Gordon Ritter
Founder & General Partner, Emergence Capital. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounderexecutive@gordonritter ↗LinkedIn ↗emcap.com ↗
In 2003, Gordon Ritter co-founded Emergence Capital to focus exclusively on early-stage enterprise cloud, SaaS, and AI-driven software companies. He is best known for leading Emergence's foundational early investment in Salesforce and backing Veeva Systems from its infancy, as well as early bets on Zoom and Box.
1shows
1appearances
18statements
0resolved
0supported
0contradicted
Everything Gordon Ritter said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Ritter: Almost no dollar price is too high to beat China
“The national security part, we should put in I, it's one person's opinion, but we need to make sure we win this race against against China in particular. And I, there almost no dollar price is wrong in that using that lens”
Ritter: Public AI training data is exhausted; commercial data is next
“Fundamentally, the harvesting of publicly available data has, for the most part, run its course, and Ilya Sutskiver said as much I love, you know, it's an interesting quote by saying, ah, AI data is fossil fuel for AI, and we've run out of it. And I generally …”
Ritter: Raw corporate data is worthless compared to captured employee workflows
“Remember when it was just data? You can get access to our data. Well, data is nothing. It's the way your employees are using that data to make value out of it. Guess what models do and good models are going to do it even better.”
Ritter: LPs Know Real Venture Returns Come from Early Stage, Not Late Stage
“Most of the LPs that are backing this segment, the venture capital segment, know that the real returns come from early stage and later stage is great, but it's a different, it's closer to their buyout category than it is to their what they call venture capital…”
Ritter: 2025 tech IPO window unlikely to be as good as hoped
“I I'm not sure that the IPO markets are going to be as good as I had hoped coming into twenty-twenty-five.”
Ritter: Tight vertical strategies may not yield the best AI outcomes
“A lot of AI companies are now doing very tight verticals for good reason, because they have, you know, they have tighter context around what they can do with AI. And we love that, but it may not be the best strategy to reproduce those kinds of results.”
Ritter: $500B Stargate project is $100B equity, 75% chips, 25% infrastructure
“Remember, it's equity dollars and debt that's going into this, so five hundred billion is probably a hundred billion of equity, of money going in that is sort of risk money, the rest is building out The infrastructure, 25% of it goes to buildings and cooling s…”
Ritter: SaaS Will Endure as Long as Humans Direct Workflow
“As long as humans are critical and we are to the advancement of these technologies and the advancement of the IP within our companies, that workflows some form of workflow is going to continue. And that's what call it SAS, call it workflow software. It is goin…”
Ritter: Leaked Corporate IP Risks Becoming Globally Accessible via AI Models
“That is going to be more and more of an issue going forward because these models, one person who has a chance to share information about how something is done that is a piece of either business process or IP, one person, and that is now not just out to, you kn…”
Ritter: VC industry received more capital in 2020-2021 than it needs
“What is different this time is the amount of money that's in this industry right now. It is, there is so much capital that came in over the pandemic and in the 20, 21 timeframe that that is you know, it's probably more than the industry needs”
Ritter: Mega-funds require 5 to 10 hits to match smaller fund multiples
“Venture is a hits business and you have to be able to have one or two really exciting companies in each portfolio and produce wonderful LP returns for our investors. And if you're either too small where you simply can't be in those great companies or too big w…”
Ritter: Interest rates probably will not drop and may rise
“Interest rates are probably not going down. My bet is that they're Either going to kind of stay where they are, which is fine for kind of absolute, you know levels, but we have some potential policies coming that could drive up interest rates and basically inf…”
Ritter: Veeva scaled to $2.5B revenue on just $3M in capital
“They used three million dollars. Thank goodness. It was our three million dollars worth, but that was all they needed to get to this scale of a, you know, a two and a half billion dollar revenue plus company.”
Ritter: Promoting VCs internally makes equal partnerships stickier and prevents departures
“When you've come through the firm for many years, you're not as apt to say, ah, you know, I just landed this great deal, and I'm not getting, you know, extreme amounts of credit for this. I think I'll just take off and go somewhere else, because you've been pa…”
Ritter: Emergence passed on early Figma because its revenue was too low
“Figma was one that we all, back to we work as a team, we all looked at Figma back when their revenue was low, but their engagement was incredibly high and spreading within organizations, and we just couldn't get comfortable. We were a little biased on if we're…”
Ritter: High user engagement is effectively revenue because monetization inevitably follows
“The classic line now we say, When we call it the Figma effect is engagement is revenue. If people are using it heavily and love it, you might as well just be getting paid for it, even if you're not, because you'll find a way.”
Ritter: Emergence passed on Twilio because developer leverage wasn't obvious
“Second one was Twilio. Twilio develop developer first, you know, kind of model. And we weren't as clear as to the power, the kingmaker, Or queen maker of developers was not as obvious to us”
Ritter: Voice and Hardware Modalities Will Open Whole New Software Categories Like Mobile
“And I think one of the things we believe is there's going to be a whole new, if the mobile device was something that opened up a whole new category of software for mobile devices, we've got devices companies like Bland that may open it up for voice in unique n…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Gordon's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 SOURCERYLEDGER | Founder & General Partner, Emergence Capital | 1 | 18 | — | full record on Sourcery → |