Gordon Ritter / General Partner
Gordon Ritter is a Founder and General Partner of Emergence Capital Partners. Prior to founding Emergence, he 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, Gordon led Emergence Capital’s first investment, in Salesforce.com. In 2008, Gordon invested in Industry Cloud pioneer Veeva Systems when the company had 25 employees and less than $2 million in revenue. He has played a key role in the company’s development (now a public company NYSE:VEEV) and he is currently Veeva’s Chairman. Gordon was named to the Forbes’ Midas List of the top venture capital investors in 2007, 2012, 2014 and 2015.
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Prior to founding Emergence, Gordon was co-Founder and CEO of Software As Service, a web services platform company he created with Marc Benioff, the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. Software As Service is the origin of Salesforce.com’s Salesforce1 platform. Prior to founding Software As Service, he ran the $3 billion IBM Global Small Business division, created as a result of IBM’s acquisition of his company, Whistle Communications in 1999. He was responsible for IBM’s launch partnership with Salesforce.com. Prior to IBM, Gordon was co-Founder and President of Whistle, a pioneering Internet appliance and web services platform. Gordon also co-founded Tribe Communications, a networking infrastructure company, and he was a VP of Capital Markets at Credit Suisse First Boston in New York.
Gordon has a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University, where he rowed on the heavyweight crew team. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and four children. He enjoys a range of endurance sports and recently summited both Denali and Aconcagua, and completed a 250-mile trail run across Switzerland.
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