Personal blog of Yzmir Ramirez

Jason Green, co-founder and partner at Emergence, has made some solid enterprise SaaS bets over the years, long before it was fashionable to do so. He invested early in companies like Box, ServiceMax, Yammer, SteelBrick and SuccessFactors.

Just those companies alone would be a pretty good track record, but his firm also invested in Salesforce, Zoom, Veeva and Bill.com. One consistent thread runs through Emergence’s portfolio: They focus on the cloud and enterprise, a thesis that has paid off big time. What’s more, every one of those previously mentioned companies had a great founding team and successful exit via either IPO or acquisition.

I spoke with Green in June about his investment performance with enterprise SaaS to get a sense of the secret of his long-term success. We also asked a few of those portfolio company CEOs about what it has been like to work with him over time.

All in on SaaS

Green and his co-founders saw something when it came to the emerging enterprise SaaS market in the early 2000s that a lot of firms missed. Salesforce co-founder and CEO Marc Benioff told a story in 2018 about his early attempts at getting funding for his company — and how every single Silicon Valley firm he talked to turned him down.

Green’s partner, Gordon Ritter, eventually invested in Salesforce as one of the company’s earliest investments because the partners saw something in the SaaS approach, even before the term entered the industry lexicon.

Jason Green, co-founder and partner at Emergence, is one of the leading VCs investing in enterprise startups at the moment. But even with the focus on B2B, many of their companies have become household names — Zoom, Yammer, Box and Salesforce among them.

Now, we’re all living in a climate where everything has been turned upside down. Meetings are virtual, the future economy and collective health of the world are unknowns, and being an investor — or a founder — comes with completely new parameters and rules of engagement.

We sat down with Green for an enlightening hour to talk about the challenges of all that, plus making deals, running a business, and suddenly finding your quiet, B2B name being turned into a verb. It was an interesting conversation, worth a read for enterprise startups and investors, but — similar to how B2B can spill into consumer — equally insightful for many more.

Extra Crunch Live is our new virtual speaker series for Extra Crunch members. Folks can ask their own questions live during the chat, with guests that include Aileen Lee, Kirsten Green, Mark Cuban and many, many more. You can check out the schedule here.

Below, you’ll find a lightly edited transcript of our recent chat with Green.

How is sourcing impacted in the current climate?

Sourcing is not much different. We follow the same due diligence process, so when we make an investment, the whole team basically dives in and does due diligence. So we make manager references and customer calls and spend time with each of the management team having one-on-ones. In some ways, it was better. First of all, we could very easily do breakout rooms with each of the individual management team members and then come back. So there was this dynamism to the meeting that we hadn’t had before. We were able to basically record it and share it with folks that couldn’t participate. So all of us had all the information when we were making the decision together. That was pretty special, actually. So it took a little bit longer, it probably took about 50% longer than we would have done otherwise. But I think actually, now knowing what we’ve done, we could probably compress it back to our normal timeframe. So I think in a lot of ways, we’ve learned like a lot of folks that we can do things remotely that we probably didn’t think were possible before. Hopefully, we’ll see how the investment turns out, but we’re super excited about it.

Are you considering more startups outside the Valley, and how are they viewing their own place outside the Valley?

Picking winners from the herd of early-stage enterprise startups is challenging — so much competition, so many disruptive technologies, including mobile, cloud and AI. One investor who has consistently identified winners is Jason Green, founder and general partner at Emergence, and TechCrunch is very pleased to announce that he will join the investor panel at TC Sessions: Enterprise on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. He will join two other highly accomplished VCs, Maha Ibrahim, general partner at Canaan Partners and Rebecca Lynn, co-founder and general partner at Canvas Ventures. They will join TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos to discuss important trends in early-stage enterprise investments as well as the sectors and companies that have their attention. Green will also join us for the investor Q&A in a separate session.

Jason Green founded Emergence in 2003 with the aim of “looking around the corner, identifying themes and aiming to win big in the long run.” The firm has made 162 investments, led 64 rounds and seen 29 exits to date. Among the firm’s wins are Zoom, Box, Sage Intacct, ServiceMax, Box and SuccessFactors. Emergence has raised $1.4 billion over six funds.

Green is also the founding chairman of the Kauffman Fellow Program and a founding member of Endeavor. He serves on the boards of BetterWorks, Drishti, GroundTruth, Lotame, Replicon and SalesLoft.

Come hear from Green and these other amazing investors at TC Sessions: Enterprise by booking your tickets today — $249 early-bird tickets are still on sale for the next two weeks before prices go up by $100. Book your tickets here.

Startups, get noticed with a demo table at the conference. Demo tables come with four tickets to the show and prime exhibition space for you to showcase your latest enterprise technology to some of the most influential people in the business. Book your $2,000 demo table right here.

Emergence is out now on Kindle, and paperback in a couple of days.

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A dying world has many secrets.

Porl's world is dying. Crops fail. Birds fall from the sky. Is this a repeat of the Cataclysm that decimated the Ancients’ world a thousand years ago?

Porl loves to fix things and is compelled to solve the mystery – and save his people no matter the personal cost. Disobeying the will of the town Elders, Porl uncovers a secret they want hidden. When caught, the Elders banish Porl into the wilderness, alone against the savage Mad-Ones.

As the Mad-Ones hunt him, Porl discovers the world isn't what he believed. The more he learns about the mystical Ancients, the more he unravels an incredible reality he never imagined.

Nothing is what it seems. The harshest truth he uncovers is that in seven days everyone he loves will die. Yet the final secret of the Ancients, on how to save his people, still eludes him…

My sci-fi mystery Emergence comes out January. Here's the gorgeous cover.