Ask A VC — Alison Wagonfeld, Operating Partner at Emergence Capital

by Pocket Sun (@pocketysun)

“Ask A VC” is an interview series by SoGal Ventures, featuring prominent venture capitalists around the world. We hope to inspire diversity in the tech community — empowering our generation to grow into exceptional entrepreneurs and investors.

In March 2013, Alison joined Emergence Capital, a leading venture capital firm in Silicon Valley focused on early and growth-stage enterprise cloud companies. It has invested in highly successful SaaS companies such as Salesforce, Box, Yammer, SuccessFactors, and Veeva.

Alison was entrepreneurial from an early age. At 10 years old, she started a business making and selling barrettes, which was followed by her stationery business at age 12. When the entrepreneurial girl grew up, she chose to go to Yale to study history and literature. Before graduation, she worked as a PR intern in New York City, to expose herself to marketing and as a finance intern at Merrill Lynch. For seniors at Yale, investment banking and consulting were the most popular career choices for students that wanted to pursue a business career. Alison preferred investment banking because she liked the pace and thought it would help her build a broad business background. She worked at Morgan Stanley’s Mergers & Acquisition group in New York City…