GS

Gary Swart

General Partner at Polaris Partners

Atherton, California

Education

Work Experience

  • General Partner

    2014

    Advisor, coach, mentor and investor

  • Advisor

    2013

    Advisor, mentor, coach, and/or investor - UpWork (UPWK - Nasdaq) CliQr (Acquired by Cisco) NerdWallet (NRDS - Nasdaq) Order Ahead (Acquired by Square) Swiftly (Acquired) TalkIQ (Acquired by DialPad) Teem (Acquired by WeWork) Take Lessons (Acquired by Microsoft) Abound Augment Catch and Release ChatDesk Cobalt.io DialPad EmpInfo Expert360 Falkonry Faro FloQast Foresight Mental Health Jirav FundBox Krome Livara Mayple Mom Project Naked Poppy NanoPay OpenCare Order Outreach People.ai Preply Qstream Quantcast Remoov SimplyInsured Stensul Thermal Thumbtack Unlimited Labs Wellthy Xola

2005 - 2014

  • CEO

    2005 - 2014

    oDesk is the world's largest online workplace, enabling businesses and freelancers to work together on-demand, via the Internet. Work is no longer a place because oDesk is freeing people to work together regardless of where they happen to be -- ultimately empowering them to grow their businesses and careers. Since joining the company in late 2005, oDesk became the market-leader and helped solidify the online work industry by being the first online workplace to reach $1 billion in work. The company currently has 4 million freelancers in 180+ countries and more than 4,000 new jobs posted daily.

2004 - 2005

  • VP Sales

    2004 - 2005

    Responsibility for Intellibank's go-to-market strategy and execution

2003 - 2004

  • Business Unit Executive

    2003 - 2004

    Responsibility for Medium Business sales of all Rational products and services in the Americas. Including Direct, telesales, and renewal organization. Quota responsibility of $250M and 180 person organization.

2001 - 2003

  • Director SMB Sales

    2001 - 2003

    Responsible for the go to market strategy for small to medium business market for all of Rational products and services.

1997 - 1998

  • Director Corporate Sales

    1997 - 1998

1995 - 1997

  • Director Corporate Sales

    1995 - 1997

    Responsible for building and leading the telesales team of 40 reps for Pure Software and Pure-Atria following the acquisition of Atria.