Spencer Chavez, a principal at Salesforce Ventures, the corporate venture capital subsidiary of enterprise software producer Salesforce who ranked sixth as a GCV Rising Stars winner in January 2020, has joined alternatives asset manager KKR as a principal in its technology, media and telecoms growth team.
KKR has been building its tech growth team under Dave Welsh as traditional private equity firms move down towards growth equity deals for opportunities and as a window on disruptive trends that might affect leveraged buyouts and other assets.
Chavez specialises in startups that develop financial, artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital health technologies.
Matt Garratt, managing partner at Salesforce Ventures, said in his nomination of Chavez in January’s awards at the Monterey Bay Aquarium: “Spencer has an incredible work ethic, an ongoing commitment to the team and has shown a tremendous amount of promise already having completed investments in [online survey management platform] SurveyMonkey, [consumer financial and lending services provider] Blend, [web conferencing platform] Zoom and [sales assistance and analytics software platform] Highspot, among others.”
Zoom Video Communications went public in an initial public offering in April 2019 where mobile chipmaker Qualcomm sold $30.6m of shares while Salesforce Ventures agreed to buy a further $100m of shares through a private placement.
Before Salesforce Ventures, Chavez was a senior associate at growth equity firm JMI Equity’s investment team, where he concentrated on growth equity deals for enterprise software developers.
While pursuing his degree in finance and economics at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, Chavez held a three-month internship at networking equipment supplier Cisco Systems.
Upon graduation, he joined asset management and financial services firms Needham and Company and Citigroup as an investment banking analyst where he helped advise the firms’ technology clients on fundraising and mergers and acquisitions initiatives for three years.
