Salesforce’s Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh: New $50M Trailblazer Fund Will Help Partners Reach Their Potential

This week Salesforceannounceda $50 million Trailblazer fund from Salesforce Ventures. The fund will provide cloud consulting companies with the capital needed to continue building and expanding their Salesforce practices.

In an interview with CRNtv, Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh, senior vice president of partner programs at Salesforce, said the investment would help fuel growth for the company's many partners, especially businesses in the services area.

"This fund is really meant to help partners find the time and resources to focus on growing their business," she said.

According to Taychakhoonavudh, the investments would allow companies to take advantage of learning more about the multi-dimensional Salesforce ecosystem while employing products and tools focused on growth.

"When we talk to partners, the number one ask is resourcing and enablement," Taychakhoonavudh said. "Salesforce does three product releases a year, and a ton of organic innovation such as Einstein, our new AI solution which is AI built into CRM. Partners are trying to get on top of that."

She said the key to implementing these solutions is enablement, and with Salesforce's 40-plus certification programs, partners can take advantage of showing their skills as well as demonstrating their commitment to Salesforce.

"Our partners now have the ability to access this $50 million venture capital fund to help them get out of those plateaus they tend to hit over time," said Taychakhoonavudh.

This quarter alone, Salesforce added three new certification levels, one in particular for field service lightening, which is a mobile field service solution.

"The second is for CPQ or 'configure price quote,' which is actually a new product Salesforce acquired a year and a half ago," said Taychakhoonavudh. "The third is around Commerce Cloud, which is an e-commerce solution product we acquired from DemandWare about a year ago."