From the Lab to Salesforce: Inside the Apromore Exit

​In November 2025, Salesforce acquired Apromore, a process intelligence company that started as open-source research code at the University of Melbourne.

​That is not the usual Australian startup story. No pivot-of-the-week, no overnight raise. Apromore was built patiently over more than a decade of academic research, grew out of university consulting when customers started asking to buy the software, and ended up important enough that Salesforce bought it to power its AI agents.

​Marcello La Rosa is the CEO and co-founder, and still a professor at the University of Melbourne. Join us at Cremorne Digital Hub for an honest conversation about what it actually takes to build a deep-tech company out of a research lab and carry it all the way to a global exit.

​What we'll get into

• ​How a research demo became a product when customers asked to buy it

• ​Why he kept the talent and the company in Melbourne, next to the University

• ​Raising a Series B from Salesforce Ventures, years before Salesforce became the buyer

• ​The decision to sell, and why joining Salesforce beat staying independent

• ​Why "process intelligence" suddenly matters in a world of AI agents

• ​What he'd tell any researcher sitting on technology that could be a company

​Who should come Founders, especially deep-tech and B2B SaaS. University and research commercialisation people. Investors who back technical teams. Anyone curious about process mining and where agentic AI is heading.