Alex Kayyal speaks five languages: English, Greek, French, Spanish and Portuguese. He's also fluent in cloud software.
What is Salesforce Ventures' investing philosophy is and how has it evolved since the venture arm launched?There are three big evolutions that have occurred. No. 1 is the fact that we're investing globally. We started in the U.S. Actually, started San Francisco, where our roots were. And obviously we continue to love that ecosystem, but we saw an opportunity to invest in companies globally. That was a big"aha" moment for us. We now have boots on the ground in the U.S.
The second is a focus on building a great values based culture. We care a lot about companies that live and breathe their values. And we believe that's the best way to build a great company. It's not just to have a great product. It's not just a big market. Obviously, the financial metrics are important, but the sort of underpinning of all that is a company that has a great foundation.
Historically, the big concern around companies outside the U.S. was, how big of a company can you build? And is there a big path to being a company? Anaplan is a great example. That was a company that actually started in the U.K., then went public. And it was a great outcome. All of a sudden, you're seeing not only unicorns, but deca-corns that are European based companies.
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