Villanova software biz roundCorner teams up with Salesforce

roundCorner’s software for nonprofits is now the premier option on Salesforce.

Salesforce teamed up with roundCorner, the five-year-old Villanova company that builds software on the Salesforce platform, to build and launch NGO Connect, roundCorner president Dan Lammot said. It’s branded as a Salesforce product and the companies share the recurring monthly revenue, he said. roundCorner would not disclose the revenue share breakdown.

“We’re the product company, and they’re the distribution engine,” Lammot said, adding that roundCorner’s six-person San Francisco team works closely with Salesforce, calling it a “one team, one product mindset.”

Its customers include City Year, the Girl Scouts and the Sierra Club.

The partnership, which has been a year-and-a-half in the works, helps roundCorner cut through the noise of the thousands of apps on the Salesforce app store.

“It gives us a huge amount of wind in our sails that we couldn’t get otherwise,” said Lammot.

The partnership also gives roundCorner the staying power that its bigger customers want.

Lammot mentioned one time the company was pitching a big customer (“It was a big investment in sales, with multiple-day demos,” he said) and that customer told roundCorner that, even though their demos won out, they were going to go with a legacy option because they didn’t expect roundCorner to be around in a few years. You’re going to get acquired, they said, and we aren’t “willing to bet the farm on you,” as Lammot remembers it. That’s when Lammot began eyeing a Salesforce partnership.

roundCorner has two Salesforce-branded products, one for nonprofits and one for higher education advancement. The nonprofit sector is its largest market. The company also has a product for foundations that it sells on its own.

The Villanova headquarters employs 25, with the company moving to a bigger office next month. The company plans to hire 10 more by year’s end. Aside from the San Francisco satellite office, roundCorner also has a Boston (six people) and New York City office (12 people). The highest concentration of roundCorner customers is on the East Coast, Lammot said.

Lammot, 38, of Villanova, is a Southern California transplant who came to Villanova for medical school. He changed his mind and spent time overseas working at banks. That led him to cofound Okere, a company that built Salesforce apps for banks. He sold Okere to Fujitsu in 2007 for an undisclosed amount. He said he started roundCorner because he wanted his next venture to be focused on social good.