to increase
Katie Morales
Katie Morales provides executive support to Paul Drews, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures. Katie takes pride in creating a positive and inspirational working environment and looks forward to taking on new opportunities to expand her skill sets all while continuing with Salesforce Ventures’ mission. She joined Salesforce in August 2018 as an Executive Assistant in the
Kartik Gupta
Kartik Gupta is an investor at Salesforce Ventures, where he focuses on early- to late-stage investments across Europe, Israel, India, and the United States. Kartik has been directly involved with Salesforce’s investments in Snowflake (IPO), Miro, Wiz, Snyk, Darwinbox, Astronomer, Atlan, AppOmni, Elevate Security, Aiven, Razorpay, Yellow.ai, Hashnode, Melio, Wefox, AttackIQ, Bugcrowd, Traction Guest, SurveyMonkey
Katie Schwartz Thiry
Katie is a Managing Director at Salesforce Ventures and focuses her time on SaaS and industry-transforming healthcare and fintech companies. She looks for massive markets, mission-critical solutions, and strong teams. She has experience investing at multiple stages, ranging from seed to buyout, and has worked as an operator at early to growth-stage startups. She loves
Ken Asada
Ken Asada is a partner and Japan Head in Salesforce Ventures’ Tokyo office where he focuses on investments in Japan and Korea. Ken has been in the venture capital business for more than a decade and has backed various tech startups in fields such as AI, communication technology, crowdsourcing, enterprise software, and security. Prior to
Khushboo Patel
Khushboo currently leads the platform team at Salesforce Ventures as Chief Operating Officer. Her team includes the Operations, Marketing, and Portfolio Development teams who support Salesforce Ventures entrepreneurs build credibility and accelerate growth. Prior to Salesforce Ventures, Khushboo was in the SEC Reporting and Technical Accounting team within the Salesforce finance organization where she partnered