Gainsight helps customer-success, post-sales and product teams put customers at their heart of their business to deliver better outcomes and grow net-dollar retention.

Background:

As a longtime investor in SaaS companies, Battery has always known that customer intention and upsell is a critical ingredient to a SaaS company’s long-term success. But back in 2010/2011, there was no product on the market that could help SaaS companies manage their existing customers, akin to what Salesforce did to help companies manage new customers/sales leads. We believed there was an opportunity to create a new category of technology to help companies better manage their existing customers, prevent churn and boost revenue. We kicked off a research project to see if any company was focused on this problem and stumbled onto JBara, a small company based in St. Louis that helped companies manage their “customer success” organizations.

Battery’s Impact:

• Battery started recruiting Nick Mehta, who had recently sold a company called LiveOffice to Symantec, to run JBara and move it to Silicon Valley in late 2012.
• In February 2013, Battery invested in JBara, installed Mehta as CEO and re-branded the company as Gainsight.
• Over the next seven years, Battery invested in Gainsight over multiple funding rounds, from the Series A to Series E, and helped the company refine its product and go-to-market strategy. Battery also encouraged Gainsight to move up-market and helped the company as it built out an enterprise product, adjusted pricing and refined its go-to-market motion. Battery introduced Gainsight to five of its first 10 customers.
• Battery also helped recruit most of the Gainsight leadership team, brought in other investors and board members, spoke at almost every Gainsight event and served as a market evangelist for the company and its mission.

Outcome:

In November 2020, Gainsight was acquired by Vista Equity.