Profile

Founded in 1983, Battery is a global, technology-focused investment firm with offices in the U.S., Europe and Israel. The firm practices a collaborative, research-focused style of investing and regularly makes early, growth and buyout investments in the same technology sector. Battery is now investing its 14th family of funds, capitalized at more than $3.8 billion, and has raised more than $13 billion since inception. The firm’s core areas of focus are application software; infrastructure software; consumer tech; and industrial tech.

Battery’s key strengths include: 

– Experience/track record: Battery was founded in 1983 and has invested in over 500 companies since then—73 of which have gone on to stage initial public offerings, and 204 of which resulted in M&A events.

– Stable capital base: Battery has raised more than $13 billion since inception. In July 2022, the firm announced it had closed two funds totaling $3.8 billion: Battery Ventures XIV and a companion fund, together capitalized at $3.3 billion, and the $530 million Battery Ventures Select Fund II, a vehicle intended to make additional investments primarily in portfolio companies of the firm’s other funds. 

– Stage-agnostic approach: Battery invests across all stages, from seed to buyout, giving the firm a unique perspective on companies at all stages of maturity in core technology sectors. Its growth-equity business continues to grow. 

– Research-based culture: The firm invests thematically, diligently researching new and emerging technology sectors and identifying category leaders to back across stages.

Battery’s growth-equity practice leverages the firm’s more than three decades of experience identifying and building technology companies, across all stages of development, to grow promising businesses into global technology leaders. 

Battery helps companies grow in a variety of ways, including by: 

– Investing in organic growth spanning both product R&D and sales & marketing, as well as growing the organization and bringing in talent at all levels; 

– Pursuing strategic acquisitions—Battery can help portfolio companies accelerate growth by pursuing highly strategic, add-on acquisitions. The Battery team serves as an outsourced M&A division to evaluate opportunities to acquire companies that may fill holes in a product line, offer complementary products and services or help a company expand into new geographies; 

– Driving profitability improvements, including by leveraging economies of scale created through acquisitions; 

– Helping with business strategy, including go-to-market and sales planning; and 

– Leveraging our portfolio-services offering to help portfolio companies with hiring and talent management, business development and marketing. 

Battery does not have a one-size-fits-all answer to value creation. The firm’s philosophy is to be as helpful as possible to grow portfolio companies in collaboration with management teams. 

The Battery team embraces complex situations and provides highly flexible capital to meet the needs of a diverse range of deal types, including buyouts of family or founder-owned companies; public to privates; and divisional carve-outs of business units.

www.battery.com

Awards

2023 Top Growth Equity Firms

2023 Top Women Leaders in Growth Investing, Lauren Wedell

2023 Top 25 Healthcare Investors, Chelsea Stoner

2023 Best Growth Investment Firms

2022 Top 25 Growth Equity Firms

2022 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Lauren Wedell

2022 Top 25 Software Investors, Jordan Welu

2022 Top Women Leaders in Growth Investing, Chelsea Stoner

2022 Top 25 Healthcare Investors, Chelsea Stoner

2021 Top 25 Growth Equity Firms

2021 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Morad Elhafed, Zack Smotherman

2021 Top 25 Software Investors, Paul Morrissey

Key People

Chelsea Stoner, General Partner

Chelsea focuses on investments in the software and healthcare-IT sectors. She is particularly interested in vertically focused SaaS companies. Chelsea currently sits on the Northwestern University Engineering School Board, as well as the University of Chicago Booth School Private Equity Council. Currently Chelsea also serves on the Healthcare Technology Advisory Council for the Cleveland Clinic.

Morad Elhafed, General Partner

As a general partner at Battery, Morad focuses on growth and private-equity investments in the software sector. He is active in the firm’s investment activities in North America and Europe. Based in the firm’s Boston office, Morad works closely with Battery’s London team.

Russ Fleischer, General Partner

Russell Fleischer, a three-time, software-industry CEO, joined Battery as a partner in 2014 and was promoted to general partner in 2015. He also served as a longtime executive in residence at the firm. At Battery, Russ focuses on new investment opportunities in the enterprise-software sector, particularly later-stage deals, including buyouts, rollups and take-privates.

Michael Brown, General Partner
Since joining Battery Ventures in 1998, Michael has made, or managed, multiple investments spanning the enterprise software, financial-services and technology-enabled business-services markets. Michael served as the chair of the National Venture Capital Association for the 2021-2022 term.

Dharmesh Thakker, General Partner

Dharmesh joined Battery Ventures in 2015 to focus on early-venture and growth-equity investments in areas including cloud infrastructure, big data, security and next-generation enterprise applications. Prior to Battery, Dharmesh was a managing director at Intel Capital, where he led the firm’s global cloud and big-data practice and made early- and later-stage investments in companies globally.

Jesse Feldman, General Partner

Jesse invests in buyout and growth-equity transactions in the industrial-technology and enterprise-software markets. Jesse’s portfolio companies often pursue aggressive, inorganic growth strategies, and he has worked on more than 40 add-on acquisitions. He has extensive experience working with businesses across the U.S. and Europe.

Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner

Neeraj, a seasoned investor who has backed many high-profile, B2B software companies, joined Battery in 2000. Neeraj, who writes and speaks frequently on software and other industry topics, focuses on B2B software investments and coined the “T2D3” growth paradigm for SaaS companies.

Roger Lee, General Partner

Roger is a former entrepreneur who invests in talented founders building innovative consumer-technology companies in sectors including e-commerce, online gaming, digital health, financial technology/blockchain and online education, among others. He has a particular focus on companies offering products and services through online marketplaces.

Zack Smotherman, General Partner

Zack joined Battery in 2013 and focuses on later-stage, buyout investments in industrial technology and life science tools. Prior to Battery, Zack was an investor at WestView Capital Partners, where he evaluated and executed middle-market buyout and recapitalization transactions across the tech-enabled services and software sectors.

Funds Raised

Founded in 1983, Battery is a global, technology-focused investment firm with offices in the U.S., Europe and Israel. The firm practices a collaborative, research-focused style of investing and regularly makes early, growth and buyout investments in the same technology sector. Battery is now investing its 14th family of funds, capitalized at more than $3.8 billion, and has raised more than $13 billion since inception. The firm’s core areas of focus are application software; infrastructure software; consumer tech; and industrial tech.

Key Investments

Affirm: Exited 2021 (IPO)
Sector: Application Software

Affirm is a next-generation, data-driven fintech company that allows people to get loans quickly at the point of sale, with no hidden fees, to buy the things they want and feel good about their purchases.

Amplitude: Exited 2021 (IPO)
Sector: Application Software

Amplitude is a next-generation analytics company helping organizations leverage data to refine their digital product offerings, particularly on mobile, and better serve customers.

AnalytiChem Holding GmbH: Invested 2021
Sector: Industrial Tech + Life Science Tools

AnalytiChem was formed in early 2021, beginning a journey to create a family of companies providing high-quality analytical chemistry and reference materials to laboratories around the world.

Array US, Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Application Software

Array delivers embeddable, custom-branded credit and identity tools, personalized offers, and more.

Avrios: Invested 2023
Sector: Application Software

Avrios helps companies provide tailored transportation to its employees through fleet management software.

Belong Home, Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Consumer

Belong is a full-stack, tech-enabled property-management solution for SFR homeowners.

BlueJeans: Exited 2020 (acquired by Verizon)
Sector: Application Software

BlueJeans Network was a cloud-based video-conferencing service.

Braze: Exited 2021 (IPO)
Sector: Application Software

Braze makes a software platform to help marketers better reach and engage customers, particularly on mobile devices.

CAMBRIO: Exited 2021 (acquired by Sandvik AB)
Sector: Application Software

CAMBRIO is a global software platform delivering CAD/CAM software to customers in manufacturing industries such as automotive, electronic, medical, white goods and aerospace.

Coinbase: Exited 2021 (IPO)
Sector: Consumer

Coinbase is a trusted, easy-to-use platform for buying and selling cryptocurrency and accessing the broader crypto economy.

Confluent: Exited 2021 (IPO)
Sector: Data

Founded by the original creators of Apache Kafka, Confluent helps organizations harness the full power of continuously flowing data to innovate and win in the modern digital world.

ContinuumCloud, LLC: Invested 2021
Sector: Application Software

ContinuumCloud offers a spectrum of cloud-based software solutions intentionally designed to meet the unique needs of the behavioral health and human services industry.

Flash App Ltd.: Invested 2022
Sector: Application Software

Flash is a next-generation benefits platform that empowers employees to consolidate all their benefits money and spend it at any place, at any time.

FlyHomes, Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Consumer

Flyhomes is a real estate startup using financial innovation to back home buyers.

Forterro: Exited 2022 (majority stake sold to Partners Group; Battery reinvested 2022)
Sector: Application Software

Forterro is a group of companies that deliver ERP software to SMEs in specialized geographical or vertical markets.

FrontApp, Inc.: Invested 2022
​​Sector: Application Software

Front is a communication hub for building strong customer relationships.

Gainsight: Exited 2020 (acquired by Vista Equity)
Sector: Application Software

Gainsight helps customer-success, post-sales and product teams put customers at their heart of their business to deliver better outcomes and grow net-dollar retention.

Guardicore: Exited 2021 (acquired by Akamai)
Sector: Infrastructure Software

Disrupting the legacy firewall market, Guardicore’s software-only approach provides cybersecurity solutions to cover clients’ endpoints, data centers and the cloud.

Harness Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Infrastructure Software

Harness is building an intelligent software delivery platform that enables engineers to deliver software faster, with higher quality, and less effort.

HoneyBook, Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Application Software

HoneyBook is a business and financial management platform for creative small business owners.

Institut für Produktqualität (aka IFP): Invested 2021
Sector: Industrial Tech + Life Science Tools

ifp Laboratories Group is a provider of analytical laboratory services for customers across the food supply chain, as well as customers within pharmaceutical, water, and diagnostic end markets.

JFrog: Exited 2020 (IPO)
Sector: Infrastructure Software

JFrog is an enterprise-software provider in the DevOps market. Its tools enable software updates to flow seamlessly and securely from the developer’s keystrokes into production.

Kustomer: Exited 2022 (acquired by Meta)
Sector: Application Software

Kustomer’s customer management platform for “people-first enterprises” is intelligent, powerful and flexible, and scales to meet the needs of any contact center and business.

MadCap Software, Inc.: Invested 2022
Sector: Application Software

MadCap creates, manages and publishes content for technical documentation, chatbots and AI, learning & development programs and more.

Maxio: Invested 2021
Sector: Application Software

Maxio provides a financial operations platform designed to meet the unique financial challenges of B2B SaaS companies, including billing, subscription management, revenue and expense recognition, and SaaS analytics.

OloL: Exited 2021 (IPO)
Sector: Application Software

Olo offers a sophisticated front- to back-end platform that helps restaurants take and process diners’ orders online—and then manage the logistics of takeout and delivery.

Postman, Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Infrastructure Software

The collaboration platform for API development, used by more than 15 million developers.

Process Sensing Technologies (PST): Exited 2020 (acquired by AEA Investors)
Sector: Industrial Tech + Life Science Tools

Process Sensing Technologies (PST) provides a comprehensive suite of instruments and analyzers for precision measurements that help companies reduce process disruptions and optimize production efficiency.

Proemion International GmbH: Invested 2022
Sector: Application Software

Proemion builds infrastructure to connect mobile machines with humans, the cloud, and each other.

RiskIQ: Exited 2021 (acquired by Microsoft)
Sector: Infrastructure Software

RiskIQ, a digital cyber-threat intelligence provider, allows enterprises to gain unified insight and control over their web, social and mobile exposure.

Smartling, Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Application Software

Smartling is a cloud-based translation technology and language services company headquartered in New York City.

Sprinklr: Exited 2021 (IPO)
Sector: Application Software

Sprinklr, a unified customer-experience-management platform, helps organizations listen to customers, learn from them and show them love across digital channels.

SPT:  Exited 2022 (acquired by EQT Private Equity)
Sector:Industrial Tech + Life Science Tools

SPT Labtech provides a suite of instruments and consumables for users within the scientific and life sciences community to enable innovative research and develop life enhancing solutions.

StreamSets: Exited 2022 (acquired by Software AG)
Sector: Infrastructure Software

StreamSets provides data ingest technology for the next generation of big data applications.

Styra, Inc.: Invested 2021
Sector: Infrastructure Software

Styra enables enterprises to define, enforce and monitor policy across their cloud-native environments.

Sumo Logic: Exited 2020 (IPO)
Sector: Infrastructure Software

Sumo Logic is a cloud-native, log-management and security-analytics platform that collects, manages and analyzes log data.

Vimcar: Invested 2023
Sector: Application Software

Vimcar is seamlessly integrating commercial vehicles into digital ecosystems by providing businesses with straightforward fleet management solutions.

Vita Mojo International Ltd: Invested 2022
Sector: Application Software

Vita Mojo is a digital ordering and back-of-house solutions for restaurants, pubs, and cafés.

VNDLY: Exited 2021 (acquired by Workday)
Sector: Application Software

VNDLY, a modern vendor-management software system, transforms how companies manage their extended workforces, including contingent workers such as contractors and vendors.

Capital Responsibility

For decades, Battery has served as a responsible, research-driven industry leader, partnering with the world’s most promising technology founders and leaders at all stages of growth.

Battery is dedicated to equal opportunity for its internal team members. The firm has an active DEI committee, focused on internal mentorship and cross-team collaboration, and many members of the firm have undergone training at “Battery University,” an in-depth orientation designed to pass down learnings about the firm’s history as well as investment and market topics.

In 2019, Battery created The Battery Foundation. This group—a donor-advised fund at the Boston Foundation, one of the country’s largest and oldest charitable foundations—seeks to give back to the community by offering grants to non-profit groups in areas including technology education; health and wellness; jobs and economic development; and other grassroots causes. Every quarter, internal Battery team members select a non-profit organization to receive a grant. Past recipients have included: Dignity Matters, a non-profit organization collects, purchases and supplies feminine hygiene products, bras and underwear to women and girls who are homeless or disadvantaged; and Equal Hope, the non-profit dedicated to eliminating health disparities in Illinois for women diagnosed with breast cancer, cervical cancer and other cancers affecting women.

Battery has invested behind entrepreneurs and teams at the forefront of environmental responsibility. In the current portfolio, these companies include: LI-COR Environmental, which provides solutions to monitor the core processes of an ecosystem—light, plants, soil, water and atmosphere—and research their interdependencies; ResourceWise, which develops Carbon Analysis 360, a carbon reporting and environmental scorecard technology dashboard, as well as Recycled Fiber 360, pricing benchmarks for recyclable materials; and Process Sensing Technologies (PST), an industrial sensor technology provider that measures moisture, oxygen and pressure to help customers maintain compliance with environmental regulations; Vimcar and Avrios, cloud-software companies that serve the growing European fleet-management sector and help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from commercial vehicle fleets; AuditBoard, the cloud-based audit, risk and compliance management platform that streamlines ESG program management; and Skalar, which produces laboratory and process industry analyzers with broad-based environmental applications, including in water and soil testing, food and feed quality monitoring and more; among others.

CEO Reviews

Robbie Payne, former CEO of CAMBRIO

“As the CEO of manufacturing-software company CAMBRIO, which was acquired in 2021 by Sweden’s Sandvik, I could not have asked for a better partner than Battery Ventures. Immediately upon their initial investment in the company in 2018, it was clear that the team was experienced in and extremely knowledgeable about our market, well-networked and proved always helpful in many areas including strategy, recruiting, and sourcing acquisitions.”

Randy Eckels, CEO, Clubessential Holdings

Battery Ventures has truly put the “essential” in Clubessential Holdings since the inception of our multi-year, successful partnership. The entire Battery team has provided exceptional operational and strategic advice at every stage in our journey. From helping us make 18 acquisitions in five countries, to supporting our operations, to strengthening our market position as a major vertical-software and integrated payments facilitator in our served markets, Battery provides the energy, intellect, pattern recognition and personal touch that powers our profitable growth story. I’m forever thankful we found such a capable business partner that I, and my entire senior leadership team, seek out and enjoy collaborating with on a regular basis.”

The executive commentary and portfolio companies listed in this profile are examples of companies with which Battery Ventures has partnered in achieving business goals and may not be representative of all companies within Battery’s portfolio. Battery did not compensate the portfolio company executives or companies in connection with the statements provided by such executives.