A member of the top 25 from the Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist
John Somorjai is the executive vice-president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce and, since 2005, has been leading the evaluation, deal execution and integration of mergers and acquisitions, and investments.
Of the latter, he was initially tasked in 2014 (when he was promoted to EVP from senior vice-president) with deploying its $100m Salesforce1 Fund. He then brought in Matt Garratt, a GCV Rising Stars 2016 awardee, to directly run what became Salesforce Ventures in October that year and it quickly grew.
Somorjai said: “Matt Garratt has been instrumental in the acceleration of Salesforce Ventures to being the third most active corporate venture program in technology and growing our ecosystem of cloud partners around the world.”
Previously, Salesforce did minority equity deals through its corporate development function since 2009. It now has 150 companies based in 13 countries, and Salesforce Ventures has investment offices in the US, UK and Japan. Its Europe division, run by Alex Kayyal, has a commitment of $100m over the next few years, while Shinji Asada, Japan head of Salesforce Ventures, is probably the most active CVC from a foreign headquartered parent in the country.
Most impressively, Salesforce Ventures has also exited 40 of its portfolio, according to Garratt. In January, India-based technology services provider Mindtree agreed to acquire US-based consulting partner Magnet 360, backed by Salesforce Ventures, for up to $50m.
It is a speed of development that reflects the fast-growing Salesforce under founder Marc Benioff. Somorjai previously worked for pay-per-call company Ingenio, which was acquired by AT&T, as its vice-president, business development, responsible for partnership, sales and strategic corporate activities. He had previously worked Oracle Corporation, as a senior director of corporate development working on strategic transactions. Somorjai was originally Oracle’s corporate counsel in the corporate legal department.
Prior to Oracle, he worked with Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and Dewey Ballantine as an associate attorney. He holds a BA from Dartmouth College and also studied at University of California Berkeley.
Salesforce’s investment activity since the beginning of 2015
