Box: The Next Cloud Platform

We are excited to announce that we are teaming up with Box to provide capital to entrepreneurs building on the Box platform [https://www.box.com/blog/platform-for-digital-enterprise/]. This relationship is a perfect fit for Emergence on multiple dimensions. First, we have been investors in Box since 2010 and have been big advocates for Aaron and his team. Box was named our Company of the Year for 2014, and we are excited to see the company build on its vision to reinvent how the world uses business content. Second, we are the only venture firm 100% focused on enterprise cloud applications, so this partnership represents the sweet spot for Emergence’s investment strategy. Third, as an early investor in Salesforce.com, we know what it means to expand from an application company to a platform company.

We watched Salesforce grow from $100 million in revenues in 2004 to over $5 billion of revenues last year. Over the years, Salesforce has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in building a compelling platform, and Emergence has had the opportunity to invest in companies that have leveraged this platform. Personally, I can remember leading the $2 million Series A round in ServiceMax when it was a tiny application built on the Force platform. Today, ServiceMax has raised over $100 million and it is the leading provider of field service management solutions. Another Emergence portfolio company, Veeva Systems, leveraged the Salesforce platform, and today Veeva is a public company worth over $3 billion. A newer investment, SteelBrick, is also benefitting from the Salesforce platform both in its go-to-market approach and technology investments.

We view Box as the next leader of this application-to-platform pattern. Aaron has the technology assets, capital base and the vision to offer developers a compelling place to build the next billion dollar enterprise companies. We know what it means to build a successful platform, and we believe that Aaron and his team have what it takes to make that happen. We are excited to be partnering with Box to help create the next generation of enterprise cloud leaders.