Gordon Ritter

Gordon Ritter is a founder and general partner of Emergence Capital. He has spent over 15 years 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. He led Emergence's first investment in the on demand leader, salesforce.com. Gordon was named to the Forbes' Midas List of the top venture capital investors in 2007, 2012, 2014, and 2015. He currently sits on the boards of Veeva, Insightly, Top Hat Monocle, High Alpha, Textio, AffectLayer, and Navera. 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 Salesforce 1 platform. Prior to forming Software As Service, he was vice president of the $3 billion IBM global small business division, created as a result of IBM's acquisition of his company, Whistle Communications, in 1999. Gordon's division was responsible for partnerships with dozens of technology-enabled service companies as part of IBM's on demand computing strategy. He led IBM's launch partnership with salesforce.com. Prior to IBM, Gordon was co-founder and president of Whistle, a pioneering internet appliance and services platform for small and medium-sized businesses. Gordon has a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Princeton University.