Gordon Ritter

“The right focus is the constant that achieves unimaginable goals.”

Gordon is Co-founder & General Partner at Emergence Capital, and remains as active today as he was in the beginning. Anyone who's spent time with him knows that he has big visions -- and he's committed to realizing them. From his undergraduate days rowing at Princeton, to trail-running 250 miles across Switzerland, and summitting Aconcagua and Denali, he knows what it takes to follow through on challenges that seem insurmountable. This is an empathy and a respect he brings into his investing practice, where he seeks to work with founders who take on big, industry-altering ideas.

That was the case with the first investment he led for Emergence: a still nascent cloud computing company aiming to revolutionize customer relationship management -- Salesforce.com. Its success put Emergence on the map as experts of their niche, enterprise software, with Gordon going deep into industry cloud in particular. This yielded his next landmark investment in Veeva Systems in 2008 when the company had just 25 employees and less than $1 million in revenue. It now trades as VEEV with a market cap of $35 billion. Gordon is still the company's chairman, and was instrumental in its decision to become the first publicly-traded company to convert to a Public Benefit Corporation. Gordon has appeared many times on Forbes' Midas List.

Gordon's career in venture capital draws strongly on his 15 years founding and building companies that pioneered new markets. One of these companies, Software As Service, co-founded with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, went on to become the Salesforce Platform. Another, Whistle Communications, was acquired by IBM, where he rose to run the company's $3 billion global small business division.

The commitment Gordon brings to his work with founders carries through to his team, family, and philanthropic efforts. He's a strong supporter of the Golden Gate National Parks, Common Sense Media, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and is a member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He lives in San Francisco and cherishes his time with his wife Amy and their four children.