Gordon Ritter

I am Founder and General Partner of Emergence Capital. Prior to founding Emergence, I spent over 15 years founding and building companies which pioneered new markets including embedded web-based interfaces, server appliances, "On Demand" services for the SMB market and web-native application development. In 2003, I led Emergence Capital's first investment, in Salesforce.com. I've been named multiple times to the Forbes’ Midas List of the top venture capital investors and was recently selected for the New York Times/CB Insights List of Top Venture Capitalists. I currently sit on the boards of eight companies, including the leading cloud life sciences company, Veeva Systems. I was appointed Chairman of Veeva leading up to the company’s IPO. Prior to founding Emergence, I was co-Founder and CEO of Software As Service, a web services platform company I started with Marc Benioff, the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. Software As Service is the origin of Salesforce.com's Force.com platform. Prior to founding Software As Service, I ran the $3 billion IBM Global Small Business division, created as a result of IBM's acquisition of my company, Whistle Communications in 1999. I was responsible for Salesforce.com's launch partnership with IBM. Prior to IBM, I was co-Founder and President of Whistle, a pioneering Internet appliance and services platform for SMBs. I also co-founded Tribe Communications, a networking infrastructure company, and was a VP of Capital Markets at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York. I have a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University, where I rowed on the heavyweight crew. I live in San Francisco with my amazing wife and four children. I enjoy all sorts of endurance sports and recently climbed Denali and Aconcagua, completed a 250-mile trail run across Switzerland and ran the Rim2Rim2Rim across the Grand Canyon.