# Ralph Eschenbach

> Ralph Eschenbach is a seed investor at Sand Hill Angels (San Francisco) backing SaaS and Software. See 6 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Sand Hill Angels](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/sand-hill-angels)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 6
- Last investment: Apr 2018
- Lead investor: 33%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralph-eschenbach-b36933

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.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| SaaS | 2 | 33% |
| Software | 2 | 33% |
| Internet of Things | 2 | 33% |
| Energy | 1 | 17% |
| Recruiting | 1 | 17% |

10 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 2 | 33% |
| Series A | 1 | 17% |
| Series B | 1 | 17% |
| Series C | 1 | 17% |
| Convertible Note | 1 | 17% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Dellfer | 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 |  |
| Cloudastructure | 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 | Comeet is a cloud-based collaborative hiring platform that provides structured, streamlined workflows to enable companies to make better hires, faster.The system is based on a team-centric approach that involves the entire hiring team, not just the recruiters. It offers an elegantly simple, user-friendly design that makes it easy for companies todeploy and customize for hiring teams to use, with little to no training required.Features and functionality cover every activity necessary to build high performance teams, including: sourcing, coordinating, communicating, sharing, scheduling, preparing, engaging, evaluating, hiring and reporting. | $730K | Seed | Apr 15, 2013 |  |
| Clean Power Finance | 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 | 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 | 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 |  |  |

6 of 6 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Claremont Creek Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/claremont-creek-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Clean Pacific Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/clean-pacific-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Denso](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/denso) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Google Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/google-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Highway1](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/highway1) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Kleiner Perkins](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/kleiner-perkins-caufield-byers) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Sand Hill Angels

VC Fund · Mountain View, United States

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.

5 contacts available at Sand Hill Angels.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Harper Cheng | Angel Investor | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/harper-cheng |
| Matt Johnson | Member, Investor | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/matt-johnson-16 |
| Ralph Eschenbach | Vice President | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ralph-eschenbach |
| Scott Thacker | Member | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/scott-thacker |
| Todd Johnson | Investor & Member | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/todd-johnson-382a |

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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.

### 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 Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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