Gordon Ritter

Who is Gordon Ritter?

Gordon Ritter is a Founder and General Partner of

Emergence. 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 Capital'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.

He currently sits on the boards of

Genius,

Ketera,

Lithium and

SeaTab.

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 AppExchange. 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.

Before Whistle, Gordon was co-Founder and President of Tribe Communications,

a networking infrastructure company. Tribe pioneered WebManage™,

acclaimed as the first HTML-based network management software. Tribe

was acquired by Zoom Telephonics

(ZOOM) in 1996. Prior to Tribe, Gordon was a VP of Capital Markets at

CSFB in New York, where he headed the Collateralized Mortgage

Obligation (CMO) group. Gordon has a B.A. in Economics from Princeton

University.

Gordon is married and has three young children, including a set of

twins. He is a Trustee of the Bay Area Discovery Museum. Gordon rowed

on the heavyweight crew at Princeton and has continued rowing in the

Bay Area. He also enjoys running, open-water swimming and cross-country

skiing.