As a firm, we are likely best known for our 40-year heritage in software investing across stages. But our team is a little different, as we focus on industrial technology and life-science tools. Put in the most overly simplistic way, our scope includes technology businesses that are not pure-play software.
Our practice is diverse and focuses on critical enabling technologies for research, quality control, automation and scientific workflows, spanning instrumentation and sensor technologies, consumables (the picks and shovels enabling life-science research, analytical testing workflows and R&D) — even training and service providers.
Much like our software-investing colleagues, we prioritize what we call high-quality revenue: predictable and recurring revenue from consumables and services, over one-time product sales.
For our companies, which often have a number of revenue streams, from product sales and service contracts to consumable sales and software/data subscriptions, it can be more challenging to define value, especially on a comparative basis as the revenue mix varies across companies. But we are seeing more and more technology companies implement software-enabled products and services, as artificial intelligence becomes more accessible and as investors and management teams place a greater emphasis on revenue stability, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
Within our portfolio, we’ve always prioritized improving revenue mix as a key value creation lever, in addition to other key factors such as scale, organic growth rate, profitability and customer/market diversification to name a few.
So, we sought to quantify what we knew intuitively: that for non-software technology businesses, revenue quality mix is a meaningful indicator of value, and moreover, should serve as a key lever to help companies increase in value over time.
Based on a quantitative analysis of publicly-traded ITLST companies and our own portfolio, we created a new framework — the Revenue-Quality Podium — to help management teams, investors and industry stakeholders track value creation as companies transition to a higher share of high-quality revenue.
Download the Revenue-Quality Podium Whitepaper here to see our full analysis.
The information contained herein is based solely on the opinions of Jesse Feldman, Zack Smotherman, Justin Rosner, Max-Julian Kaye and Stefan Momic, and nothing should be construed as investment advice. This material is provided for informational purposes, and it is not, and may not be relied on in any manner as, legal, tax or investment advice or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by Battery Ventures or any other Battery entity.
This information covers investment and market activity, industry or sector trends, or other broad-based economic or market conditions and is for educational purposes. The anecdotal examples throughout are intended for an audience of entrepreneurs in their attempt to build their businesses and not recommendations or endorsements of any particular business.
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