Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars Awards 2016: #20 Matt Garratt

Matt Garratt, vice-president of Salesforce Ventures, the corporate investment unit for the US-listed cloud services provider Salesforce, is struggling with “an embarrassment of riches”.

He explains: “We have access to so many great companies and investment opportunities.”

Salesforce Ventures manages 150 portfolio companies, having been set up in late 2014 to rationalise the investments devised by the corporate development team that had included Garratt’s Gainsight, Mulesfot, Insidesales, Invoca, Thousand Eyes, EVariant, NCino and Anaplan deals.

Garratt, who since taking over the role was also proud of having devised the Talkdesk, Vidyard and Twilio deals, said: “We rebranded it Salesforce Ventures shortly after I started managing the programme in October 2014.

“I managed all aspects of the launch, which included the launch event, building the website, mission statement, public relations and so on. When I started, it was just me and now I have a team of five.”

While its 150 companies are based in 13 countries, Salesforce Ventures now 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. Garratt said it had “seen great success already with investments in NewVoiceMedia, Qubit and CartoDB to name but a few”.

Garratt added: “We have been ramping quickly and it is a tremendous amount to manage. Ensuring we are disciplined about sticking to our strategy as we continue to scale is always a challenge.”

His boss has been impressed. John Somorjai, executive vice-president of corporate development and Salesforce Ventures, said: “Matt Garratt has been instrumental in the acceleration of Salesforce Ventures to being the third most active corporate venture programme in technology and growing our ecosystem of cloud partners around the world.

“Matt has worked tirelessly to increase awareness of our investment programme among entrepreneurs and VCs, and has made our venture programme recognised for the value it can bring to companies as well as the promotion of integrated corporate philanthropy.

“Matt has developed an impressive team of investment professionals who have a sharp analytical focus on investment opportunities and strive to help our entrepreneurs.”

It has been a big shift for the former venture capitalist at Battery Ventures and Plymouth Venture Partners. Garratt said: “I honestly didn’t expect to be conducting corporate venture capital (CVC). However, once I joined the Salesforce corporate developement group, I saw what an amazing programme and opportunity Salesforce Ventures presented.

“We have one of the most amazing platforms for partnering with companies. We have an amazing CEO and executives, many of whom were entrepreneurs and inherently see the value in meeting with and helping startups.

“That, combined with the knowledge-base Salesforce has, I saw an opportunity to create the best VC in enterprise software.”

To do this, Garratt said Salesforce and the industry had to: “Not only think about the immediate interests of the CVC parent company, but also to think about interests of the startup in which they are investing.

“To think about furthering the broader interests of the industry and catalyse the resources of the CVC parent company to provide effective advice and mentorship to portfolio companies.

Having an impact was Garratt’s intention as a cleantech investor at Battery Ventures and while working for the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative to assess the impacts on public policy on the availability of capital for renewable energy projects. He completed his MBA at the University of Michigan’s Stephen M Ross School of Business.

His efforts have certainly led to riches for many.