Norwest Venture Partners Expands Presence With New Investment Team Hire and Office in San Francisco

PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 23, 2014) - Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), a global, multi-stage venture and growth equity investment firm, today announced that Sean Jacobsohn has joined the firm as Principal. A venture investor and former SaaS executive with broad technology, sales and business development expertise, Mr. Jacobsohn will work from Norwest's Palo Alto and San Francisco offices with a focus on early to late stage investment opportunities in business cloud, including SaaS, industry cloud, healthcare IT, mobile business applications, and B2B marketplaces.

Norwest also announced today the opening of its new office in San Francisco's South of Market District, "SoMa." The new location enables the firm to work more closely with entrepreneurs based in San Francisco and to better serve Norwest's existing portfolio companies headquartered in the city, including Lending Club, Bluenose Analytics, Extole, IFTTT, Lumosity, Madison Reed, Modcloth, Threadflip, Udemy, Zirx and others. The firm's new office is located at 123 South Park Street in the city's South Park neighborhood.

Investment Team Growth and Geographic Expansion
On the heels of the firm's latest $1.2 B fund raised in May, Norwest will continue to expand across stages, sectors, and geographies. Mr. Jacobsohn is the first of several new investment team hires the firm expects to make in the coming year.

"We are very pleased to welcome Sean to our firm," said Matthew Howard, managing partner, Norwest. "Our commitment to serving as a value added business partner to our entrepreneurs has always been an important part of our firm's culture, and Sean will be a valuable contributor in this area. His operational experience, hustle and passion for technology and entrepreneurship make him a natural fit for Norwest. We look forward to the value Sean will bring to our enterprise practice and our portfolio companies."

Mr. Jacobsohn was previously a venture partner at Emergence Capital Partners where he focused on business cloud investments. Prior to Emergence he was VP of Worldwide Alliances at Hightail, a cloud collaboration company, and VP of Channel Management at Cornerstone OnDemand (NASDAQ: CSOD), a human capital management software-as-a-service provider. While at Cornerstone, he helped grow the company from $7 million to $75 million in revenue and 300,000 subscribers to over 7.5 million. Mr. Jacobsohn also served as VP Sales and Partner Development at WageWorks (NYSE: WAGE), a leading provider of consumer-directed spending solutions, which grew from $3 million to $82 million in revenue during his tenure. Prior to WageWorks, he was at Elance, the world's largest marketplace of contractors.