John Somorjai is President of Salesforce Ventures. John helped found Salesforce Ventures in 2009 and since then the team has invested more than $5 billion in 400 companies from seed to IPO. Some of these investments include Auth0, BetterUp, Databricks, DocuSign, Guild Education, nCino, Snowflake, Snyk, Stripe, Vlocity, and Zoom.

In addition, since 2005, John has led the evaluation, deal execution, and integration of Salesforce’s strategic transactions, including mergers and acquisitions as EVP of Corporate Development. His team has helped bring the company into significant new growth areas and onboarded a number of key leaders through more than 80 acquisitions including Click, Datorama, Demandware, ExactTarget, MuleSoft, Quip, SteelBrick, Slack, Tableau, and Vlocity.

John served as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association from 2017 to 2021. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Laura joined Salesforce Ventures in 2020. She invests across multiple stages in the US and EMEA, with a focus on vertical saws, data stack, and devops. Some of Laura’s investments include Airbyte, Blockdaemon, Cerby, Genesis Global, OpenClassrooms, Mews, Popmenu, and Theta Lake. She is engaged in multiple efforts to increase diversity and improve access and opportunity in the technology ecosystem including leading Salesforce Ventures’ Women in VC and Female Founder initiatives.

Prior to Salesforce Ventures, Laura worked in strategy consulting where she advised companies and supported private equity transactions in the technology sector. She holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA with Honors in Theology from the University of Cambridge. Laura grew up in the UK but calls New York City home.

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 and healthcare automation, where he’s supported investments at various phases in their journey, from pre-revenue to IPO. Select investments include Snowflake, OwnBackup, Highspot, Vercel, dbt Labs, BigID, FullStory, Qualified, Spiff, Medallion and Wheel.

Zak grew up in the Chicagoland area before attending Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, Maine, where he studied economics, mathematics, and Spanish and played on the varsity hockey team.

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 Cloud 100, Cloud Gives Back, Leadership Classroom, and the Salesforce Ventures experience at Dreamforce.

Prior to joining Salesforce Ventures, Trista was on the Dreamforce production team helping produce one of the world’s largest software conferences; Dreamforce, from 2014 to 2017. Before coming to San Francisco and Salesforce, Trista worked at AOL in New York City on a mix of B2B and B2C events, including CES, SXSW, Ad Week NYC, Global Company Meetings, and AOL’s Global Volunteer Day. In 2018 she was selected for Event Marketer’s list of 35 National Experiential Event Professionals under 35 for her work at AOL and on Dreamforce.

Takuya Hosomura is a Principal for Salesforce Ventures. Takuya brings a combination of strategic investments, business planning and development, and marketing experiences to Salesforce. Based on his previous experience both in B2C and B2B industry, he focuses on eCommerce, fintech, horizontal, and vertical SaaS companies in Japan and Korea. He invests across multiple stages, including Aeye Security Lab, GVA Tech, iCare, Monoxer, Nota, Unifa, Zeals, and also worked on Andpad, Kakehashi, and Readyfor investments.

Prior to joining Salesforce Ventures, Takuya was a senior manager of Rakuten Capital, a strategic investment arm of a leading e-commerce and fintech service provider based in Japan. Previously, Takuya worked for Sumitomo Corporation, one of the largest trading houses in Japan, where he was involved in multiple strategic investments, M&A, PMI, and business development, including 5-year management experience in Stockholm, Sweden. He holds a BS in Economics, Waseda University and an MS of Bond-BBT Global Leadership Business Administration, at Bond University.

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. Sarah began her career in audit at Deloitte & Touche serving Fortune 500 companies. Sarah lives in Southern California, splitting her time between San Diego and Joshua Tree. Sarah has a BS in Accounting from Santa Clara University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

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 returned his focus to North American and emerging market opportunities.

Since joining Salesforce Ventures, Rob has helped lead investments in nCino, DocuSign, Highspot, MuleSoft, Forter, Airwallex, GO1, Drata, AppOmni and Protect AI among others.

Before Salesforce Ventures, Rob was in Morgan Stanley’s Technology Banking Group, advising clients on M&A and capital raising including Veeva Systems, Splunk, eBay, and Spotify. Rob graduated from the University of Southern California and hails from San Diego, CA.

Paul is Managing Partner at Salesforce Ventures. Paul focuses on application and infrastructure software investments across all stages. He is currently a board observer at Airbyte, Astronomer, and Vivun, and is actively involved with investments in Class Technologies, Databricks, Lyra, Monte Carlo, Starburst, Vercel, and VNDLY (acquired by Workday).

Prior to joining Salesforce Ventures, Paul was a partner at Tenaya Capital, where he led investments in companies including Concord and Streamsets (acquired by Software AG). He was formerly a vice president at Battery Ventures, where he was actively involved with the firm’s investments in companies including Collibra, Jfrog (NASDAQ: FROG), Opsgenie (acquired by Atlassian), and Streamsets. Paul holds an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in economics from Duke University.

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 worked at Deloitte Consulting in New York City where she advised growth businesses and Fortune 500 companies on functional operations and organizational strategies. Olivia holds a dual Bachelor’s degree in Art History and Communications Studies from the University of Michigan.

Nowi Kallen is a Managing Director at Salesforce Ventures, based in London, UK. He focuses on multi-stage companies addressing big pain points, particularly in dev ops, data, cybersecurity, and product-led growth companies in software and fintech. Investments he (co-)led include Aiven, Avalor, Balance, Charles, Laminar, Snyk and Wiz. He also invested in Contentful, Gong, Hopin, Monday.com (Nasdaq: MNDY).

Having lived on three different continents, Nowi is a strong believer that great companies can be built anywhere. He can often be found looking for investment opportunities in less charted territories or remote-first companies. He thinks we are still in the early innings of enterprise automation and is optimistic about how this will transform companies and improve people’s lives in the future.

Prior to joining Salesforce Ventures, Nowi was an investor at tech investing firm Vitruvian Partners where he focused on software and fintech. He started his career advising software companies on M&A and IPOs at Barclays in London and New York City. He holds Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Economics from Eramus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.