Since its founding a decade ago, Emergence Capital Partners has become among the startup industry’s most highly regarded investors in enterprise software-as-a-service companies.
Fact is, few firms are as specialized. But the approach has paid big dividends. In fact, in 2013, Emergence saw one of the industry’s biggest returns with the IPO of Veeva Systems, an enterprise cloud provider for life sciences companies. In 2008, Emergence invested $4 million in the startup. When it went public, it was valued at $4.4 billion, and the firm’s stake was transformed into more than $1.2 billion.
Veeva’s market valuation has since slid to $3.2 billion, and Emergence has since quietly shifted its focus from SaaS startups to mobile enterprise applications. Among its newest investments: ServiceMax, a company whose applications are used by field service workers who are tasked with, say, completing installations or warranty repairs.
“We think this is a bigger trend than SaaS has been to date,” says general partner Kevin Spain, who just published a detailed industry report that you’ll probably want to read.
We talked with him about it Friday. More from that conversation follows here.