Emergence Capital's Gordon Ritter: Finding the next breakout company

Gordon Ritter, the founder and general partner of Emergence Capital Partners, is one of the top venture capitalists in the on-demand space. Besides being the original VC in Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), his firm has also funded companies like SuccessFactors (Nasdaq: SFSF), HireRight (Nasdaq: HIRE) and Lithium Technologies.

Well, last week I had a chance to meet with Gordon and we talked about what grabs his interest when an entrepreneur makes a pitch.

Of course, he wants a company that has a big market opportunity (say $1 billion) as well as a qualified team (or, at least, there is a team identified).

True, these are typical things. What else is important?

"What we find that's critical is that a company has shown an ability to build a relationship with customers," said Gordon. "It doesn't have to be a lot of customers. Instead, we want to see evidence that the company is engaging customers."

Unit economics is also key. "What are the customer acquisition costs?" said Gordon. "Is there a low-cost access to leads? We also want to see a short sales cycle."

Something else: Gordon wants a team with strong domain expertise. "On-demand is getting verticalized," he said. "In a way, it's about selling knowledge.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.