Through our global network, experience, resources, and expertise, we enable entrepreneurs to maximize your company’s potential as quickly as possible to achieve market leadership.
Sapphire Ventures has an extensive network of CIOs and CxOs at Global 2000 companies that we routinely connect portfolio companies with as potential customers or partners.
When Global 2000 executives visit Silicon Valley, we help them connect with emerging startups that can address their business challenges. We organize more than 40 innovation sessions and executive briefings annually, carefully matching conversations with portfolio companies.
Understanding what is top of mind for the CIO is key to helping us provide value to our portfolio companies and executive network. Our exclusive CIO network and invite-only CIO Summit conference arm our portfolio with sophisticated product and strategy feedback from potential customers and partners in the Global 2000 ranks.
Staying on top of the constantly evolving technology landscape is a challenge for today’s corporate innovators. SV Explorer is a free platform that makes it easier for corporate IT and business leaders to discover, evaluate and share emerging technologies through a searchable and curated list of start-ups.
“Many VC firms do introductions, but Sapphire Ventures takes it to a new level with context and follow thru. They deliver incredible value and proactive engagement.”
Global 2000 customer introductions annually
Industry-focused events and CXO innovation briefings in 2018
Corporate IT leaders registered on SV Explorer
Hiring the right executive talent can make or break your business. Our dedicated Talent team understands your needs, and makes introductions to top industry talent to help you find the best fit for your company.
Deciding what your next key executive hire will be or filling an open position are strategic and critical decisions for your business. Our experienced operators and talent professionals are here to provide insight, advice and mentorship as you build out your executive team.
We participate in the Venture Capital Executive Compensation Survey, which helps our CEOs understand industry pay practices. With inputs from 1,300+ startups, the VCECS report provides robust insight into salary and equity compensation.
We believe that brilliant and tested leaders are key to helping companies scale quickly. The Sapphire Fellows Program matches experts across a variety of functional areas with our portfolio to help them as they rapidly grow and scale.
Are you a candidate looking for your next role with a market-leading start-up? Sapphire aggregates open positions with our portfolio companies on our Careers page. Come explore the opportunities open now.
“Many investors give good talk about their talent orgs and the value add they bring. Elizabeth at Sapphire? A lot more than talk…within 2 weeks of signing on with Sapphire we had extended and gotten acceptance of our first referral.”
Jobs posted on the Sapphire Careers page
Industry experts in the Sapphire Fellows program
Sapphire Ventures has an experienced team of industry marketers that produces content and events for the firm’s ecosystem, as well as, advises portfolio companies on their approach to marketing and communications.
Successfully building your brand takes time, effort and planning. Our team is here to help entrepreneurs strategize and build the best plan to get your message out in the most impactful way.
Mastering the media landscape is daunting, but critical to building your brand. Our team will help connect you to right PR and media resources, letting you focus on sharing your brand and message.
We love to share, promote and amplify our portfolio’s news and thought leadership across our social channels. Let us know when you have something to share so we can help you spread the word.
We have a dedicated team to help provide expert guidance and support to our portfolio companies as they navigate the capital markets, including:
We work with our portfolio companies to help them extend their runway with non-dilutive debt financing alternatives. We maintain strong relationships with dozens of commercial banks, non-bank lenders and mezzanine debt providers, and as a result, we can refer the right lenders at the right time and provide support to negotiate the best terms on behalf of our portfolio companies.
We provide strategic advice to help our portfolio companies plan and hit milestones to raise the next round at the best possible valuation to minimize founder dilution. And we work closely with our management teams on structuring and negotiating tuck-in acquisitions.
With 50+ exits since 2011, we have deep experience working with our portfolio companies on making timely corporate development introductions, selecting the right investment bankers, and setting the right expectations to create value in the markets post-IPO.
“Steve and the team at Sapphire are a great resource for any CFO approaching the capital markets. Steve made introductions to the right bankers, gave us great advice on leverage points for negotiating our venture debt financing, and provided my CEO and I timely guidance and insights on corporate development topics.”
Sapphire’s Portfolio Growth team produces dozens of events per year ranging from intimate dinners for portfolio CxOs to larger, thematic industry summits.
Each year, the Sapphire’s CIO Summit convenes hundreds of enterprise IT leaders, startup executives and investors to explore today’s most compelling and cutting-edge innovations in enterprise IT.
Sapphire hosts deep dive events focused on specific sectors, technologies or trends to build the conversation between start-ups, their customers and other investors. Sign up for the Sapphire email list to learn about upcoming events.
Startup executives, across functions benefit from meeting and learning from their peers and industry leaders. Every month, we host intimate dinners and salons geared toward connecting our portfolio executives with each other, and with leaders in their respective field.
With topics on everything from design thinking to ASC 606 planning to building your skills as a CFO, our workshops are designed to help our companies navigate the tactical challenges all businesses face as they rapidly scale and expand globally.
In addition to providing capital, Sapphire Ventures proactively draws on our experience with 100+ investments and 50+ exits to help our portfolio companies overcome obstacles and accelerate growth.
We collaborate closely with C-level executives at Global 2000 companies across a variety of industries. These corporate leaders rely on us for insights into startup-led disruption, analysis of key emerging technologies, guidance on innovation programs, and connections to a vetted pool of startups in our global network.
With more than 100+ investments and 50+ exit events under our belt, we know what the patterns of hyper-performance look like. Our robust, private benchmarking database of performance data from startups of all stages provides users with targeted analysis and best-in-class metrics.
“There are investors and then there are builders. Special thanks to Rami and Sapphire Ventures who help us build at Nutanix. The Sapphire folks are truly an entrepreneur’s best friend.”
Sapphire Ventures is committed to helping female leaders navigate their way to company Board roles at both public and private enterprises, and further develop as corporate leaders. That's because in our mission to help build Companies of Consequence, it's essential to our firm to invest in “people of consequence” from all backgrounds. To this end, we recently hosted a workshop for emerging female board leaders, From CXO to Board Director - Forging Your Path.
We’ve seen it a number of times at Sapphire Ventures with growth-stage technology companies: you’ve nailed the transactional sales model -- selling at a high velocity to a group of mid-level leaders (data analysts, developers, sales operation leaders) -- but now you want to go hunting for enterprise-wide deals with c-level executives so you can land larger multi-year contracts.
In recent decades, many venture capital firms are working to differentiate themselves beyond their ability to write a check. They understand that entrepreneurs’ success isn't strictly correlated to the size of a funding round; rather, start-ups often need the intelligence, mentorship, and network an experienced VC is able to provide in addition to cash.Today, value-add teams at VC firms
