Since it was founded just before the turn of the millennium, cloud-computing company Salesforce has gone from strength to strength. Its success has, over the past couple of years, led to a high degree of speculation about a potential takeover, with Microsoft thought to have come closest to agreeing a deal with the San Francisco-based firm last spring.

But thus far, Salesforce – currently valued at just over $50bn – has managed to maintain its independence. Its annual revenues are now approaching $7bn and its services have proven immensely popular among the corporate venturing community.

Salesforce’s private equity and venture capital software can help managers to better organise their fundraising efforts and manage their portfolios. Applications offer real-time reporting as well as deal tracking and evaluation. And the extensive ecosystem of third-party Salesforce developers has enabled VC firms and corporate venturing units to customise the company’s software to provide exactly the functionality they want.

As a point of interest, Salesforce also has its own corporate venturing arm, Salesforce Ventures, which focuses predominantly on investment in mobile technology and cloud computing innovations.