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Neeraj Agrawal

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26
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2016-04-18
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2016-04-18
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  1. “They're in the product success category. The one liner here is we saw a dramatic transformation in the marketing function where it moved from being very gut driven to being data-driven, hence our investments in companies like Exact Target and Marquetto and Amature. We believe the same thing is now happening in product management, where it's historically been a gut-driven field, but now we believe more and more data will infuse the product management process. And Pendo is really championing that.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “My most recent investments, a company in Raleigh, North Carolina, a company called Pendo.io. This is a company that's in.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Well, as I mentioned, I'm a big fan of Bradfeld's writing. He's done an amazing job writing about both professional and personal topics. I've learned a lot from him. And then who doesn't love Jason Lemkin, right?”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “There's a ton that I respect. I'll tell you, I really admire Doug Leone at Sequoia. Maybe not because of all the success that he's had per se. I mean, that's obviously impressive. I had the opportunity to work with Doug on a deal maybe five years ago. And I think Doug by that point was probably already a billionaire. If not, he was well on his way to be a billionaire. And Doug and I were working on an investment. The entrepreneur decided not to go down our path. Doug got on a plane, took a red eye out, sat in the lobby of the person's office, waiting for the person to convince him that hey, we should really work on this deal together. What I loved about that story is even though he was so successful, he was still so hungry and really just a wonderful role model of someone who didn't get caught up in his success and is still just hustling to do whatever he thinks makes sense for his investors. But I'll tell you, he does the same thing for his entrepreneurs. He will do whatever it takes to make them successful.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Associate a battery, not a partner not leading my own deals. But I remember we had a conversation with a company. Ultimately, we decided not to move forward because we couldn't get the right structure or downside protection that we were looking for. What I've learned to that deal and many others since then is you should really be willing to do a deal regardless of the exact terms that you get, the exact structure you get, because that's how you really test your conviction in an investment thesis. If you're really focused on, hey, did I get that special dividend structure or participating preferred or some ratchet or if I got the deal for 5% less, ultimately none of those things matter for your successful investments? So that's why the deal side is the least of the four important variables.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I would say there's a company, kayak. We spent some time looking at their Series B. We ultimately decided to not move forward because at that point in their journey, their unit economics weren't such that they were acquiring traffic for free. And so we weren't really sure how it would scale. And what we realized is that team was so phenomenal that they built such an amazing product that all the traffic just started showing up over time for free. They got these power users and they built this amazing business. And so, you know, our friends, Joel Cutler at General Catalyst, did an incredible job building, you know, investing that business and Paul English and Stevener did a great job building it out. So that's one, you know, I'll tell you, I'll give you another example of one too. I don't know if we really had a shot at this, but we had conversations with Salesforce when I first started battery in 2000, I think it was, we had a conversation in 2001 or two. At that time, I was a”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Oh god, there's so many companies that I've missed. And I learn a lot from each one. I'll tell you, you learn a lot from your MIST companies or your failed companies more so than your good ones.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Tell you one that I had a hard decision to make a couple years ago was one of our companies called Brightree. This is a SaaS software company in the healthcare space. And we had offers to sell the business for, say, $400 million range after a long conversation with the CEO. We collectively decided to turn that down and to keep going. And we were fortunate that two years later we announced a sale of the company to Resmed for $800 million. That's a really tough decision when you can walk away from what obviously would be a good investment or a good result to being willing to risk it to get to something greater than that.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I think for founders, it's really good to have either a CEO coach or chairman that they can trust to help them assess executive leadership. Many of them do, but sometimes even though they don't really have a ton of experience in that area, we'll try to wing it. So I think having a few folks they trust, and by the way, the VC investor can also play that role for the founder, but many times they'll pick another person to be chairman or a CEO coach that can help out. I think that's an area that founders underinvest in, but they can do a better job in.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “It really tends to be recruiting issue. You have on the product side, which you see less of these days, but battery was an investor in Frenzer way back in the day, and I think they were way ahead, but unfortunately grew too fast. They couldn't keep up and Facebook ultimately won that market, which is unfortunate for us. But I'll tell you the one that we see is kind of a common issue is really around sales leadership. And so we spent a lot of time blogging about this issue, about hiring a great BPS sales and how to think about sequencing mid-management in sales and then international expansion, those are the areas where I think people don't necessarily do a great job finding a great sales leader, sometimes moving on a sales leader to find the next person. It's a high-risk game because if you pick the wrong person, you're not going to know that for at least 12 or 18 months. And many times that's the difference between the number one and the number two person in a market. Is that critical 12 or 18 months?”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It's incredibly satisfying. You hope as an investor that you make some investments that reach real critical mass. Hopefully the founders enjoy the foods of their labor financially, but also most founders I have found are ultimately, they're ultimately more missionary than they are mercenary. And they want to change something about the world. And when you can get these companies to that stage, they really have to borrow a phrase dented the universe in a special way. And that's the part that's really enjoyable for me.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, I mean, I've gone everywhere from seed to pre-IPO rounds. I did the pre-IPO round in Marquetto and I did the Series A round at Sprinkler and everything in between.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I tell you a few things. I learned something from Jyoti Bunsel, who's the founder and CEO and chairman of AppDynamics. Jyoti has this one question that he asks people and he says, if you had to justify this product to your boss, how would you do it? You learn a lot in that question. One is, will the champion that you're talking to actually take the time to go to their boss, right? That's step one. If they don't, you know it's not a high priority. Can they find some tangible benefit? And are they then willing to ask for budget because it's high enough pain point? That's the real way of knowing is someone going to spend money at the end of the day against this problem.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “One of the beautiful things about investing is that it really is a mix of all these components that you look for. So when I think about patterns, I look for all of it to make my call. I'd say there's three kind of stages that people tend to get involved. There's this one million in recurring revenue stage that a lot of investors invest in. There's this kind of five to ten million dollar stage. And then there's really everything from 20 to IPO stage. Battery is a bit unique that we do all these stages. I personally have made investments across all these stages. It's not as dogmatic on the financial metrics, but I do tend to spend a lot of time going back.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I think five or ten years ago, I would say it was harder for seasoned executives to maybe work for younger founders. I think that with enormous success, folks like Anne Levy has had or Zuckerberg's had, I don't think that structure is an issue anymore. I do think as opposed to being a younger issue, I think it's a 10-year question. If a company only has a million or two million in revenue, there's just hundreds of companies like that. And so if you want to land that amazing executive, you have a greater shot at getting that person at 10 million. You probably have a better shot at getting that person at 20 million. So sometimes the person who's right for you for 0 to 20 is not the person who's going to be the executive that takes you from 20 to 200.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “The one thing that I would say founders sometimes do, and especially as I've noticed with younger founders, is for some reason they are less willing to hire executives earlier in the cycle. I think sometimes there's this skeptical perspective around what does an executive actually do? And whereas an individual contributor, you can see the work they do at an individual contributor, whether it's an engineer or a salesperson. And they tend to bias in that direction. And what you find is 12 months later, you really do need to bring in leadership. And so my advice to founders is it's okay to go to invest in leadership early in a company's cycle. A people tend to hire other A people. So if you can bring in a great VPS sales sooner rather than later is kind of, I think, the way to go.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “It's a great point. I've studied this question around starting companies and with a co founder starting at Solo, the number of co-founders in the ideal world, you would have one co-founder so that you have a person to go to. Being a founder or CEO is a lonely job. The co-founder is the kind of confidant until maybe you're up to real scale and you've got a real executive team around you. There's some things you really don't want to share with your board and you kind of want someone else to talk to you. And that's the role a co-founder can play. Having said that, I've worked with companies that have had no co-founders like Raji at Sprinkler and I've worked with companies that have had six co-founders like Guidewire and they've been equally successful. So I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I think of it as the highs are incredibly high and the lows are very low. And sometimes they happen in the same day and sometimes in the same hour of the same day for founders. You might lose a big deal. You might have somebody quit on you. You might land a great BPS sales. All those things are happening throughout the day for a founder. They have to somehow be able to detach from those lows and kind of keep going and making sure that there's opportunity for them. That's kind of what I think about. People think of it as it's a linear graph from zero revenue to $100 million in ARR and everything's hunky-dory in the world is awesome. But the roller coaster that's happening throughout that journey, it's not for the faint of heart. You need to have the right fortitude to be able to handle that.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Kind of think of it a little bit differently. I think being a founder, it's somewhat of a glorified path, but it is a really hard path. I mean, the ups and downs of a startup, I think, don't get talked about as much. And so requiring, you need incredible perseverance. Ideally, the right point in your life cycle where you can go all in on something. And so there's something nice about starting at that point in your career where you can really be all in for five, ten years, maybe before you have a family. Sometimes you have a family at that point. But founders have this great ability to learn. Prior experience is not required for success.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Definitely. I'd say when I first started a battery, the typical founder, so I started a battery when I was 27 years old. And I would say the typical founder that came in the door would be somebody like David Acheri up at Blade Logic, maybe 34 years old at the time, had some enterprise experience. And what I found is as I have gotten older, the founders that I'm working with are getting younger. Now I'm 43 years old, and many times I'm pitching to a founder who might be 26, 27, 28 years old. And I've often wondered, like, that's kind of interesting. Why is that happening? And I find that these founders are equally passionate, very thoughtful, similar intellect. What's allowed them to start earlier in their careers is really just the vast amount of knowledge that's now on the internet through great podcasts like yours and various websites and whether it's Brad Fell's website, who I think is amazing.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Leadership or the second spot in that market, and it's kind of hard to sometimes catch up, although not always the case. And so timing is really important. Thinking about the trends that allow for a new market are really important. On the consumer side, as you said, there's some differences. On the enterprise side, which is where I spend my time, there's mostly kind of new greenfield markets as typically where we invest in. And so markets that just really didn't exist before. Once in a while, we'll do some replacement markets, and those have been very good for us. A company like GuideWire software.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Question. So on markets, a lot of people will come to us and have this presentation about how this market is a $10 or $20 billion market. And I always find that to be Of the least exciting part of the presentation, like in the ideal world, what you're looking for is actually a Market that might be close to zero today, and that's going to be like $500 million three years from now. And it's really the new opportunity. However, you want to define it in this rapid growth where you get to enjoy an inflection point in the coming six, 12, 18 months. Kind of how that's what I think is the ideal If you get to a space and you're too early for it, many times you'll run out of money before that inflection point comes. And if you're too late, Someone's already captured”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “At a high level, I tend to use a pretty similar framework across my last 15 or 16 years. Really been looking at four key things. Look at market, the team, technology, and of course the deal itself. I've learned over the years that the most important thing really are the first two, the market and the team. There's some debate in the venture industry between which of those two is more important. Some will argue that if you back good founders, then they'll figure everything out. Some will argue that if you don't start with a good market, it's very hard to course correct and have the opportunity to figure something out.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Exciting intellectually speaking, you're trying to understand these markets, try to predict what might happen, ultimately make a few bets, and hopefully your predictions will play out. So that type of excitement and variety, it doesn't really exist in most other career paths. I think that's been one super exciting thing for me. The second part has really been the entrepreneurs that I work with. I've been fortunate to work with some just amazing founders. And they're intoxicating. You work with somebody like Rajiet Sprinkler. And you can't help believe the board meetings super excited and ready to take on the world because he just has this vision for what he wants to do that's so massive. And I have the luxury of working with a dozen plus such entrepreneurs kind of on a regular basis.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “There are a few things that I think are pretty exciting about the VC career path. One is there's kind of a lot of variety built into it. I might one week go to board meeting at Wayfair and talk about the home goods market and the next week I'll go to Marquetto and we'll talk about marketing technology another day, go to Glassdoor and we'll talk about the recruiting space and how that's evolving. You get to learn about all these different segments that are out there that form, broadly speaking, you know, the economy and really kind of think about the trends in each of those segments. I would say it's incredibly”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Sure. I've been at Battery now 16 years. Seems an amazingly long time. I actually got into Venture somewhat accidentally, graduated undergrad with a computer science degree, and thought that I would work in product management for a software company. And after my business school degree, folks at battery reached out and said, do you want to do a project on the streaming media space? I had just worked as a summer intern at a company called Real Network. They were the inventor of the real media player, so kind of the original streaming media player. And I was very excited by that space. I'd worked in satellite TV at Sky TV and thought I would do video on the internet post-business school. But when the battery folks came calling, I decided to give it a shot. I thought I would spend a couple years doing it until I found that magical perfect startup. But 16 years later, I'm still investing in software and internet companies.”

    2016-04-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source