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. He currently sits on the boards of Ketera Technologies and Genius.com® Incorporated. 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 AppForce/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.

Business Leadership, Technology,