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CASE STUDY
Gainsight, a pioneer of customer success software

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.

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Gainsight Related ARTICLES

The presented case study investment was made in particular economic and market conditions. There can be no assurance that Battery Venture would elect, or be able, to exploit similar opportunities in a similar manner under similar or different economic and market conditions. More generally, there can be no assurances that the Battery vehicles will have comparable investment opportunities in the future. No assumptions should be made that any investments identified above were profitable. It should not be assumed that recommendations made in the future will be profitable or comparable to the portfolio company described in this case study. For a full list of all Battery Ventures investments, please click here.

Details
Focus area
Application Software
INVESTED
2013
STATUS
Aquired by Vista
Location
Mountain View, California
STAGE
Early
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