Jake Saper, GP @ Emergence Capital: "We Sold Salesforce Early and Lost Out on Billions"

Jake Saper of Emergence Capital explains why selling Salesforce early cost billions and ranks market pull above founder and traction in investment decisions.

• Emergence deployed ~$2B over 20 years and returned over $8B cash; Zoom alone returned the fund more than 10x.
• Selling Salesforce shortly after IPO cost LPs billions; Emergence now excludes it from public-stock performance analyses.
• Internal analysis showed active post-IPO position management beat immediate lockup sales by $2B for current holdings.
• Saper ranks investment criteria: market pull first, founder second, traction third — desperate buyers are the signal.
• Zoom was priced at $200M post-money on ~$2M revenue in 2014; Eric Yuan was miscalculating churn, understating his own business quality.
• Emergence grew all partners internally; founding partners forfeited carry on retirement, eliminating the incentive to leave and start new funds.
• Saper flags AI-enabled services creating mirage product-market fit: customers buy because it’s cheaper, not because the unit economics work.
• Sam Altman told Saper not to teach kids to code but to teach them how to understand and influence how people think and feel.

2025-03-10 · Watch on YouTube