Introducing the World’s First Ohana Crowdfund

For too long the typical fundraising cycle has remained unchanged. Seed Round > VC Backed Series A > VC Backed Series B, all the way to IPO (initial public offering). For individuals, it’s near impossible to join this fundraising cycle and share in the extraordinary wealth generated when tech companies successfully exit.

We invite you to join the world’s first Ohana funding round and join us on our mission to transform Salesforce telephony – register your interest today.

What Is the Salesforce Ohana? 

I recall sitting in Salesforce Tower London back in early 2016. We had just completed a spectacular 2015 at over $5B in annual revenue.

Salesforce was gunning for $20B ARR by 2020. As leaders, we shouldered the responsibility for coming up with actionable plans, communicating direction, inspiring our teams, and guiding the entire company to that $20B outcome. But the question was, would we be able to go from $5B to $20B in just five years? 

Salesforce was more than a group of employees, partners, and customers. These things (and more) came together to form what Marc Benioff called the “Salesforce Ohana”. It was at the core of everything; it was at the heart of our success.

We realized that $20B by 2020 could only be achieved by recognizing and communicating the value of our ohana to every member of the Salesforce community, and we did this with gusto. Everyone was brought in – a global community of the smartest and most driven professionals in the history of software, all facing in the same direction.

Things worked out well. In the most recent filings, Salesforce.com revenues for the 12 months ending Jul 31, 2022 were $26.5B, with the ecosystem expected to be valued at $1.67T by 2026, according to research from IDC.

Why Make This Crowdfund Exclusive to the Ohana?

RocketPhone is a company I founded (as a 10-year Salesforce veteran!) and shamelessly engineered to work with Salesforce technologies, employees, customers, and partners. 

When we thought about raising our seed round, we had all the usual options in front of us. However, I wasn’t entirely at ease with the ‘conjugal’ nature of some of the funding proposals. They didn’t feel right to me – they felt too exclusive. 

I was thinking about this late one night, so I did some cursory research on the most successful companies inside the Salesforce ecosystem:

• Veeva had been built on $7M funding with only one VC involved: Emergence Capital.  Veeva went on to IPO at a valuation of circa $2.4B (recent valuation of $44B). 
• nCino ($5.5B valuation, investment led by T. Rowe Price and Salesforce Ventures).
• Vlocity (acquired by Salesforce for $1.3B, investment lead by Salesforce Ventures and Sutter Hill).
• Zuora ($1.83B valuation).
• Blackbaud ($2.7B valuation).

I cannot speak to the inner workings of these companies, however, I would suspect that the main beneficiaries of the IPOs and acquisitions were the founders and VCs. 

Whilst there is nothing inherently wrong with rocking the Silicon Valley shuffle (my term for the coming together of strong founders and top VCs), to me this was not ‘Ohana’. As someone who is in the Ohana and who has seen the power of the Ohana, I can only feel the vast emptiness of an opportunity being squandered. 

This is the first time a company has sought to be owned by the Ohana without going to an IPO.

I want every member to be an owner, but the limited level of funding that we want to raise, against what is a fair valuation, makes this impossible – so please act fast. 

Whilst I can’t promise that everyone will get shares in this round, I can certainly assure you that there are no closed doors or backroom private deals with VCs or institutions. 

What Can You Expect From Becoming an Investor?

You will own what is already (in my opinion) the most advanced business telephony platform in the world for Salesforce users. We have broken new ground with our platform’s ability to ingest real-time audio, process it, and then kick off a multitude of configurable actions – all in real-time while the rep is on the call. I invite every one of you to watch RocketPhone in action on our crowdfunding page.

We are focused on making RocketPhone the de facto business comms platform in every Salesforce region globally, with growing revenues to match. Our customers chose us over well known CTI alternatives because of the sheer level of innovation in what we’ve built. In the words of one of our customers: “RocketPhone is a no-brainer”.

The more RocketPhone licenses we sell, the greater the impact to shareholder value, and the beneficiary of that will be you. Be under no illusion, we are gunning for a sizable exit event and will endeavor to create intermediate liquidity opportunities for our Ohana shareholders.

Beyond ownership, we are Ohana and the values apply. 

The best success is mutual. We want you to be ambassadors for RocketPhone and we will do everything in our power to reciprocate that. If you need a helping hand, we’re here to give you the benefit of our experience and to put you in touch with co-investors who can guide you.

Crowdfunding requires a level of trust that is not a feature of a VC round. As investors, you will receive regular updates on our progress. I know that with the Ohana on our side, we have the world’s smartest people to turn to when we need help.

As a company we’re driven by innovation. We’re really strong on this point. Our Chief Science Officer is Head of Computer Science at Oxford University and has been a world expert in AI research for over three decades. We’re also closely associated with Manchester University – they’re co-working with us to develop world leading waveform processing algorithms. 

Final Thoughts

We will continue to (as Steve Jobs succinctly put it) “think different”. We don’t just do something because it’s been done before or it’s something that the market has come to ‘expect’, we do things because it’s going to be game changing.

I welcome you to read through our pitch deck and browse the various documents and videos that we have made available – you can register your interest here.

This is our time; we’re changing the definition of voice and telephony; we’re trailblazing and maybe we’re even making history. And if we are, then join us, and let’s make history together.