Pierre Perrin-Monlouis Dernière mise à jour: 20 octobre 2021
Winning entrepreneur or startup building on the Force.com Platform to receive up to £1 Million in funding from leading early stage technology venture capital firm
Financing innovation not infrastructure, in the age of Platform-as-a-Service
LONDON – salesforce.com Dreamforce Europe Conference – May 7, 2008 – Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, and Eden Ventures, the early stage venture capital firm specializing in software and technology, today announced the £1 Million Force.com Investment Challenge – a venture challenge for entrepreneurs and early stage companies building on the Force.com Platform. Force.com delivers Platform-as-a-Service, enabling companies to develop and deliver any application on demand.
The £1 Million Force.com Investment Challenge, the first of its kind in the UK, is designed to inspire a new generation of independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop and deliver SaaS applications on the Force.com Platform. The winner will have the opportunity to negotiate with Eden Ventures for a potential investment of up to £1 million. Eden Ventures will announce the winner in November at Dreamforce 2008, salesforce.com’s user and developer conference.
“New investment models are required to match the new technology and business models made possible with Platform-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Eden Ventures has a track record of success in identifying entrepreneurs and startups that have the vision and leadership necessary for long term business success. That’s why they are investing in companies based on the Force.com Platform.”
“SaaS and PaaS have transformed how entrepreneurs and established companies build, deliver and deploy business applications,” said Mark Farmer, General Partner, Eden Ventures. “As a team of successful entrepreneurs and experienced business managers we will apply our collective operational expertise to assist the development of SaaS and PaaS companies. Eden Ventures will help this new generation of entrepreneurs leverage Force.com to not only build innovative applications but also build successful long term businesses.”
The £1 Million Force.com Investment Challenge
For the £1 Million Force.com Investment Challenge, salesforce.com will work closely with Eden Ventures in an advisory capacity. As Eden reviews promising entrepreneurs and early stage companies building on the Force.com platform, salesforce.com will assist in due diligence, provide design review, packaging and distribution best practices, and go-to market programs for companies building applications on the Force.com platform. Eden Ventures and salesforce.com will meet regularly to review Force.com applications and companies that meet the criteria for the £1 Million Force.com Investment Challenge.
Eden Ventures will participate in a panel of judges evaluating the entries and selecting the winning entrepreneur or startup. In addition to providing a financial investment, the selected business will receive ongoing support from Eden’s team to grow their business. With Eden’s strong seed and Series A investment track record, they have particular skill in identifying entrepreneurs with the right balance of vision and leadership who can develop companies of lasting value. Entrants in the £1 Million Force.com Investment Challenge will be judged along eight main criteria:
• A strong team with deep domain knowledge
• International vision and ambition
• Customer success and user adoption
• A significant market opportunity and likelihood of becoming market leader
• Adoption and innovative use of the Force.com Platform
• Financial plan
• Competitive differentiation
• Likelihood of long-term company success
For more information, contest rules, and to enter, please visit http://www.edenventures.co.uk/ or http://www.salesforce.com/eu/eden/.
Force.com Platform and the AppExchange
Force.com (http://www.force.com/) reinvents the traditional development, deployment and distribution of any business application with platform-as-a-service. Developers, customers and partners can use Force.com to easily create a new generation of on-demand applications and deploy them worldwide as a service. Force.com allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace, enabling all the innovation that Force.com unleashes to be easily distributed to the entire on-demand community.
The AppExchange economy continues to expand, with thousands of customers installing applications via the AppExchange. Customers of all sizes can quickly and easily extend Salesforce with additional on-demand business applications available on the AppExchange, found at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.
About Eden Ventures
Eden Ventures invests in technology companies in the telecommunications software, enterprise software, digital media, e-commerce, internet and mobile sectors in the UK and Ireland. Eden Ventures was founded by a group of software engineers turned investors and the team brings real operational experience to the venture process. The company’s blend of knowledge, experience and skill covers business strategy, sales and marketing, finance and operations, M & A transactions and institutional fund management. Eden delivers value to early stage technology companies through investment of hands-on skills and expertise as well as seed funding and Series A finance. Its goal is to help the businesses in its portfolio grow to their maximum potential through utilization of a key blend of skills and expertise.
Eden’s existing portfolio includes Huddle, Reevoo and Truphone, and recently completed exits include the sale of Apertio to Nokia. In 2007 Eden Ventures was awarded Winner, Exit of the Year, 2007 for the sale of Cramer Systems to Amdocs by Investor AllStars. Eden Ventures (UK) Ltd. is regulated by FSA. http://www.edenventures.co.uk
About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). The company’s portfolio of SaaS applications, including its award-winning CRM, available at http://www.salesforce.com/products/, has revolutionized the ways that customers manage and share business information over the Internet. The company’s Force.com PaaS enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful on-demand applications that deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy across the enterprise. Applications built on the Force.com platform, available at http://www.force.com/, can be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com’s AppExchange marketplace available at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.
As of January 31, 2008, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 41,000 customers including ABN AMRO, Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM”. For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
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