After selling Demandware to Salesforce for $2.8 billion last year, Tom Ebling is ready to take a break from running his own company, but he's not stepping away from the tech world entirely.
Ebling, Demandware's former CEO, has joined Cambridge venture capital firm General Catalyst as part of its executive-in-residence program, the firm announced on Tuesday. General Catalyst's program brings on experienced entrepreneurs and executives to build new companies or support existing ones through a variety of ways, including taking a board seat.
General Catalyst's history with Ebling goes back about 15 years ago when Ebling became CEO of retail tech company ProfitLogic, which the firm had invested in and was sold to Oracle in 2005. Then, after a two-year stint as CEO of Lattice Engines, the firm's relationship continued with Ebling when he became CEO of Demandware in 2009. There, he led the company through a successful initial public offering in 2012 and its eventual sale to Salesforce last year.
Ebling told me he left Salesforce in January after helping with Demandware's transition into a subsidiary for a six-month role. Then, after taking a much-needed break, he reconnected with General Catalyst and decided to join the firm.
While executives-in-residence sometimes go on to form their own companies out of General Catalyst — like OM1 and Evolv Technology — Ebling said he isn't interested in leading another company again, at least for now.
"I'm at a point where my focus is going to be on making investments on my own."
Instead, he said, he will work with General Catalyst to find new startups to invest in and mentor. Ebling said he will be writing his own checks alongside General Catalyst, and that the check size will be larger than previous investments, which he had only done in the past to sit on board seats of companies. Ebling declined to say which startups he has previously invested in but said the previous range of his check size was typically around $100,000 to $200,000.
"I'm at a point where my focus is going to be on making investments on my own and to mentor and help guide other entrepreneurs," Ebling said. "General Catalyst has a lot of resources to find and source investments."
Ebling said his main interests are enterprise applications, ecommerce and artificial intelligence. "That was something we both got into at ProfitLogic and Demandware," Ebling said of the latter category.
