The Global Storm

If you follow us on Twitter — and we hope you do — you might have noticed the flurry of international and Dutch oriented Tweets not too long ago. In fact, if you stay tuned, you’ll see another group of Tweets and pictures go out today. So what exactly is going on? Has Storm suddenly decided to become a Dutch focused firm?

YES!

We love orange so much we have multiple orange furniture items! But seriously, the answer is that as a 21st century vc firm we understand that all technology companies are global companies, the question is really not “if” a company will go global, but “when” they will.

Jacco Vanderkooij

That’s why our partnership with Jacco Vanderkooij has been a fantastic relationship! His extensive European network adds nicely to our already global reach. Jacco is a GTM expert with years of experience. He runs Winning By Design a consultancy that helps our portfolio companies grow their sales teams the right way. What Jacco also brings to the table is the opportunity for our globally focused B2B SaaS companies to sell to those within his network of global executives.

Two weeks ago Storm hosted 15+ Dutch IT executives who spent the morning at our offices on Sand Hill. We began the morning with them by having Jacco discuss the startup journey and some of the do’s and don’ts of scaling the sales team of an enterprise SaaS business. Jacco, with his natural effervescent personality (if you’ve met him, you know what I mean) was the perfect “wingman” for our portfolio companies.

During the second half of the morning we thought it would be a great opportunity to have some of our global sales oriented companies come by and pitch to the executives. We had four companies, Talkdesk, Digital Shadows, Litbit, and Cloudwords talk about their companies and how their products allow global companies run smarter, safer, and more efficiently.

All-in-all, these global oriented events have been exciting for us here at Storm. They are perfect opportunities to continue to expand our community, bring value to our portfolio companies, and learn some of the unique pain-points of European IT executives.

Today’s Event

Today we will be hosting another Dutch delegation of CEO’s and Executives. They have come to the U.S. and our offices to learn about how technology can be used to transform their businesses. There trip revolves around engaging with innovative companies and thought leaders. We hope to continue to facilitate these sorts of conversations between our international businesses friends and portfolio companies.