Shashank Saxena Joins Sierra Ventures as Our New Managing Partner
Sierra Ventures is excited to announce Shashank Saxena as our newest Managing Partner. Saxena is a successful entrepreneur and an accomplished executive in the software industry. His Cincinnati-based startup VNDLY was acquired by Workday for $510 million just four years after its founding.
"Shashank is the investor that every B2B SaaS founder is looking for," said Sierra's Managing Partner, Mark Fernandes. "I serve on a board with him, and it is very clear that he has a deep understanding of the enterprise software world and a strong blend of technical and commercial expertise."
After VNDLY's exit, Shashank stayed at Workday as the General Manager of their Workday VNDLY division. Shashank's experience in digital transformation in Fortune 25 companies goes beyond his time at Workday. Prior to building VNDLY, Shashank led the e-commerce and corporate strategy at Kroger and ran Citi Group's strategy and planning for their mobile division. He was also an early-stage venture partner and active angel investor with a robust network of enterprise technologists and founders.
Shashank will focus on investments primarily in the applications software space in his new role. At Sierra, we recently announced the closing of our $270 million Fund 13. We have a disciplined model of right-sized funds to focus on being an early investor in the best B2B companies across North America at the Seed and Series A stages. Utilizing this approach, we have generated top-performing funds by being an early investor in unicorns like Reify Health (Healthcare SaaS) in Boston, Phenom (Enterprise HR software) in Philadelphia, and Astronomer (Data Management) in Cincinnati.
"We are on the cusp of a generational shift in business software, moving towards 'Intelligent Applications' with AI and automation at their core," said Saxena. "Sierra's commitment to early-stage enterprise software positions us uniquely to lead this transformative era, and I closely identify with Sierra's founder-first philosophy."