20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Neeraj Agrawal is a general partner at Battery Ventures investing in SaaS and Internet companies across all stages. He was a founding investor in BladeLogic in 2001 and has invested in several other companies that have gone on to stage IPOs, including Bazaarvoice, Guidewire Software, Marketo, Omniture, RealPage and Wayfair. His current, private investments include AppDynamics, Catchpoint, Chef, Cohesity, Coupa, Glassdoor.com, Nutanix, Optimizely, Pendo, SmarterHQ, Sprinklr, StellaService, Tealium and Yesware. For the last six years, Neeraj has been recognized on the Forbes Midas List, which ranks the top 100 venture capitalists in the world.

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In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Neeraj made his way into the world of VC?

2.)Question From Logan Bartlett: 'What is your thought process on what makes a good vs a bad deal? Also, how have you developed your ability to process deals and poke holes in logic?'

3.) How can early stage Saas founders determine the extent to their product market fit??

4.) What is it like to back rocketships like GlassDoor or Marketo and helping scale operations when you’re in hyper growth mode? Does Neeraj agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship?

5.) Neeraj previously stated in a Nasdaq article that it is all about the team and the market. So I am intrigued what are Neeraj's thoughts on VC founder alignment? Neeraj also places emphasis on the market, so how does Neeraj view the juxtaposition between current and future market?

6.) One hurdle preventing some companies from growth is the ability to attain later rounds of funding so as a largely Series B investor, why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell?

Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Neeraj's Fave Blog: Brad Feld, Jason Lemkin

Neeraj's Most Recent Investment: Pendo.io

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Neeraj on Twitter here!

If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to another sterling week on the 20 minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, who you can find on Snapchat at H. Stebbings, that's Stebbings with two bees.
0:09.7	Now, as you may have heard recently, the godfather of SAS and Saster, Jason Lemkin and I, have teamed up to create the official Saster podcast.
0:18.7	Therefore, to highlight this, we'll be doing a deep dive on all things
0:22.1	SaaS this week on the 20-minute VC. And joining us for this deep dive, I'm so thrilled to
0:27.2	welcome the experts from Battery Ventures. And more specifically, joining me today, we have
0:32.6	Niraj Agrawal, general partner at Battery Ventures, where he focuses on SaaS and internet companies across
0:38.8	all stages. He was a founding investor in Blade Logic in 2001, and has invested in several other
0:45.4	companies that have gone on to stage IPOs, including Bazaar voice, guidewire, software, Marquetto,
0:52.2	Omniture, Real Page, and Wayfair. And his current investments, Asimli is
0:56.8	impressive with the lights of Cooper, Glassdoor.com, Newtonix, optimise, Pendo, Sprinkler, and many,
1:04.3	many more incredible companies. However, we're not the only ones who seem to think that
1:08.0	NIRAAGE is incredible. For the last six years, he's been
1:10.9	recognised on the Forbes Midas list. But before we dive into the show with Niraj today,
1:15.6	the 20-minute VC is brought to you by Lisa. Lisa are like the Tom's and Warby Parker of the
1:20.6	mattress industry. Why? Well, having created an awesome online end-to-end mattress buying experience,
1:26.5	replacing the worst ever experience of buying
1:29.2	and testing a mattress in a terrible mattress showroom. That still is not enough for them,
1:34.2	as they like to give back, which is why for every 10 mattresses Lisa sells, they donate one to a shelter.
1:39.9	These mattresses are also not just any mattresses. They're engineered to perfection with three unique layers, including two inches of memory foam and two inches of latex light foam designed to keep you cool.
1:51.0	Not only are they engineered to perfection, but all Lisa mattresses are made in the UK and the US and can be shipped for free to the US, UK and Canada.
1:59.8	They also have a 100-night trial, so what is the risk?
2:03.3	Head over to lisa.com forward slash VC, that's L-E-E-E-S-A, and enter the promo code V-C-75 at checkout
	...

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