Richard Yanowitch Joins Emergence

Richard Yanowitch has joined Emergence Capital Partners as a venture partner. He previously was a venture partner with Accel Partners. As founder and chairman of The Entrepreneurs Group, Yanowitch serves as an independent director of the boards of Yume, Mig 33, Lithium and Raptr.Technologies.

PRESS RELEASE

Emergence Capital Partners, the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage technology-enabled services companies, today announced that Richard Yanowitch, has joined the firm as a venture partner. Yanowitch, a successful Silicon Valley executive and SaaS pioneer, has a proven track record of helping to transform early stage technology companies into high-growth market leaders, creating multiple billions of dollars in shareholder value.

 

“Richard’s extensive experience building technology leaders, coupled with his dedication to helping entrepreneurs succeed, makes him a great match for Emergence,” said Gordon Ritter, general partner at Emergence Capital. “We are thrilled to welcome him to the team and look forward to working together to help build market leading, successful businesses.”

 

As founder and chairman of The Entrepreneurs Group, Richard serves as an independent director on the boards of numerous digital and social media companies, including video ad network Yume, mobile social network Mig 33, enterprise social media provider Lithium, and social gaming platform Raptr.Technologies.

 

“As a board member and a mentor, Richard has been instrumental in helping us transition Lithium from a small, bootstrapped business into a high-growth, scalable market leader,” said Lyle Fong, CEO of Lithium.

 

Yanowitch recently served as venture partner for Accel Partners, vice chairman of the NDS Group, a $700 million market leader in digital media technologies, and as senior consultant to News Corporation, where he reported to chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch. Prior to that, Yanowitch held top executive roles at internet services provider VeriSign and database provider Sybase, helping them grow rapidly from early-stage ventures to thriving, publicly-held market leaders.

 

“Emergence Capital’s depth of knowledge and focus on technology-enabled services has helped many companies flourish and they continue to lead the way in investments in this high growth market,” said Richard Yanowitch. “I look forward to working alongside the team, leveraging my experience to support entrepreneurs and build impactful companies.”

 

Emergence has defined a new category of venture capital investing called Technology-Enabled Services (TES), which includes Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), business services, consumer Internet services and information services. Emergence partners were early investors in Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), as well as other market-leading TES companies such as SuccessFactors (NASDAQ: SFSF), HireRight (IPO, merged with USIS), aQuantive (IPO, acquired by Microsoft), DoubleClick (IPO, acquired by Google), Ask Jeeves (IPO, acquired by IAC) and WebTV (acquired by Microsoft). Through its close association with Salesforce.com and other SaaS leaders, Emergence Capital Partners is working to accelerate the movement of all software to the on-demand model and is championing a new approach to venture capital investing.

 

About Emergence Capital Partners

 

Emergence Capital Partners, based in San Mateo, Calif., is the leading venture capital firm focused on early and growth-stage Technology-Enabled Services companies. Its mission is to help build market leaders in partnership with great entrepreneurs. Emergence partners have funded and helped build more than 40 TES companies, more than any other early-stage venture firm. Emergence Capital has assets of over $325 million under management. For more information, visit www.emcap.com