Gary Swart, Polaris Partner

By Dave Barrett on June 18, 2014

My Polaris Partners and I am stoked to announce that Gary Swart will be joining us as our Partner.

He’ll join our Tech Investment Team as Venture Partner, based out of our San Francisco office.

Gary was most recently the CEO of oDesk – the world’s largest online workplace — and chose to become part of the Polaris partnership among many opportunities presented to him from top Silicon Valley firms.

He’s proven himself to be a respected and well-known entrepreneur, operating executive, and thought leader in SaaS technology, marketplace-building, and the evolving workplace.

He’ll apply his knowledge to help our portfolio companies, source and lead investments and further build out our tech investing practice in Silicon Valley.

I’ve been fortunate to have known Gary for nearly 20 years, since he worked on my team at Pure Atria/Rational and led our Corporate Sales efforts. Gary was an integral part of Rational’s success, and was always one of those guys that one knew was destined for big things — and one that I knew I wanted to someday work with again.

Since that time, he’s gone on to build an incredible career and an incredible company at oDesk. He led a team that has not only built exceptional shareholder value — including through its recent merger with Elance — but importantly, a company culture that known for its collaborative teamwork and quality of work environment.

He’s proven it possible to thoughtfully build and lead a company with billions of dollars of value — and build it in a manner that inspires special people to love working with each other.

oDesk is known not only as the world’s largest workplace marketplace, but also a truly special company composed of truly special people.

Gary, as I did 14 years ago, is embarking on his “second career” as an investor, after having spent the first part of his career as an entrepreneur and operating executive.

I know Gary will be super-successful with Polaris.

He’s is passionate about many of the things we and our Polaris Repeat Entrepreneurs are passionate about. He and my partners share many of the same fundamental values and beliefs.

Gary, at his core, is a Coach, Mentor and Builder.

He is a “people person” who has great talents for recruiting, selecting, guiding and developing special talent.

Beyond his work at oDesk, he’s a prolific speaker, widely-followed blogger, and superb people collector who has given much of his time to the entrepreneurial ecosystem around the Silicon Valley, San Francisco and the Stanford communities.

Gary is a mentor to entrepreneurs and students alike, and frequently speaks to groups about the challenges growing businesses face. As an example, in 2013 alone, he gave more than 40 talks to universities, incubators and other organizations fostering entrepreneurship.

Gary’s built a reputation as a thought leader on the future of work, how best to hire and manage teams, and on the rise of the “freelance economy.” He has spoken at the Inc. Leadership Conference, The Economist’s Ideas Economy Panel, SXSW , TechCrunch 50, GigaOM Net:Work, and at HBS – which teaches a case study on oDesk.

His commentary has appeared in a variety of publications including LinkedIn, Forbes, and TechCrunch. And he’s appeared on TV and radio outlets, including CNBC, BBC, Bloomberg Television, NPR, and the Fox Business Network.

He’ll be a great partner to our companies, to his Polaris partners, and to special entrepreneurs he works with and invests in.

He’ll help extend our California technology footprint — beyond our current 16 tech portfolio companies — add to our super-strong SaaS footprint of 37 companies nationally. And, very importantly, lead our expertise around marketplace businesses.

He’ll work closely with us as we continue to seek out, invest in and support transformative business models, technologies and teams alike.

He’ll be a great Partner to us all.

This blog was originally posted at Dave Barrett’s website I Know You Know