Prior to founding the Ridgewood Capital Palo Alto in 1999, Elton Sherwin established the West Coast office of Motorola Ventures. Elton spent twenty years at IBM and Motorola where his products won numerous awards. He wrote The Silicon Valley Way which is used by entrepreneurs and professors around the world; and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

While in college at UC Berkeley he programmed robotic cameras and then started his career at IBM selling mechanical design tools (CAD systems) to west coast manufacturers including Lockheed and Boeing. The U.S. Patent Office has granted him eight patents, including patents for:

Elton received his BA from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Peregrine Semiconductors, Scintera Networks, Ethertronics, Pixim and CleverSet