Emergence Capital Partners

Focus on Technology-Enabled Services (TES)
Emergence Capital Partners is a leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage Technology-Enabled Services investing. Our mission is to help build market leading, successful businesses in partnership with great entrepreneurs. Our partners have funded and helped build over 25 TES companies, more than any other early-stage venture firm. Having assessed thousands of companies in the TES sector, we have developed significant expertise and resources focused on the critical factors of success in our market. Our focus and team-based approach allow us to create unique value for our service-based portfolio companies.

Investment Categories

Software as Service (SAS)

Business/Consumer Services

Information Services

Enabling Software and Infrastructure

Investment Criteria

Early and growth-stage

Compelling customer value proposition

Experienced and passionate management team

$500k-$5 million initial investment

Nationwide focus

Experienced and Complementary Team
The Emergence team has a proven track record of founding, investing in and actively shaping more than 50 portfolio companies. Our partners bring over 25 years of venture experience as well as over 25 years operating and entrepreneurial experience from established, blue-chip firms such as Venrock Associates, US Venture Partners, St. Paul Venture Capital, IBM and Salesforce.com. Over a dozen of our companies have had successful IPO's, such as Salesforce.com , DoubleClick , Ask Jeeves , aQuantive , NetPerceptions , Lexar Media and Visual Networks and are now leaders in their respective industries. Many others have been acquired by leading companies such as IBM , Microsoft , Lycos , Amazon and Siebel . As entrepreneurs ourselves, we appreciate what it means to have deep passion for an opportunity, to bootstrap and creatively finance it, and recruit a founding team. We have founded many companies, helped them raise significant venture financing, and successfully realized the value we helped to create. We have decades of experience selling to Small and Medium Business (SMB), a critical market for many TES start-ups and one where many other VCs have limited experience. Our experience includes pioneering the "On Demand" strategy at IBM within the $3 billion IBM Global Small Business division using a 100% services-based architecture.

Unique Approach
The Emergence partners have a history of seeing opportunity where others have not. We are proud to have raised our $125 million inaugural fund from premier institutional investors during 2003, one of the toughest periods of venture fundraising in recent history. Today we have $325 million under management. We continue to be the only early stage firm focused exclusively on opportunities in the TES sector, and we bring a unique perspective and value to our portfolio investments. We understand how successful service businesses differ from product businesses and can help service-based startups with the critical success factors at each stage of their growth.

Entrepreneur Focused
As entrepreneurs ourselves, we have a passion to build successful companies and to build a unique firm in the venture capital industry. We recognize that our success comes from the success of our entrepreneurial partners, and we are committed to doing everything we can to enable them to succeed. We share our experience and knowledge with our entrepreneurs and are totally committed to their success.