Ralph Eschenbach
Vice President @ Sand Hill Angels
San Francisco, United States
Ralph Eschenbach is a seed investor at Sand Hill Angels in San Francisco focused on SaaS and Software. Ralph Eschenbach has been a Sand Hill Angels member since 2004, serving as President, Treasurer, and board member. He has spent his whole career in Silicon Valley, which began at HP Labs. In 1976, he created the first commercial GPS receiver at HP, demonstrating the possibility for addressing a low-cost market for a locating sensor. TrimbleNavigation purchased the design in 1982, and it became the foundation of Trimble's GPS technology. He joined Trimble in 1983 as VP Engineering and eventually assumed P&L responsibilities for Trimble's Marine and Aviation businesses. He joined Trimble as CTO in the late 1990s and retired in the mid 2000s. He presently serves on the boards of roughly six startup firms in the valley and likes discovering and mentoring new ventures. He got his BSEE from UC Berkeley in 1968 and his MSEE from Stanford University in 1970. He graduated from Magna Cum Laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
- Total investments:
- 6
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 33%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Ralph Eschenbach invests in
Stages Ralph Eschenbach invests in
Countries Ralph Eschenbach invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Investment Focus
Industry
- SaaS 2 (33%)
- Software 2 (33%)
- Internet of Things 2 (33%)
- Energy 1 (17%)
- Recruiting 1 (17%)
Stage
- Seed 2 (33%)
- Series A 1 (17%)
- Series B 1 (17%)
- Series C 1 (17%)
- Convertible Note 1 (17%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dellfer is an IoT and automotive cybersecurity startup that provides tools for DevOps to add endpoint protection. The company was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in San Mateo, California, United States. | $2M / Seed / Apr 04, 2018 | ||
| Cloud-controlled physical infrastructure providing enterprise solutions for Video Surveillance as a Service (VSaaS), Door Access Control as a Service (ACaaS), as well as integration with other sensors to support Internet of Things (IoT) applications.The Cloudastructure hardware utilizes state of art technology, delivered at a competitive pricethat beats industry standards and comes with zero maintenance or replacement costs with a life-time warranty. The Cloudastructure solution centralizes the management of access control with video monitoring and allows customers to scale geographically across multiple locations. The Cloudastructure platform delivers intelligence online and keeps critical data safely offsite. | $750K / Convertible Note / Aug 01, 2016 | ||
| Comeet is a cloud-based collaborative hiring platform that offers structured, streamlined workflows to help businesses make better hires more quickly. The system is built on a collaborative approach that includes the entire hiring team, not just the recruiters. They provide an elegantly simple, user-friendly design that is simple for businesses todeploy and customize for hiring teams to use with little to no training. | $730K / Seed / Apr 15, 2013 | ||
| Clean Power Finance (CPF) is building an online business-to-business marketplace to drive the mass-market adoption of solar. The company connects providers of capital who are committed to investing in residential solar with qualified solar marketers, installers and distributors who need residential solar finance products to differentiate and growtheir businesses. CPF raises 100 percent third-party‐owned project finance funds from institutional investors such as Morgan Stanley and Google, working with the investors to structure and launch the funds with managed risk and return profiles. CPF then markets the funds as solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) to qualified solar professionals, including Paramount Solar and Real Goods Solar (Nasdaq: RSOL), through its licensed online solar sales platform, CPF Tools. CPF Tools is software-as-a-service that simplifies complex sales, quoting, proposal and finance processes and minimizes the “soft costs” of selling solar.CPF’s fund investors earn favorable returns on stable investments on the resulting portfolios of residential distributed generation projects. The company’s solar professional partners gain access to solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) that they can brand and sell to homeowners who want the benefits of solar without the cost and hassle of owning and maintaining a system.CPF manages approximately half a billion dollars of capacity on behalf of fund investors, and supports more than 100 solar professional customers who currently use the CPF Market to sell residential solar finance products to homeowners in CA, CO, HI, MA and NJ. Thousands of solar professionals in all 50 states have extensively used CPF Tools to quote and design solar systems. | $25M / Series B / Sep 02, 2011 | ||
| Clean Power Finance (CPF) is building an online business-to-business marketplace to drive the mass-market adoption of solar. The company connects providers of capital who are committed to investing in residential solar with qualified solar marketers, installers and distributors who need residential solar finance products to differentiate and growtheir businesses. CPF raises 100 percent third-party‐owned project finance funds from institutional investors such as Morgan Stanley and Google, working with the investors to structure and launch the funds with managed risk and return profiles. CPF then markets the funds as solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) to qualified solar professionals, including Paramount Solar and Real Goods Solar (Nasdaq: RSOL), through its licensed online solar sales platform, CPF Tools. CPF Tools is software-as-a-service that simplifies complex sales, quoting, proposal and finance processes and minimizes the “soft costs” of selling solar.CPF’s fund investors earn favorable returns on stable investments on the resulting portfolios of residential distributed generation projects. The company’s solar professional partners gain access to solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) that they can brand and sell to homeowners who want the benefits of solar without the cost and hassle of owning and maintaining a system.CPF manages approximately half a billion dollars of capacity on behalf of fund investors, and supports more than 100 solar professional customers who currently use the CPF Market to sell residential solar finance products to homeowners in CA, CO, HI, MA and NJ. Thousands of solar professionals in all 50 states have extensively used CPF Tools to quote and design solar systems. | $3.6M / Series A / Jan 06, 2010 | ||
| Clean Power Finance (CPF) is building an online business-to-business marketplace to drive the mass-market adoption of solar. The company connects providers of capital who are committed to investing in residential solar with qualified solar marketers, installers and distributors who need residential solar finance products to differentiate and growtheir businesses. CPF raises 100 percent third-party‐owned project finance funds from institutional investors such as Morgan Stanley and Google, working with the investors to structure and launch the funds with managed risk and return profiles. CPF then markets the funds as solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) to qualified solar professionals, including Paramount Solar and Real Goods Solar (Nasdaq: RSOL), through its licensed online solar sales platform, CPF Tools. CPF Tools is software-as-a-service that simplifies complex sales, quoting, proposal and finance processes and minimizes the “soft costs” of selling solar.CPF’s fund investors earn favorable returns on stable investments on the resulting portfolios of residential distributed generation projects. The company’s solar professional partners gain access to solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) that they can brand and sell to homeowners who want the benefits of solar without the cost and hassle of owning and maintaining a system.CPF manages approximately half a billion dollars of capacity on behalf of fund investors, and supports more than 100 solar professional customers who currently use the CPF Market to sell residential solar finance products to homeowners in CA, CO, HI, MA and NJ. Thousands of solar professionals in all 50 states have extensively used CPF Tools to quote and design solar systems. | $37M / Series C |
Co-Investors
About Sand Hill Angels
Sand Hill Angels is a group of Silicon Valley angel investors passionate about helping entrepreneurs get to the next level. What makes the group unique is the collective experience of its members building and scaling deep technology companies. The group has been around for more than two decades.Sand Hill Angels works openly and collaborativelywith venture capital funds, other angel organizations, and the Bay Area ecosystem that fosters the growth of technology startups. For additional information, visit www.sandhillangels.com or follow @SandHillAngels.com on Twitter.
Sand Hill Angels Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Harper Cheng
Angel Investor
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Matt Johnson
Member, Investor
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Ralph Eschenbach
Vice President
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Scott Thacker
Member
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Todd Johnson
Investor & Member
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FAQ
What does Ralph Eschenbach invest in?
Ralph Eschenbach invests primarily in SaaS, Software and Internet of Things startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 6 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Ralph Eschenbach?
Public channels for Ralph Eschenbach include LinkedIn. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Ralph Eschenbach last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Ralph Eschenbach closed in Apr 2018. Shizune tracks 6 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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