Recently I was talking with Harish Mohan, president of Narvar* and former Battery executive-in-residence about the rise of AI agents. We riffed that it seems at many B2B vendor websites we visit, we’re met with the companies’ AI agent—Jack, or Missy or Sam. We both find these agents great. They collect all the necessary information from visitors like questions about the product, use cases, pricing, competitors and so on. While…
The last few years have thrust CFOs into the limelight. The pandemic’s end, the persistence of work-from-home (WFH) plus ongoing economic uncertainty have all fundamentally shifted the CFO’s job description. Beyond just managing financial operations, CFOs are emerging as key leaders in understanding and improving performance across their organizations. By centralizing data across functions, communicating insights based on that data, and influencing a company’s culture, CFOs are in a unique…
Former Intel CEO Andy Grove wrote a book more than two decades ago called “Only the Paranoid Survive.” Intel took that mantra to heart for many years, reinventing itself multiple times and pushing to stay ahead of technology trends. I had a front-row seat to Intel’s aggressiveness, working as an intern at the company 30 years ago and, later, as an investor with the company’s Intel Capital venture-capital unit. As…
B2B customer support today is fragmented and inefficient. Sending an email about a technical issue often feels like tossing a message into the void. Chatbots promise real-time responses but force users out of their workflows, while support teams are overloaded by their inflexible ticketing systems, making it difficult for them to provide a seamless, high-quality customer experience. At the same time, over the last decade, workplace communication has undergone a…
Today’s financial advisors are operating in a dramatically shifting market. Consolidation and competition have changed firm dynamics as advisors try to provide more comprehensive wealth-management services to their clients, often leaving small advisors squeezed. At the same time, there’s huge promise and opportunity related to the fact that, over the next two decades, Baby Boomers are expected to pass down roughly $84 trillion to their heirs, who will presumably need…
As we navigate through the current AI revolution in software development, one thing is glaringly apparent: Both the infrastructure and application layers are experiencing a surge in demand. AI and other trends are dramatically increasing the amount of code being developed, meaning there is more code than ever that needs to be reviewed and verified before it’s put into production. That’s catching the attention of huge tech players like GitHub,…
Physical security is a universal requirement for all organizations, which in the U.S. alone deploy an estimated 85 million security cameras to monitor their premises against threats and crime. Yet almost all the exabytes of video data generated by these cameras serve no purpose: They vastly exceed the attentive capacity of people to view them. Indeed, experiments show that even dedicated personnel cannot effectively detect threats or illicit behavior while…
Eight years ago, Battery kicked off a research project into what we termed “blue-collar software”. We used the term to describe technology for workers in the field—on a crowded construction site, or on a factory or retail-shop floor—and not those sitting behind a cushy office desk. This software, we wrote in a slide deck at the time summarizing our thesis, was often delivered via mobile devices and focused on automating…
The best part of my job is that I get to meet so many wonderful people, but I don’t always remember the exact moment we met. But I definitely remember meeting Bob van Luijt, CEO of Weaviate.* When I introduced myself to Bob, he reacted with contagious enthusiasm. He was warm and engaged in our conversation. At one point, he pulled out his phone to show me pictures of Weaviate’s…
Has it finally happened? Have fledgling AI “experiments” inside companies finally morphed into real technology deployments, paving the way for big new efficiencies and streamlined workflows across all manner of industries and business processes? The answer, according to our Battery Ventures 2024 “State of the OpenCloud” report, is yes—to a point. Our research finds there’s still a big gap between expectations and reality when it comes to actually deploying generative…
Thirty years ago, I graduated from college, got my first job in software sales and was given three things: a $1 million quota, a CRM and a (desk) phone. Fast forward to 2024, that same new graduate entering software sales would get the same $1M quota. But he’d also get a mobile phone, a CRM, an avalanche of tools like LinkedIn for social selling, Slack for internal collaboration, DocuSign for…
Despite all the hype around generative AI—including some giant, headline-grabbing funding rounds announced recently—there’s still an ongoing debate in the market about whether smaller startups trying to build real businesses around AI are actually finding product-market fit. How many are actually finding paying, business customers for new tools and products solving real enterprise problems? As investors with a long-term, bullish outlook on generative AI, we’re excited to back early-stage companies…
As we head into 2025 budgeting season, the question on everyone’s minds is this: will the new year bring a return to robust tech budgets? Our latest State of Enterprise Tech Spending report provides a sneak peek. As in previous quarters, we polled 100 CXOs who collectively represent over $35B in annual technology spending; our goal was, as always, to gauge the budget planning and overall sentiment of large enterprise…
Since generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) became a household phrase in the last year, enterprise technology leaders have experienced incredible pressure to deploy the technology, between a groundswell of user requests and top-down mandates from boards. However, actual enterprise implementation of AI is proving to be more complicated, something that could adversely impact the fortunes of software companies selling into the enterprise, at least in the near term. Specifically, many…
Predicting the weather—especially in this age of climate change—is big business. Today, the market for weather-forecasting services is $10 billion in the U.S., where an estimated one-third of the economy is exposed to weather and climate. Industries ranging from agriculture to commerce to the military are key consumers of weather-forecasting technology, most of which is based on information provided by large, national weather services. But today, exciting new technologies are…
Starting my career in political communication taught me a lot, but one of the most important lessons was this: Know, and never underestimate, your audience. It’s easier said than done. After my pivot into the software world, I’ve experienced firsthand how challenging it can be to explain a complex technology in accessible language or reach a niche buyer audience. Good software marketing is hard, but excellent marketing is extremely hard—to…
In evaluating what type of go-to-market approach to use in introducing a new SaaS product to potential buyers, a founder likely will look closely at whether product-led growth (PLG) is the most effective strategy. If that’s the choice, a founder will then have to decide between two PLG pricing models: free trial and freemium. In this blog post, we will examine both models and offer real-world use case examples. We’ll…
Too many GTM efforts in B2B companies are focused on leads and pipeline creation, causing them to wonder why that doesn’t work well for them. Outcomes are unpredictable and the marketing and sales teams are badly aligned. That’s why in my blog post “Modern Demand Management,” I proposed a “VAP” (value-added pipeline) approach for B2B marketers that is a function of the ending pipeline and the total bookings or ARR…
New online-privacy regulations and reduced use of online “cookies,” which track people’s movements on websites, have been lauded by online-privacy advocates—but they’ve made things tough for corporate marketers. It means that today, most marketers are finding it harder to measure the efficacy of their online campaigns with the level of granularity they could in previous years. Tracking specific individuals online has become much more difficult, forcing marketers to find new…
At Battery, we’re laser-focused on identifying verticals where AI adoption isn’t just a boardroom talking point, but a seamless solution to real pain points. In our view, healthcare is clearly one of those verticals; government contracting is another. We’re equally enthusiastic about AI’s potential to transform the legal industry. When we recently attended Legalweek in New York, we saw firsthand how excited the legal community is becoming about AI, too.…
Today we are excited to announce that AuditBoard*, a software company specializing in risk-and-compliance software for large enterprises, has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Hg, a global software-and-services investor, for over $3 billion. The last six years of Battery’s partnership with AuditBoard have been, in our view, the ride of a lifetime. Today, we’d like to share some of that story with you—as AuditBoard is in many…
With deepfakers, fraud agents and identity thieves growing in numbers and sophistication, the landscape of cybersecurity technology is growing in parallel. These days, it’s not enough to add an exclamation point to the same password you use for everything (seriously, don’t do that). The proliferation of global cybercrime and data security issues has drawn the attention of global policymakers, who have responded by issuing new regulation, from the California Consumer…
For an established company, the process of raising capital is usually a straightforward exercise in corporate finance. For a startup, however, every round of venture financing is fraught with dramatic decisions and symbolism. When a startup is struggling, or merely unproven, survival itself is at stake. In the early days at Guidewire*, my co-founders and I quickly realized that beggars can’t be choosers and that any capital meant keeping the…
The first quarter of 2024 has drawn to a close and we’re excited to unveil the findings of our latest State of Enterprise Tech Spending report, intended to gauge the budget planning and overall sentiment of large enterprise technology buyers. As in previous quarters, we polled 100 CXOs who collectively represent over $35B in annual technology spending. To get up to speed on past reports, check out what we published…
Times have gotten more challenging for many technology companies of all sizes. The easy-money era of low interest rates is over, and many investors are demanding more rigor from the companies they back. No more growth at all costs—software leaders must focus on smart growth, discipline and sustainable revenue in 2024 and beyond. Helping small startups and larger, more-mature tech companies scale to reach their potential is always tricky. Fortunately,…
In this digital age, where every online transaction, interaction, and click leaves a data trail, the imperative for organizations to maintain robust data-privacy programs has never been clearer. This also has led to a myriad of new data-privacy laws and regulations all over the globe. While these new laws no doubt have the positive impact of protecting individual data rights, they also present challenges for businesses trying to comply with…
There’s plenty of advice out there for American companies hoping to expand internationally. But what’s the playbook for European and Israeli companies—specifically those in enterprise tech—hoping to “hop the pond” and enter the lucrative U.S. market? On this topic, Battery has you covered. We recently published an in-depth guidebook with advice for EMEA-based companies on how to structure a move into the U.S. We discuss issues such as timing (when,…
For kids, it’s back to school season. For software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, it’s time to start planning for the next fiscal year—including figuring out the details around all-important sales territories for sales reps. Right now, many companies are putting together draft annual sales plans complete with people, quotas, costs, and more detailed items like ramp times and attrition all factored in. Because hiring takes time, sales and finance teams are also…
Just two months after its initial release, OpenAI’s ChatGPT reached 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history according to Reuters. In the months since, we have seen AI strategy rise to a top priority among business leaders: More than half of CXOs now list “Generative AI and LLMs” among their top five priorities, according to our latest Battery Ventures Cloud Software Spending survey. But the growing…
Generational change is an inevitability, particularly where technology is concerned. The fact that you’re (most likely) reading this post on a computer or smartphone is indicative of how much has changed since Battery was founded 40 years ago, when such devices–let alone more advanced technologies like artificial intelligence–were little more than a theory. Today, technology is a fixture of every aspect of our lives: a trend that will only accelerate…
The process of building software usually begins with a set of requirements; As engineers, we are trained to find the most efficient way to solve these requirements. Then, we figure out how to adjust and scale the software based on the usage and reliability needs of users. This process is cyclical, even Sisyphean. As the software is used and the business grows, the product must be improved to meet new…
A startup spends so much energy on acquiring and retaining its customers that voluntarily severing its relationship with any of them feels like self-inflicted harm. Yet, when necessary, acting decisively to “fire” a customer can mean the difference between survival and failure for a young company. By far the most important time to act is when customer relationships entered into in good faith reveal themselves to be strategically misaligned. Here’s…