A new platform to meet leading practitioners, discover best practices and uncover opportunities to drive business growth
With more than 170 portfolio company investments since the firm’s inception(¹), Sapphire is intimately familiar with the entrepreneurial journey and what it takes to build a category defining company. We know that oftentimes, it’s difficult for CEOs and company leaders to know where to go for guidance and how to get connected to leaders who have done it before. This, coupled with the current macro environment impacting the technology ecosystem, has resulted in startups requiring more help than ever to build their companies, and Sapphire is here to help.
At the same time, Global 2000 organizations and leading digitally cloud native companies are being tasked to innovate, create organizational efficiencies and meet the technology demands of today’s customers. We believe that startups are key to delivering on these evolving expectations, and Sapphire has been a crucial partner in providing access to the latest technology innovations and trends.
With this in mind, we’re excited to unveil Sapphire Communities. An extension of our value-add platform, Portfolio Growth, Sapphire Communities provide portfolio company executives, Global 2000 decision-makers and top private cloud company leaders with the opportunity to make connections, learn new strategies and accelerate business growth. Sapphire Communities is also made up of our in-house executives and Sapphire’s Growth Advisors. Also announced today, Sapphire Growth Advisors is an exclusive group of B2B technology leaders within our network who work closely with our companies to help them achieve their business goals.
An essential platform for propelling startup growth
Sapphire Communities are a rich destination for startup CEOs and leaders to uncover new opportunities and learn from each other as they build their businesses. Community benefits include advisory services ranging from playbooks, frameworks and benchmarks to hands-on workshops and one-to-one consultation sessions. Sapphire Communities also provide leaders with a space to ideate and co-create when developing content and event programming. It’s a collaborative environment where playbooks and frameworks can be continuously iterated on in an effort to share the most up-to-date best practices. Additionally, members are invited to our exclusive events, including the Hypergrowth Engineering Summit on June 15th, 2023 and the Sapphire Ascend Summit on October 18th, 2023.
Sapphire Communities are made up of six communities essential for startups that are in their later stages of growth: IT, Engineering, People, Revenue, Finance and ESG. By being part of Sapphire Communities, portfolio company CEOs and leaders gain access to our vast networks including hundreds of startup CEOs and practitioners, Sapphire portfolio company alumni, Global 2000 and leading cloud native executives, Sapphire Growth Advisors and our internal team of in-house former operators.
Helping our portfolio scale with Sapphire Growth Advisors
In conjunction with Sapphire Communities, we’re thrilled to announce Sapphire Growth Advisors, an exclusive group of industry leaders within the Sapphire network representing some of the most impactful companies in the enterprise B2B technology landscape. These highly-respected industry practitioners are key members of Sapphire Communities, working hand-in-hand with our startups across a variety of disciplines and topics, such as GTM operations, revenue growth, engineering excellence, and information security.
Sapphire Growth Advisors have been carefully selected to deliver the utmost value to our portfolio CEOs and leaders. They are currently made up of half a dozen individuals, including Jesus Requena, Head of Marketing at Hex, Susan Chiang, Deputy CISO at Cloudflare, and Bhawna Singh, CTO at Okta.
Your GTM partner of choice committed to accelerating growth
Since its very beginning, the Sapphire Portfolio Growth platform was designed to help scale our portfolio companies. What first started as a few experienced and well-connected practitioners, assisting portfolio companies with customer and talent introductions, has burgeoned into a team of esteemed operators focused on delivering meaningful value to portfolio company CEOs and their leaders across all go-to-market needs.
With Sapphire Communities, we’re now ushering the next generation of value-add services. Time and time again, we hear from portfolio CEOs that they want more from their VC partners as they navigate uncharted waters, including stronger networks and specialized services most relevant to a company’s later stages of growth. This shift has resulted in the evolution of our value-add services and introduction of Sapphire Communities.
With a mission to delight Sapphire portfolio companies with the most relevant and necessary services, and relentless execution, we are committed to being the #1 value-add services platform for growth stage SaaS companies.
Legal disclaimer
Disclaimer
* Denotes Sapphire portfolio company.
(¹)Figure represents the # of direct portfolio company investments Sapphire’s growth strategy has made since inception in January 2011 through April 2023.
¹Nothing presented within this article is intended to constitute investment advice, and under no circumstances should any information provided herein be used or considered as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund managed by Sapphire Ventures (“Sapphire”). Information provided reflects Sapphires’ views as of a time, whereby such views are subject to change at any point and Sapphire shall not be obligated to provide notice of any change. The quotes set forth within this presentation are from members of current and former Sapphires’ portfolio companies and other third parties with whom Sapphire interacts under such categories and have provided a statement as such. Statements reflect endorsements related the nature and type of management services provided by Sapphire as an operating partner and do not constitute testimonials to Sapphires’ investment advisory services and no inference to the contrary should be made. Sapphire has provided no compensation related to such endorsements.Companies mentioned in this article are a representative sample of portfolio companies in which Sapphire has invested in which the author believes such companies fit the objective criteria stated in commentary, which do not reflect all investments made by Sapphire. A complete alphabetical list of Sapphire’s investments made by its direct growth and sports investing strategies is available here. No assumptions should be made that investments listed above were or will be profitable. Due to various risks and uncertainties, actual events, results or the actual experience may differ materially from those reflected or contemplated in these statements. Nothing contained in this article may be relied upon as a guarantee or assurance as to the future success of any particular company. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
