Battery Ventures

It's that time of year again! 🌩️ We're so excited to unveil the speaker lineup for our annual #OpenCloud summit in San Francisco, which will bring together more than 125 of the world's fastest-growing, most-promising cloud software companies in one room. This year’s summit, held on November 7, will focus on teasing out the tension between the industry hype around generative AI and where the industry truly is in its adoption curve, as well as providing operational best practices for the audience of CEOs as they scale their businesses. We'll hear from technical leaders from Databricks, GitHub, Glean, Netskope, Vanta, Sigma Computing, Workato, Harness and ClickHouse; and enterprise experts from Fidelity Investments and Memorial Hermann Health System in a series of panels moderated by Dharmesh Thakker, Marcus Ryu, Max Schireson, Scott Goering and Danel Dayan. Many thanks to this year's speakers for joining us: Ron Gabrisko, Michael Hanley, Arvind Jain, Sanjay Beri, Christina Cacioppo, Mike Palmer, Vijay Tella, Adam Ely, Eric Smith, Jyoti Bansal and Aaron Katz!

If your "sales, marketing and GTM insight" senses are tingling, here's why: Season 3 of "Sound Bites" with Bill Binch is underway! 🤯 We enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane with some Season 2 highlights in the video below. Special thank you to last season's guests for joining us and sharing their experiences and expertise with our audience. Check out the full episodes here: 💙 Insights into SaaS Marketing + Sales Alignment with Carilu Dietrich: https://lnkd.in/dQWuAn6n 💙 Sales, RevOps and the "Buffalo Strategy" with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, chief business officer of Stripe: https://lnkd.in/gcrdqxDh 💙 Learning, Building and Mentorship in SaaS Sales with Dennis Lyandres, former chief revenue officer at Procore Technologies: https://lnkd.in/dhKJAc5c 💙 Data-Driven Marketing in the AI Era with Stephanie Buscemi, chief marketing officer at Confluent: https://lnkd.in/dGNAu-ET 💙 Lessons in Software Leadership with Andy Kofoid, president of Databricks: https://lnkd.in/dkbF-cia

We are so honored to announce that we've been named to the 2024 Founder-Friendly Investors list from Inc. Magazine, which recognizes capital providers with a track record of supporting founders. For over 40 years, we have made it our mission to partner with and support talented founders and teams building category-defining businesses. We exist to support our companies—it is a privilege to help them scale and reach their full potential. To see the full list of Founder-Friendly Investors and the methodology used to produce it, please visit: https://lnkd.in/ebhzF2Xq Inc. Magazine, an independent third party not associated with Battery Ventures, issued this award. Battery Ventures submitted materials and paid a fee in connection with the application. This recognition is not indicative of future performance and is solely the opinion of the party conferring the award.

Meet Ani Kochiashvili, a vice president of portfolio analytics in our Boston office who works closely with our CFO to analyze portfolio performance to guide strategic decisions. We chatted with Ani for our latest #TeamTuesdays, here’s what we learned: 🖊️ What does a typical day look like for you here at Battery?  🔹 As the person responsible for building out Battery's portfolio and fund analytics, my typical day involves leveraging our firm's rich 40-year history of data to drive insights. I work closely with our CFO and general partners to identify critical business questions and develop the data infrastructure needed to answer them effectively. 🖊️ What’s something interesting you’ve learned about the firm’s portfolio through your work?  🔹 What fascinates me is the depth of data we have access to from our portfolio companies. Given the scale of our portfolio, we're in a unique position to identify emerging trends in private markets—something that's incredibly valuable given how scarce reliable private market data can be. This enables us to create meaningful benchmarks that we can then share with our portfolio companies, helping them identify both areas for improvement and untapped opportunities. 🖊️ How do you use AI (if at all) in your work?  🔹Currently, I use AI mainly to debug SQL issues. While there's a lot of hype around AI writing perfect SQL code, I believe AI's current reasoning limitations position it as more of an enhancer than a replacer of technical skills, at least right now. In the coming years, I anticipate seeing promising applications in chatbots trained on our proprietary data for quick insights and in AI-assisted dashboarding where you can generate visualizations through prompts. 🖊️ Tell us about your career path. What brought you to the Battery team?  🔹 My interest in startups began at Deloitte, where we acquired software products and bundled them with services to create new GTM offerings. This led me to Y Combinator, where I built scalable solutions to handle hundreds of investments annually and worked to break down data silos between the finance and investment teams. While Y Combinator was an amazing adventure, the early-stage nature of companies meant limited data for meaningful analysis. Battery offered exactly what I was looking for: a chance to build something new while working with a portfolio mature enough to generate meaningful insights. 🖊️ What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career and who’s it from?  🔹 A partner once told me to stay flexible, noting that success often demands adaptability when facing changes beyond our control. Being a good team player means knowing which areas you can be nimble with and which are non-negotiable when working with others’ unique preferences and workstyles. 🖊️ We have to ask—what’s your favorite Microsoft Excel function?  🔹 FILTER, combined with SORT, UNIQUE and / or TRANSPOSE. These dynamic array functions can do magic! 

Is a new product role on your career roadmap? 🌟 If so, Battery Ventures portfolio companies have some incredible opportunities you should check out. 🌟 Product Manager at Galileo 🔭 (San Francisco): https://lnkd.in/gMjKDbKA 🌟 Product Manager at MineOS (Tel Aviv, Israel): https://lnkd.in/gi_5WMmr 🌟 Principal Product Manager, Post-Delivery Experiences at Narvar (Remote): https://lnkd.in/g2zZQ34H 🌟 Senior Product Manager at Harness (SF Bay Area): https://lnkd.in/gWZNreQH 🌟 Senior Product Owner, Growth at Matillion (Manchester, UK): https://lnkd.in/gbF6EsKh 🌟 Insurance Product Manager at Next Insurance (Boston, MA): https://lnkd.in/gpcNRUk4 🌟 Product Manager at InfluxData (Remote): https://lnkd.in/gbVHrywA 🌟 Senior Product Manager, Advertising at StockX (Remote): https://lnkd.in/gMitiAPJ 🌟 Product Manager at Orkes (Seattle, WA): https://lnkd.in/gqPRKmKC For more great opportunities, be sure to check out (and bookmark) our portfolio jobs page: jobs.battery.com or reach out to me directly!  

Improved access to research, community engagement and better outcomes are at the core of the Future of Medicine movement from Care Access, an initiative of our portfolio company Reify Health. 💙 Check out the short film below for more insight into what that future looks like! ⬇️ ⬇️

Last night at our NYC AI happy hour, the conversation was all human! 🚀 We had a great time networking with 40+ founders and CEOs from across the New York AI ecosystem, including our friends at Opal Security and Shortcut. Many thanks to everyone who joined our team, including Dharmesh Thakker, Brandon Gleklen, Michael Hoeksema, Olivia Henkoff, Jack M., Hailey Wilcox, Evan Witte, Hannah Kirby and Elizabeth Macdiarmid, for such a great evening. Check out some highlights below.

Are you sold on generative AI for sales yet? 🤔 🧠 We are, especially Bill Binch, a 30-year software sales veteran who is all-in on the transformative power of automation for modern sellers. As Bill writes in his latest post for the Battery blog, "As a user, builder and seller of software over the last 30+ years, I’m excited by GenAI. While GenAI skeptics do exist, the prospect of real change to the hard, manual work required to be successful in the sales is alluring. I’m leaning into this innovation and would encourage others to do the same." Read the full post here for more insight: https://lnkd.in/g6HwPPDj

We're extremely enthusiastic about the future of AI, particularly at the application layer, as our General Partner Chelsea Stoner shared with Michael Brandmeyer on the Goldman Sachs Exchanges podcast, linked below! ⬇️ Watch on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gtwrQAyA Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gex-QJaJ Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gP2mRU5u

The rumors are true. Everyone's favorite LinkedIn newsletter, the Battery Monthly Digest, is back! Check out our team's September highlights below. ⬇️