Tassbieh Hassan, manager at Salesforce Ventures, is one of our top 50 Rising Stars in corporate venturing for 2025.

Tassbieh Hassan

Taz Hassan had already published three patents by age 25 as an engineer at IBM when she decided she wanted to transition to a more client-centric role. 

“I really wanted to work more in the intersection of technology and people,” she explains. 

Hassan first moved internally to IBM’s Watson Group consulting team, where she gained early exposure to real-world AI applications. She later joined Salesforce as a sales engineer, advising customers on their digital transformation strategies, before ultimately joining Salesforce Ventures, where she uses her technical and client-facing skills to drive innovation. 

“I think it can be daunting to change career paths, whether it is 5,10,15 or 30 years down the line. Paying attention to your inner voice and taking a calculated risk, regardless of your previous path, is worth it.” 

“Paying attention to your inner voice and taking a calculated risk, regardless of your previous path, is worth it”

Now a manager at Salesforce Ventures, she is part of a team that has deployed over $6 billion in capital in over 400 startups, targeting best-in-class B2B SaaS companies. 

“You just get to see so much, and there’s so much opportunity to not only support the CEOs, but also be able to build things from the ground up, and build a bridge between the vision that you have, or the vision that these CEOs have, to actual execution.” 

Hassan is excited by developments in AI because of the long-term impact she believes this will have on society, which Salesforce Ventures has focused on with a $1 billion fund. “I’m really curious to see how [generative AI startups] develop over the next few years,” she says, highlighting companies like Runway, which is working on text-to-video technology, and ElevenLabs, a text-to-speech startup. 

She says it’s important to not be spread too thin in the role. “An appeal of working in CVC, especially for those who are naturally curious, is that you get to see so much and speak to so many stakeholders, but this needs to be balanced against an ability to prioritise what is most important day to day.” 


See the full list of Rising Stars 2025 here.