Brian Jacobs founded Emergence Capital with Jason Green and Gordon Ritter in 2003. He has over 20 years of venture capital experience, a deep national network and an understanding of how technology startups can become market leaders.
Prior to founding Emergence, Brian was an early General Partner at St. Paul Venture Capital. During his 10 years there, Brian helped to grow the firm to one of the 15 largest venture investors in the country and led the firm's Silicon Valley investing activities. His prior venture capital experience was at Security Pacific Venture Capital. Brian also worked for the Raychem, RCA, Westinghouse, and Polaroid, and he holds several patents.
Brian was named to the Forbes' Midas List of the top venture capital investors in 2006 and 2007. He is an experienced board member who has served on dozens of public and private boards. He currently serves on the boards of Intacct, YouSendIt, InsideView, Bill.com, Janrain and Donuts.
Brian's reputation for helping entrepreneurs build market-leading technology-enabled service companies comes from his active involvement in HireRight, BigFix (sold to IBM), nQuire Software (sold to Siebel Systems), NetPerceptions (NETP), WebTV (sold to Microsoft), NextCard (NXCD) and others. Brian has backed leading companies in other sectors, including Lexar Media (LEXR), Microchip Technologies (MCHP), and many others.
Brian has a MS and BS in mechanical engineering from M.I.T. and an MBA from Stanford.
He is happily married with two children. Brian loves adventure travel with his children and cycling in the mountains.