YouSaid · the spoken record

Chelsea Stoner

lines on the record: 39
first: 2024-10-22
most recent: 2024-10-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know, there's so much happening in biotech. We don't invest in the space, but there's just seemingly a lot of really interesting science happening. One of my friends is a neurologist at UCSF and has a lab and has for a long time. Very meaningful areas. One of them is dementia research. And she has been doing a lot with Clotho, which is a protein in the brain. And it's really, really exciting. I think she's on the cusp of something really big.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Growing up in Montana, I'm a huge outdoors fan. And so anything that I can do outdoors, running, hiking, skiing, we do a ton of skiing as a family. Such a good family sport to do too.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My biggest mentor, I'd say near age, Egarwal, who is a partner at Battery. The one who hired me, he and Dave Tabors hired me. And he's brilliant. He's world class at what he does and really taught me product market. I was a model junkie before, really focused on the financials and this world of product market is so important to investing in what we do.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's hard not to say buffet. It's just on so many levels, right? So, but I think everybody probably says Buffett. You know, I really respect Ray Dalio and his data-driven nature and his last book of changing world order was phenomenal. And so I think from that aspect, I think he's great from multiple dimensions there too.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That time is your most scarce resource. I used to take loads of any meeting that wanted to meet with me, any conference. I would go to. And I think just recognizing, you know, I need to prioritize things that I don't have time to do everything.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Makes me smarter, you know, from an investor. And especially when we're looking at specific product markets that require a lot of deep dives. So long-winded answer to your lighting round question, Michael, sorry. Not at all”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I would say kind of a combo. So bear with me for a second. I love data. I'm a data geek. And I think just the analytical skills have given me ability to maybe see things that others maybe didn't see, maybe signals through the noise, if you will. I would say I'm also incredibly focused, sometimes so much so, maybe, you know, blinders on, but it's enabled me to avoid FOMO. And so I kind of stay on my path and do it, not get distracted by what others are doing and feel badly about it. And then, you know, I think one skill that, you know, maybe overlooked a bit, but we have it in spades at battery is just humility. My parents raised me to be humble and it, I think, really important in investing to recognize you don't know everything. And it kind of forces me to dig deeper and deeper and deeper to build the confidence, which”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. I think it's such a good example. And you're absolutely right. At Goldman, we are very focused on the pipeline. We have been for a long time, but this really has to be done through cultivating talent for a very long period of time. There's not a one-year fix, and it requires a very long-term focus.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel so lucky that somebody took a big risk on me from multiple dimensions. So it's about getting to those folks, getting to diverse candidates earlier. And one thing that we've done at Battery, we used to hire more experienced folks out of investment banks, largely. And we've moved to earlier where we're now hiring straight from college. And it's had a really meaningful impact the last few classes of analysts that we've had have been at least 50, 50, you know, from a diversity perspective, if not more. And so I think it's getting to folks early and showing them that it can be a really great profession. They might not know about it, right? While they're trying to figure out what they want to do after college. And so we have an internship program that, again, kind of leads into the analyst program.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I love the question because I think it is a collective thing and we need the men in the room to help us along the way. And I come back to it's all about getting the opportunity. I mean, that's all we need. Well, we can prove ourselves once we're there and this industry is great because it is a true meritocracy. Data is what matters. And if you don't have returns, you shouldn't be here. But how do you get here in the first place? And I think that's really where”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of GAP. It's a really, really great question. Growth right now is really tough. I mean, first of all, growth rates have come down so much. And so we're looking at anything north of kind of 50% growth and the multiples are just sky high back to kind of COVID days. I think part of that is also because there's so much capital chasing those few opportunities. There were a lot of growth funds raised and I'm a hammer, everything's a nail, and so I need to go find the growth deals that are out there. And so I come back to the blessing that we have being stage agnostic. We don't have to do growth deals. We find other opportunities to play. But I think it's going to take a while for us to get through the capital and then at the same time kind of get back to the accelerated growth that more companies should see.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've been seeing a lot of opportunity in the Series A deals, very early stage. Yeah, and because of our model, we can morph and be flexible to where that opportunity is best. Right now, anyway, that's tended to be very early stage. I wouldn't say pre product market fit after product market fit is there. And then on the very other end of the spectrum, on the more mature side of things. So we've seen a lot of activity around buyouts, particularly in Europe. We've done a couple in Canada recently. And so again, because we're so flexible able to go anywhere from a stage perspective and most anywhere from a geo perspective. And so we've been kind of hunting everywhere. And that's the two ends of the barbell, I guess, is where we've seen the best opportunities so far.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it will feel different, faster. And I do think it's Gen AI that's really going to be the trigger for this. The government has tried to regulate information sharing and making sure that at least patients can access their information across all of their providers into one place. Even that hasn't really gotten us very far. And I think the recognition by the providers of being able to have meaningful clinical outcomes and suggestions based on going through so many different patient information in one place, I think is going to be very powerful. And they recognize that. So it is happening, but I think there needed to be a forcing function, and this is a great one.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, exactly right. And I don't think that they'll give up their data. It's more of how can they use it for themselves in different aspects. And I just keep coming back to the hospital because it's. Kind of a glaring issue right now, which across the hospital there might be 10 to 20 different EMRs clinical systems used, each having their own data database that everything's stored in. And so bringing that into one location for that one hospital to even be able to see across their patients is super important. Really hasn't been done yet.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I mean, in some cases, you could see horizontal software being a good solution, but in some cases, why would the customers now give up their data given these solutions are different? So it'll be interesting to see how it evolves.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's really interesting as it relates to data and if you think about the data players out there, Data Bricks, one of our companies is one of them, Snowflake, enables you to get all of the data into one area so that you can train Gen AI and use Gen AI on all of that data. So if you think about that, you don't necessarily need all of the players coming together and the winner-take-all, you can still have them give up their data to one location if you're a customer. Healthcare is going through this whole kind of trend right now, which is desperately needed, as we all know.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so Curve is trying to help them get there, but they just have so many customers and so many reams of patient data that can be really great when it comes to what insights can I give the dentist while they're in with the patient. One of the solutions actually is able to find cavities or close to cavities before the human eye would be able to see it. Right, you know, when you're in the chair, your dentist can say, okay, it looks like you're developing a cavity here, you know, might want to take some measures, or how can we prevent that from happening? So, you know, on the preventative care front, there's just a lot of opportunity.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, happy to. As we think about AI, at least as it relates to the application layer, data is king, right? I mean, these models, if they're all trained on the same data, there's not much differentiation. And so when you have something, some data that others don't have access to, what can you do with that? And of course, a lot of our industry-specific vertical software companies have data that nobody else has. And so there's a lot of really interesting things that you can do with that information with Gen AI. You can train models on it to go through the data and look for interesting insights for your customers or your patients from a clinical perspective. One of our companies sells practice management software to the dental space, which, by the way, hasn't transitioned to cloud yet. It's still, I think it's less than five percent, which is amazing. It's a huge, huge market. And still they have service underneath it.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah. That takes a while, and it's so interesting. Many of the capital structures of lots of players around the table with very different challenges or incentives. And so corralling that all into one exit strategy is tough. And so we're thinking through how can we be helpful in that and maybe come up with some different. Capital structure ideas.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It should be more interesting, frankly Because of everything you described. And we actually met with your team last week to understand kind of their IPO pipeline. And it is vast and ever expanding. And you think, gosh, it's going to take five or six years for all of these to get public. Clearly they're not. And so that is the opportunity. But I think what was interesting is during COVID, it forced this Focus on cash flow. And so many of these companies were able to continue their runway by many had layoffs. A lot of our portfolio went through that because we were so maniacal on making sure that folks had enough runway. And so we haven't quite seen the need for additional raises yet for a lot of these companies that have decelerated growth. It's probably more caps.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you had to be growing 30%. Well, there was a lot that was left on the table because of that box that they were in. And we understood, hey, this is a cloud model. They're probably not going to be profitable until they're kind of 20 million or above. And so just understanding it very, very well enables you to take what others might think is very risky bets, but you know something, right? And so it's...”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we have. We found some venture returns in lower risk buyout land, which has been great. And it just goes back to really understanding the product markets very deeply. And I chalk that up to it allows us to find Alpha into kind of gaps that others aren't necessarily looking. Sometimes it's in a different geo. Sometimes it's a certain feature of a product. We just do so much market work and understand that that's really going to take off and accelerate. Sometimes it's the flexibility to just not be kind of boxed into a particular deal type. Like I remember when I first started, this was when cloud was just kind of becoming a thing and recurring revenue was just becoming a thing. It was more of the license maintenance on premise model. And there were firms who needed to invest. You had to have at least 10 million of revenue. You had to be profitable.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so they did this take private then. And I got a call a couple years later as they were thinking about, gosh, there's something to this. There's some more interesting opportunities and there certainly will be over time as more and more software companies become mature. Maybe we should bring some skill set who have looked at financial models and know how to think about debt and have relationships with debt providers and kind of build out the buyout effort in a more formal way. And so I got a call in 2006. I was doing middle market private equity out in San Francisco and Neeraj Agarwal, who was a principal at battery, called me. He had heard from a friend, I think we got introduced from a friend. And he said, do you want to come to Boston? Heck yeah, packed up and moved out.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's so funny to think about it because people still don't really realize that we do private equity. But yeah, I mean, think about the audacity of a venture firm. We did one of the first Take Privates in software ever in 2003, a small ERP business called Me to Manage that became this great return for us. And I think it was that recognition of Oh, that's interesting. You know, kind of, we should be thinking about investing along the spectrum as software, as matured, so should our investing style. And there's opportunities, like I said, kind of everywhere. And how can we best play it?”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you mentioned later stage battery asked you in 2006, I believe, to focus on private equity. And at the time, that was like totally non-consensus, right? Yeah. I mean, no one was doing private equity. And as a matter of fact, some of your competitors are now hiring people to focus on private equity so we can get on to that in a minute. But what did battery see back in 06?”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And oftentimes we find we thought this was a really interesting growth opportunity, but you know what? It's more of a buyout play because it's a very sticky market, hard to get legacy players out. And so that is the better way to play that particular end market. And so we'd love to deploy capital after all of that hard work of figuring out a market where the best risk reward is. And so it's just been very powerful as an investor. You know, I tend to focus more on our later stage businesses and seeing what's happening on the innovation side has kept me from doing some maybe challenging deals because things change and things get disrupted so quickly.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The power of being stage agnostic, I've come to really appreciate it, especially in markets like this. But we consider ourselves fundamentally tech experts, software to be specific with about 85% of what we do as software between infrastructure and application And really understanding and seeing the full breadth of software businesses from early stage to more mature businesses is very powerful to help make decisions and be able to look across the spectrum. So we're, as you know, Michael very thesis driven, very thematic driven. We'll go very deep in a particular end market or industry”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The best educated knowledge of the space and decision making and to get an entire IC up to speed on that when deals are happening pretty quickly is a feat. And groupthink is a real thing. And a lot of our best deals, by the way, have kind of on the low side of votes from the IC. So it's really interesting to see that how that kind of works.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah. So we have an investment committee process like any firm would, but it's very different. And so we'll pick the investment committee members based on their knowledge of a particular end market or maybe it's a specific deal type or maybe it's a geographical region that we're looking at. There's generally two to three partners who sit on any given IC. And the decision making process is really in the hands of the deal team because in software, there's just so much nuance in product market and we really believe firmly that it's the team on the ground doing all of the work, the detailed work to get that nuance who's going to have”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's exactly right. And so when you talk about generational transition, it's less about having one person that runs everything. And if we lose that person, you know, something's going to fall apart. It's rather it's in all of the general partners and folks around the table. And we really think of ourselves as developing talent, right? I mean, that is so foundational to the firm. And we hope that analysts who start with us end up being the next generation of partners along the way. And we do a lot of our processes, a lot of the ways that we make decisions from deal perspective really center around that and growing and seeing people come up and make sure that we understand their deal judgment along the way.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's really interesting. We obviously look at managers across every asset class, and there's no asset class where the human capital element of it is more important than a venture because you're going back right to the inception and you're there when a company is starting or when it's on this hyper growth path. And having people focused on finding those assets and then nurturing those assets is just so critical. And so how you get the most out of your team, I mean, you can't have just one person doing it. You have to harness that collective wisdom. Of a team, and I think your setup in many ways has done it as well or better than anybody else.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even from the management company to the governance to the deal making decision. I guess we're on our fourth kind of governance model where we have an executive committee. So there's not one managing partner right now. We have four of us that are part of this executive committee. And what it does is it enables us to continue doing what we love to do, which is invest. And understanding that there's so much that goes into running a firm administratively, strategically, and it allows us to split those tasks among the four of us so that we have time to do the bulk of what we want to do is invest.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with the founders and the way that they constructed it from the beginning. We've gone through maybe three and a half generational transitions that have had different models along the way. And I think all of us feel like we are stewards of the firm. It's not my firm. It's not anybody one person's firm. It's all of ours. And then we're planning to leave it in the best hands for the next generation, right? And what can we do to make it better along the way? But I think a lot of it is kind of the way that it was constructed, very elegant in design.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that was a key trigger. I don't know about if it sparked more innovation. It certainly allowed for talent to hook up with the tech companies kind of anywhere and everywhere. And from an investor perspective, what I did, I mean, we were, you know, investing in companies and buying companies online, right? for a couple years. And so it exposed investors to companies they maybe wouldn't have traveled to before because it was so much easier to do Zoom meetings than it was to get on a plane or two planes or three planes to get there.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think so. I think it's the recognition that there's smart people and innovation everywhere. And on the coast, we see clusters, but there's innovation everywhere. And so if it takes a little bit of extra effort to take two planes to get to Burlington, Vermont or Bainbridge Island, Washington, Sydney, Australia, I mean, we've done deals kind of all over the place and have found, I think, some really great returns because a lot of folks haven't done that. times are changing the last few years especially have gone more and more competitive and i think you know people are turning up in in these kind of off the beaten path places”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All of the case studies we did, the more I learned, I just became really enamored with it. And thought of it as this marriage between the quantitative skills that I had and that I loved and the people side, the human side of the business.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wasn't my personality. So I ended up doing what a lot of college grads who don't quite know what they want to do yet. And I became a consultant. Which was amazing. It was a really great experience. I traveled the world. I was able to work with some really great clients on interesting projects. I had a lot of responsibility at very young age and decided to go back and get my MBA. I had never taken an econ class studying engineering. And so I chose Chicago and I got a finance degree there, which is really where I learned about investing. I had no clue about investing before that. I mean, really at a fundamental level.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So many internships of being in dark labs with not very many people, and it just wasn't my personality. It doesn't seem to be.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a straight path from rural Montana to Silicon Valley Growth. Yeah, I had a very circuitous path and just a lot of people along the way who believed in me and gave me a chance. I think that, you know, is really what it's all about. Just to start, I decided to do chemical engineering because I liked chemistry and math, not because I had any idea what chemical engineers did once I learned a little bit more about that. I decided I didn't want to do it.”
2024-10-22 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Battery Ventures’ Chelsea Stoner on the power of being ‘stage agnostic’ in tech investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT