Neeraj Agrawal

General Partner, Battery Ventures · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investor@NeerajVC ↗LinkedIn ↗battery.com ↗

Neeraj Agrawal is a General Partner at Battery Ventures who formulated the T2D3 growth framework for SaaS companies. Over more than two decades at the firm, he has backed enterprise software companies including BladeLogic, Marketo, AppDynamics, Nutanix, Sprinklr, and Wayfair.

11statements → 2claims → 0claims resolved → 4.09/5average certainty → 2.27/5average debate potential → 4.5/5argument clarity · the sources → 13said about them ↓

2 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 7 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Neeraj argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.5 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.8 · precision 4.5 · compression 4

answered every one of 24 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

272 words/min while actually speaking · 18.3 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,550 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 2/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 1/10

setup questions received 50%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 14:14“And I'm intrigued that going back to the, to the characteristics on investability, and we said there were four there, and, and that slightly seems to kind of contradict a large sec…” ▶ 10:22“And you said the ups and downs aren't talked about enough there. What do you mean by that? We, we, you know, we, we hear a lot about failure and startups and success. So I'm, I'm j…” ▶ 15:53“So how can you tell if it is pain point number one? Is that if they're kind of ringing you up, pounding you for the next feature? Because it's often very difficult to gain that cus…”

when Neeraj pushed back ▶ 9:47“I kind of think of it a little bit different.”

What they said11 What others said13 Episodes1

Everything Neeraj Agrawal said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Enterprise buyers only buy software for their top two pain points

“I'll tell you the one thing I've learned is that if you're addressing something that's pain point number three, four or five on somebody's list, they just never get around to it. They just don't have enough time to buy that solution.”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 15:43 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Insight

Agrawal: Deal structure and price terms do not matter for winning investments

“What I've learned through that deal and many others since then is you should really be willing to do a deal regardless of the exact terms that you get, the exact structure you get, because that's how you really test your conviction in an investment thesis. You…”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 22:22 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Insight

Agrawal: Prior experience is not required for founder success

“Prior experience is not required for success.”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 10:20 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Insight

Agrawal: Mis-hiring a sales leader delays startups 12 to 18 months

“It's a high-risk game, because if you pick the wrong person, you're not going to know that for at least 12 or 18 months. And many times that's the difference between the number one and the number two person in a market, is that critical 12 or 18 months.”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 18:53 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Disclosure

Battery rejected $400M offer before selling Brighttree for $800M

“This is a SaaS software company in the healthcare space, and we had offers to sell the business for, say, a four hundred million dollar range. After a long conversation with the CEO, we collectively decided to turn that down and to keep going, and we were fort…”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 20:23 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Insight

Agrawal: Ideal target markets start near zero and inflect within 18 months

“In the ideal world, what you're looking for is actually a market that might be close to zero today. And that's going to be like 500,000,003 years from now. And it's really the new opportunity, however you want to define it. And there's a rapid and Rapid growth…”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 6:57 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Insight

Agrawal: Startup success does not depend on the number of co-founders

“I've worked with companies that have had no co-founders like Raji at Sprinklr, and I've worked with companies that have had six co-founders, like Guidewire, and they've been equally successful, so I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all.”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 12:05 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Agrawal: Seasoned executives working for young founders is no longer an issue

“I think five or 10 years ago I would say it was harder for seasoned executives to maybe work for younger founders. I think that, you know, with the enormous success folks like Anne Levy has had, or Zuckerberg's had, I don't think that that structure is an issu…”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 13:31 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Insight

Agrawal: The executive needed for $0–$20M revenue differs from $20–$200M

“So sometimes the person who's right for you for zero to 20 is not the person who's going to be the executive that takes you from 20 to 200.”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 14:07 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Disclosure

Battery Ventures lost early social market lead with Friendster to Facebook

“Battery was an investor in Frencer way back in the day, and I think they were way ahead, but unfortunately grew too fast, they couldn't keep up, and Facebook ultimately won that market, which is unfortunate for us.”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 18:13 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Agrawal: Product management will shift from gut-driven to data-driven

“The one liner here is we saw a dramatic transformation in the marketing function where it moved from being very gut driven to being data driven. Hence our investments in companies like exact target and Marketo and Omniture. We believe the same thing is now hap…”

Neeraj Agrawal Apr 18, 2016 ▶ 24:42 20VC: The Best Determinant Of Product Market Fit & Why Prior Experience Is Not Required For Founder Success with Neeraj Agrawal, General Partner @ Battery Ventures

The other half of the tape: Neeraj Agrawal's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 13 times in 5 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 6 Logan Bartlett 4 Alex Clayton 2 Jason Lemkin 1