Originally published on Markets Insider.

TORONTO, May 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced that Salesforce Ventures, the company’s global corporate investment group, has launched the Canada Trailblazer Fund, a $100 million fund to invest in Canadian startups and fuel cloud innovation and customer success in the region. Salesforce Ventures has supported the Canadian startup community since 2011, investing in innovative Canadian companies such as Vidyard and LeadSift.

Comments on the News:

“There is incredible innovation happening in Canada today and we want to encourage and empower the next generation of enterprise cloud startups in the region,” said John Somorjai, EVP of Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures at Salesforce. “Salesforce Ventures’ Canada Trailblazer Fund is a commitment to our mission to help startups grow and enable our customers to reach new levels of success.”

“Canada is recognized as an excellent place to start and build globally competitive technology companies,” said the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Canadian Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. “Corporate initiatives such as Salesforce Ventures’ new Canada Trailblazer Fund provide valuable support to technology entrepreneurs throughout their start-and-scale journey. I congratulate Salesforce on the launch of this important new fund, and look forward to future successes as they make progress toward their goal of investing $2 billion in Canadian businesses in the next five years.”

“Salesforce Ventures is an incredibly strong partner to Canadian startups,” said Ali Asaria, CEO and founder of Tulip, a mobile platform built for next generation retail store associates to offer a world-class omnichannel experience. “Their investment and the unique access we get to the Salesforce ecosystem has enabled us to expand our business faster and maintain that rapid pace of growth.”

Empowering Canadian Startups through Salesforce Ventures’ Canada Trailblazer Fund

IDC forecasts that Canada’s public cloud software market will grow almost six times faster than on-premise software deployments to reach C$4.1 billion by 2019¹. Salesforce Ventures’ Canada Trailblazer Fund will provide funding and support to the companies driving this growth and empower entrepreneurs to deliver unique capabilities to Salesforce customers.

The first round of funding recipients include:

• Tier1CRM: A provider of cloud-based CRM solutions for the capital markets industry built on Salesforce.


• Traction Guest: A developer of cloud-based visitor management systems (VMS) that enable global enterprises to shape the workplace experience, strengthen security and leverage visitor data with its Salesforce integration.


• Tulip: A mobile application provider focused on empowering workers in retail stores. Tulip integrates with Salesforce to deliver simple-to-use apps for store associates to look up products, manage customer information, check out shoppers and personalize the customer experience.


• OSF Commerce: A top digital cloud transformation specialist focused on building multi-cloud and unified commerce projects using Salesforce.

Driving customer success and innovation with World Tour Toronto and Dreampitch

The unveiling of the fund kicks off Salesforce World Tour Toronto, taking place today at Beanfield Centre. The Salesforce World Tour is a global roadshow where Trailblazers share how they’re using the Customer Success Platform to create connected customer experiences, learn new skills, innovate at their companies and shape the future. World Tour Toronto will feature a keynote from Salesforce CFO Mark Hawkins, specialized breakout sessions for every role and industry and live demos of cutting-edge technologies.

As part of World Tour Toronto, Salesforce Ventures will also host its first Canadian Dreampitch competition. Three early-stage Canadian startups that have built products leveraging the Salesforce Platform will pitch to a panel of expert judges and compete for an opportunity to win a $100,000 USD investment from Salesforce Ventures.

Committed to the growth and success of Canadian businesses

Salesforce recently announced its intent to invest $2 billion in its Canadian business over the next five years. More than 6,000 Canadian companies are using Salesforce to connect with their customers in new ways across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more. Additionally, Canadians have earned more than 87,000 badges on Trailhead — Salesforce’s free, gamified online learning platform — acquiring the skills needed to succeed in today’s technology-driven economy and be part of Salesforce’s flourishing ecosystem.

Additional Information

• Join Salesforce, alongside thousands of customer Trailblazers, at World Tour Toronto today: https://www.salesforce.com/events/


• To learn more about Salesforce Ventures, please visit: www.salesforce.com/ventures


• To learn more about how Salesforce is driving workforce development with Trailhead, please visit: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en

Connect with Salesforce

• Like Salesforce on Facebook http://facebook.com/salesforce


• Follow @salesforce and @SalesforceVC on Twitter


• IDC Software Tracker 2017

About Salesforce

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. Salesforce 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 about Salesforce, visit: www.salesforce.com.

About Salesforce Ventures

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. Salesforce Ventures — the company’s corporate investment group — invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. Portfolio companies receive funding, access to the world’s largest cloud ecosystem and guidance from Salesforce’s innovators and executives. With Salesforce Ventures, portfolio companies can also leverage Salesforce’s expertise in corporate philanthropy by joining Pledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 275 enterprise cloud startups in 17 countries since 2009. For more information, please visit www.salesforce.com/ventures.

BOULDER, COLO. (PRWEB) MAY 01, 2018

Scaled Agile, Inc., provider of SAFe®, the world’s leading framework for enterprise agility, today announced it has recently moved to a 27,000-square-foot office space at 5400 Airport Blvd. The space was formally unveiled during an open house event in February.

The new headquarters allows Scaled Agile to better accommodate the company’s current number of team members as well as provide for anticipated further growth. Scaled Agile hired 30 new team members in the past six months and will be hiring up to as many as 40 new employees in sales, marketing, course content development, and engineering teams. For more information about career opportunities at Scaled Agile, please visit scaledagile.com/careers.

Not only is global interest in SAFe increasing, Scaled Agile continues to expand its leadership role in this important area. Additional U.S. and international expansion is planned for 2018. The company has more than 180 global partners to help engage with and shape the global community of next-generation Agile organizations comprised of industry leaders, growth companies, and startups.

“Today, almost every company is a tech company, and with the business world’s focus continuing to center around ongoing innovation, the demand for enterprise agility has never been more pronounced,” said Chris James, President and Chief Operating Officer, Scaled Agile. “We are excited to help guide the organizations that develop and depend on the world’s most important systems in scaling Lean and Agile practices—regardless of size.”

By connecting strategy to execution, the Scaled Agile Framework visualizes how to apply Lean and Agile practices and principles to the team, program, and portfolio levels, providing the principles and practices that unlock enterprise agility for corporations like Intel, Capital One, Fannie Mae, fitbit, and Northwestern Mutual.

“We don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on our accomplishments,” said Dean Leffingwell, co-founder and chief methodologist for Scaled Agile. “But when we moved to an office that’s 27,000 square feet, it took a moment to realize five years ago we were in an office above my garage.”

“We have been based in Boulder since our founding in 2011,” James added. “We are proud to be a part of the Colorado entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem that draws on a highly skilled workforce to serve a world increasingly transformed by digital technology.”

About Scaled Agile, Inc.:

Scaled Agile, Inc., is the provider of SAFe®, the world’s leading framework for enterprise agility. Through learning and certification, a global partner network, and a growing community of over 250,000 trained professionals, Scaled Agile helps enterprises build better systems, increase employee engagement, and improve business outcomes. Scaled Agile is a contributing member of the Pledge 1% corporate philanthropy and community service movement. Learn about Scaled Agile and SAFe at scaledagile.com and scaledagileframework.com.

Pledge 1% is hiring an Operations and Member Success Coordinator starting immediately! Full job description and details are below. To apply, email your resume with subject line “Ops & Member Success Coordinator” to jobs@pledge1percent.org.

We also encourage you to share this listing with any interested friends and peers!

Title: Operations & Member Success Coordinator

Company Overview:

Pledge 1% is a global movement to change the status quo and create a new normal where giving back is baked into the DNA of every company from the very beginning. Pledge 1% empowers companies to donate 1% of their profit, equity, product, and/or employee time to causes of their choosing.

Pledge 1% is at the forefront of all things social impact + tech. Over 5000 companies in 95 countries have taken the pledge to date and in 2017, Pledge 1% was named Fast Company’s #1 Most Innovative Nonprofit in the world.

Pledge 1% companies have already ignited over a half a billion dollars in new philanthropy and we’re just getting started!

By joining the Pledge 1% team, you’ll get the opportunity to liaise with our core partners (e.g. Salesforce, Atlassian, 500 Startups, Techstars, TechCrunch) and our ever-growing list of member companies—all while working in a dynamic startup environment offering tons of independence and ownership.

Role Overview:

We’re looking for a highly-efficient and self-driven Ops & Member Success Coordinator. This is a super exciting opportunity because you’ll be an early addition to our core team. That means you’ll have the chance to shine right off the bat, and to play an integral role in helping the organization run smoothly as we rapidly grow/scale.

Reports to: Director, Operations & Partnerships (Dotted line to Chief Executive)

Core Responsibilities:

• Data:
  
  
  
  • Manage all incoming data including sets in Salesforce and Hubspot environments.
  
  
  • Develop reports to keep internal team and core partner organizations fully informed of our key metrics.
  
  
  • Practice exceptional data hygiene.
  
  
  
  

• Customer Support & Member Success:
  
  
  
  • Implement best practices in customer support to ensure P1% members are fully engaged throughout the relationship cycle.
  
  
  • Promote the success of P1% through social media and other channels. We sing from the heavens when our members do great things!
  
  
  
  

• General Operations, Office Management, Admin and EA:
  
  
  
  • Provide back-office support to all P1% staff.
  
  
  • You will be the guru for Google Suite, Salesforce, Hubspot, Crunchbase integration, website updates, and office equipment.
  
  
  • Manage orders for office supplies, marketing collateral, and meeting snacks and drinks.
  
  
  • Serve as Executive Assistant for Chief Executive (approx. 10% of time)
  
  
  
  

• Events
  
  
  
  • Provide key support for P1% events, ranging from booth set-up and side events at conferences, to intimate donor gatherings.
  
  
  • Research event venues, coordinate logistics, and provide professional frontline event presence.
  
  
  
  

• Special Projects and Research:
  
  
  
  • Research start-up accelerators, seek out growth partners, investigate the latest conferences. You will be constantly looking to identify new avenues for membership growth.
  
  
  • Become an essential member of our small high-powered team. Your flexibility and ability to think on your feet will open up an array of exciting new projects where you can show your high value.
  
  
  
  

Who you are:

• Tech savvy and enjoy leveraging technology to make things more efficient.


• People person. Good at relationships.


• Extremely organized and detail oriented. Self-motivated.


• Data excites you.


• Passionate about social change, and the role for-profit companies can play in making the world a better place.

Experience:

• Prior experience in an ops, data, events, and/or admin role is a plus.


• Track record in project management, data, and roles that involve attention to detail.


• Database management. Prior experience with Salesforce is a bonus.


• You have been part of a startup ecosystem. Extra credit if it is a high-growth tech company.


• Ideally experience with non-profits as well as for profits.


• Demonstrated top performer.

Specifics:

• Target start date: April 2018.


• 12 days vacation (and more in your 2nd year!).


• Office space in the Presidio (a national park) shared with other awesome small nonprofits.


• Pledge 1% is an equal opportunity employer.

We’d love to hear from you. Send a resume, short cover letter, and relevant portfolio materials, to jobs@pledge1percent.org with the subject line “Ops & Member Success Coordinator.” Don’t just tell us what you’ve done in the past—tell us why you’re excited to be part of the Pledge 1% team and why you’re the best person to help us succeed.

Originally posted on Salesforce.com.

Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, has completed its acquisition of CloudCraze, a leading B2B commerce platform built natively on Salesforce. Leading global companies, including Coca-Cola, Cummins, Ecolab, Land O’ Lakes, and WABCO, rely on CloudCraze to power global B2B commerce experiences and connect directly with their customers and partners to grow sales, reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.

Salesforce is a global leader in digital commerce and during the 2017 holiday shopping season, Salesforce Commerce Cloud powered the experiences of more than 540 million consumers across some of the world’s top brands. With the addition of CloudCraze, our customers will be able to create the same richly branded commerce experiences for business buyers that they do for consumers, all from a single platform.

The acquisition of CloudCraze enables Salesforce and its customers to take full advantage of the shift to digital commerce.   For more information, see the original announcement of the acquisition agreement.

By Chris Kohlhardt, Founder and Chairman of the Board, Gliffy

We took the Pledge 1% because I want to be able to give something back to the San Francisco community I have called home for over 22 years. We worked very hard to build Gliffy into a strong company. Myself and the company have been fortunate, given many opportunities and touched by luck. We are humbled to be in a position to take a portion of our success and reinvest it, hopefully sending a little luck and opportunity in the lives of community members who need it most.

Gliffy started our philanthropy by matching employee gifts to organizations that were personally important to them. We joined Pledge 1% in the early stage of our company’s development to ensure it was part of our company’s DNA. As the Gliffy Charitable Fund grew, we realized we were in a position to make larger investments. We have been inspired by the philanthropic efforts of large companies such as Salesforce, Atlassian and Google, but as a company with less than 40 staff we also believe we have a role to play in being active citizens.

Like many San Franciscans we struggle with homelessness in our city. Myself and others on our team have expressed a sense of helplessness faced with men, women and families living on the streets. We chose this as the area we wanted to support believing that taking some sort of action is the only way to reduce the feeling of being helpless.

We recognized we are a software company without any in-house expertise on non-profits or philanthropy. We hired an advisor to help us identify a project that was designed by local experts, aligned with our values and in need of funding. We were inspired by the work of Jeff Kositsky and the leadership at San Francisco’s newly created Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. We chose to invest in their expanded “problem-solving” strategy to help minimize the pipeline of people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.

We built out an additional level of opportunities for our staff to learn about the issue and other organizations working on homelessness. We have created a year of programming for Gliffy staff including activities like volunteering with Downtown Streets Team to help us understand the individual experiences with homelessness. We are also bringing in local experts like Enterprise Community Partners to help us understand the larger policy work that exacerbates Bay Area housing costs across income levels. Importantly, we are including smaller financial contributions for each organization to go along with each of these activities.

At Gliffy we haven’t forgotten about our business goals and objectives, but we are working to expand our place in the community and to do our part to give back. We hope to inspire other smaller companies to incorporate a philanthropy program into their work. We are eager to help. Contact me at pledge-advice@gliffy.com. Chris Kohlhardt is Founder and Chairman of the Board of Gliffy, a San Francisco-based software company that specializes in visual tools that power and help teams work better together. Gliffy is also a member of Pledge 1%, which encourages and challenges individuals and companies to commit 1% of equity, profit, product, and/or employee time for their communities.

Originally published on the Box blog by BRYAN BRECKENRIDGE

Millions of people are suffering unimaginable circumstances around the world, even in the places members of the Box ecosystem live and work. The global social impact sector, especially nonprofits, are more overwhelmed than ever.

For the past four years, Box.org has provided these organizations with the capacity-building resources they need to innovate and fulfill their mission. In addition to offering donated or discounted access to our cloud content management platform, we build nonprofit capacity through employee-led volunteering and giving programs. For example, Thinkof-Us, Year Up, and International Rescue Committee innovate using Box technology, host Box volunteers and partner with Box to elevate their work and garner more support from the expansive Box ecosystem and beyond.

As Box.org has evolved we’ve realized the importance of focusing the bi-directional exchange of value between the Box ecosystem and the social impact sector in a narrower set of social impact areas. In addition to enabling success for all nonprofits leveraging the Box cloud content platform in their work, we’ll now focus more on addressing the needs of organizations working to scale youth well-being, tech sector inclusion and humanitarian aid delivery.

We’ve partnered with over 6,000 social impact [nonprofit] organizations to date and anticipate we’ll serve hundreds of thousands more. Because of these bold aspirations, we feel it’s now time to expand Box.org in three critical ways:

1. Creation of the Box.org Fund and a unique funding mechanism supported by philanthropic partner Tides


2. A policy offering Box employees (Boxers) 3 paid Box.org Impact Days to build social impact org capacity


3. Launch of the Box.org Coaching Corps which will enable Boxers to mentor nonprofits on Box tech

Our expansion of Box.org will empower Boxers, Box tech and the entire Box ecosystem to empower more social impact [nonprofit] organizations and their vital missions. A scaling Box.org means more innovation and mission fulfillment for social impact organizations world-wide, especially organizations focused on youth well-being, tech sector inclusion and humanitarian aid.

Box.org Fund

The Box.org Fund is a donor advised fund housed at Tides Foundation along with Google, Patagonia, Okta, Twilio’s and many other leading organization’s funds. Tides will help Box as we evolve our integrated scalable impact model.

Box will initially fund the Box.org Fund with a transfer of equity and cash, but will also deposit a percentage of the (heavily discounted) services cost that social impact organizations [nonprofits] pay Box on a quarterly basis. All funds re-directed to the Box.org Fund will support grant-making and nonprofit capacity building programs and eventually support Box.org’s social impact investing aspirations. Our approach will be to team closely with Tides to make Box.org grants as unrestricted as possible.

We’re excited to announce this fund and the social intraprise model that fuels it, a model that assures that the more nonprofits succeed with Box cloud content management and invest in it the more resources Box.org can mobilize for nonprofit capacity building. We call this scalable virtuous cycle Biznevolence, the business of scalable well being. We’re excited to see lots of our peers in tech adopt similar corporate social impact models that maximize outcomes for all stakeholders involved.

Box.org Impact Days

For Box, our teaming with nonprofits both local and abroad is a reflection of who we are as company: we habitually give back, and it is a value system that is core to our company culture. Three paid Box.org Impact Days will allow Boxers to do that simply by being a part of Box. These are three days for Boxers to dedicate to social impact work that speaks most to them personally. The Box.org team cant wait to see the programs and capacity-building skilled volunteering and social impact organization support and advocacy these days generate.

Box.org Coaching Corps

We know that the vast majority of social impact organizations doing incredible work don’t have the dedicated IT capacity to maximize the value of the solutions they use. Though Box is extremely easy for nonprofits to deploy and use Box without expert support, we know nonprofits can get more value from the platform with brief coaching sessions with Box experts. Box.org Coaching Corps will help us scale up the number of nonprofits a scaling community of Box expert coaches can serve.

We’re excited to announce that incredible executives will join Box.org’s advisory board. Dylan Smith, CFO and Co-founder of Box Inc. and Erik Arnold, CTO of Microsoft Philanthropies- Tech for Social Impact. Both are passionate about developing scalable capacity-building models. We look forward to their continued thought partnership.

Box.org works hard every day to maximize the way the social impact sector and tech sector maximize positive social impact together. We’re grateful to everyone who has contributed to the expansion of Box.org and the organizations we serve. We look forward to working with all members of our ecosystem to evolve our model. Please learn more about our work at Box.org, start using Box technology in your work and contact us if so inspired.

Finally, we are supporting #GirlScoutsInTech, an effort to prepare more girl leaders for careers in tech. More info here. Please help us support the program here. See the support Box is generating for Girl Scouts here.

Originally published on the Optoro blog.

Optoro is proud to announce that we have joined Pledge 1%, a global movement creating a new normal where companies of all sizes integrate giving back into their culture and values. Pledge 1% empowers companies to donate 1% of product, employee time, equity, or profit to causes of their choice.

In our initial year, Optoro has committed to donating 1% of our product and 1% of employee time to causes close to our communities, both in Washington, D.C. and Mt. Juliet, TN. By effectively donating goods to those in need and offering paid Volunteer Time Off to all employees, we pledge to continue ingraining giving back into our business. We are excited to stand alongside Pledge 1%’s participating companies, including Salesforce, Atlassian, and numerous others, in this mission to make philanthropy an integral part of our company.

Originally posted by the DeFrame team on Medium.

Today, we are pleased to announce that DeFrame has joined the Boston chapter of Pledge 1%, a global philanthropic movement creating new normal where companies of all sizes integrate giving back into their culture and values. Pledge 1% empowers companies to donate 1% of their product, 1% of equity, 1% of profit or 1% of employee time to good causes of their choice. Over 1,500 companies in 40 countries have taken the Pledge and committed to communities around the world.

DeFrame is excited to join Pledge 1%’s network of founders, entrepreneurs and companies around the globe that have committed to giving back. We have committed to pledging 1% of DeFrame’s upcoming software/platform to local Art Galleries and Independent Artists.

At DeFrame we believe in the importance of art culturally, and socially. Our mission of Connecting Museums, Art, and People art goes beyond just sharing your thoughts and feelings about a painting; it is about making art both accessible and interactive to everyone, from art experts to kids who are visiting their first museum.

Also, by utilizing technology, we want to empower everyone’s art experience, creating a user-friendly experience that promotes a collaborative community that shares their perspectives and interpretations of art. We aim to create a more interactive approach to the process of appreciating and learning about art, its beauty, and importance to the world.

We believe in the importance of art culturally, and socially. We want to bring new ways of financial sustainability by keeping Museums and Art Galleries relevant to younger generations.

Lastly, we want to bring new ways of financial sustainability by keeping Museums and Art Galleries relevant to younger generations. Our team at DeFrame want to put their own mark in reaching that goal. Technology will eventually change the way we behave and interact with art; we are aiming to be one of the catalysts that will push this industry to a prosperous financial future by working hand-in-hand with advances in tech and the Art world.

We are proud to be a Pledge 1% member. For more information about Pledge 1%, visit www.pledge1percent.org.