Change Isn’t Risk — It’s Opportunity
That belief was the spark behind the creation of Slack Fund in 2015.
At the time, we were expanding the Slack product with a bold thesis: Slack would become the central nervous system of enterprise software. Every tool — whether for communication, collaboration, sales, support, or productivity — would one day connect to Slack. We didn’t just want to build a platform; we wanted to build an ecosystem.
So we started investing.
Slack Fund was created to support the developers and dreamers building apps and integrations that extended the power of Slack. But as our view of the world — and the needs of our founders — evolved, so did our investment thesis.
Over time, we broadened our focus to back the tools, technologies, and teams shaping the Future of Work. We looked beyond integrations and plug-ins to broader innovation, investing in companies transforming how people connect, build, and thrive in a digital-first world.
In 2021, more change came to bear. Slack joined Salesforce, and Slack Fund became part of Salesforce Ventures. We brought our early-stage lens to a much broader platform, enabling Salesforce Ventures to support founders from first check through scale. We gained deeper customer relationships, expanded go-to-market support, and in turn increased the aperture of Salesforce Ventures’ impact on the enterprise software ecosystem.
The team at Salesforce Ventures has built an early-stage investment engine that matches the pace, vision, and dynamism of the founders we back. Our thesis has matured, our team has grown, and our portfolio has thrived. The results speak for themselves: we’ve deployed $180M of early-stage capital into 120 startups, including category-defining companies like 1Password, Lattice, Glean, Loom, and Hightouch. When paired with our later-stage investments, Salesforce Ventures has invested over $6B in over 630 of the world’s most tenacious enterprise software companies, including generational businesses like Anthropic, Box, Cohere, Databricks, DocuSign, Mulesoft, nCino, Snowflake, Wiz, and Zoom. Slack Fund’s integration with Salesforce Ventures means that we truly support founders at all stages of the company-building lifecycle, from seed funding through the growth stage.
We’ve laid a tremendous foundation together, and we feel there’s still so much more to come.
A New Era of Entrepreneurship
As a team with deep entrepreneurial roots, we’ve always had a strong point of view on where the market is going. In the mid-2010s, that meant betting early on the product-led growth and the Future of Work movements. Today, we see another seismic shift driven by AI.
The rise of LLMs and autonomous agents is redefining how software is built and how startups get started. Founders no longer need to raise capital to build their idea — now, they can ship a product and take it to market with little to no outside investment. The barriers to entrepreneurship are lower than ever, and the risk profile has never been more favorable.
But that also means more competition. Larger funds are moving earlier, trying to secure their seat on the next wave of AI rocketships. While AI-native companies are often lean and capital-efficient, scaling them still requires deep, long-term investment.
Against this backdrop, our team sees a new opportunity.
Today, we’re sunsetting the Slack Fund brand and operating fully as Salesforce Ventures. We believe this change will help clarify our mission as the de facto partner for the world’s most enterprising AI companies from seed through IPO.
As Salesforce Ventures’ early-stage arm, we pair speed and conviction with real distribution advantages: enterprise GTM expertise, deep customer relationships, access to Salesforce product leaders, and an understanding of what it takes to scale. We know AI-native startups require patient, committed capital, and we’re dedicated to this journey. Whether it’s leading a $3M seed round or a $500M growth round, our goal remains the same: empower founders to reinvent the way the world works.
What’s Next
If you’ve worked with us in the past, you already know the value of Slack Fund and Salesforce Ventures goes beyond a name or a dollar amount. Our value is in our relationship with you, the founder. It’s in our belief in your vision and our commitment to your success, no matter your business’s size or stage.
So while the market will continue to change, our ethos as a fund isn’t. We will continue backing bold people with insight, empathy, and conviction. We will invest with a sharp POV on where enterprise software is headed. We will move quickly and thoughtfully, meeting our founders where they are. We will bring the full weight of Salesforce — customer access, product connections, talent introductions, GTM expertise — to help our founders scale smarter and faster.
Most importantly, we will continue prioritizing deep, long-term relationships with our founders. We know what it takes to will something into existence. And we will stay in the trenches with you, because we don’t just invest in ideas, we invest in people.
While the types of businesses may change, our ideal founder hasn’t. You should have:
- A deep personal connection to the problem,
- A clear point of view on the solution, with the flexibility to pivot,
- An intense commitment and work ethic, and
- A world-class team/network around you.
If that sounds like you, we’d love to talk.
Salesforce Ventures actively leads and co-leads rounds in the next generation of horizontal and vertical AI applications, from seed funding through the growth stage. Our investments range from < $5M for seed rounds to $50M+ for growth-stage rounds.
To get in touch, email me directly at jspinell@salesforce.com.
Let’s build the future together.
