Background:

Battery has a long history of investing in the ERP-software market, dating back to the firm’s first-ever buyout transaction in 2003 involving the acquisition of Made2Manage, a manufacturing-centric ERP software provider based in the U.S. The company re-branded as Consona and made 9 subsequent acquisitions. Following the Consona exit in 2012, Battery began researching the highly fragmented European ERP landscape, initiating a new research project to identify a European ERP platform that could serve as an anchor for an acquisition strategy.

This research culminated in Battery’s initial acquisition of the Forterro platform via the take-private of Jeeves Information Systems, a Swedish ERP provider for small and midsize businesses. Battery subsequently identified additional, mid-market ERP companies in other European countries that, like Jeeves, were servicing their respective domestic markets well but faced limitations on their growth. Battery brought these companies together via acquisitions to build a much larger, pan-European business.

The Battery Impact:

• Led Forterro’s acquisition strategy and execution, sourcing its M&A opportunities, leading due diligence, determining debt strategies, and executing the final financings.
• Ultimately helped company complete 14 acquisitions across six countries, including France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and The United Kingdom.
• Formed the Forterro management team, recruiting seasoned software-industry executives who could operate the corporate entity, while working directly with the management teams and executives for the brands acquired by Forterro.
• Established Forterro as a large, multi-national software company serving more than 10,000 small and midsize manufacturers and distributors around the world.
• Grew its revenue over 10 times from 2012 to 2022.

Outcome:

In 2022, Battery sold Forterro to Partners Group for €1 billion. Following its closing, Battery announced a re-investment into the business and now holds a significant minority share.

Battery continues to serve as a corporate-development resource for the company, helping Forterro identify and execute new acquisitions, and Battery investors Dave Tabors and Zak Ewen serve as observers on the Forterro board.

The post Forterro, a pan-European provider of enterprise-resource planning (ERP) software. appeared first on Battery Ventures.

Background:

Customer-service software has long been a massive part of the cloud TAM – Salesforce’s Service Cloud is actually larger than the company’s Sales Cloud–but despite the seeming maturity of the segment, shifting consumer expectations have transformed the category and created space for disruptive, new market entrants.

Battery originally invested in Kustomer in January 2019. What immediately struck us about Kustomer was the deep domain knowledge of the founders Brad Birnbaum and Jeremy Suriel, who together had been building customer experience and customer service software companies for more than 20 years. We felt  they had extensive knowledge of the industry and clarity in their founding vision: That most customer-experience (CX) platforms are fundamentally architected the wrong way. Namely, their core objective is to handle and clear service “tickets.” Kustomer, as the name suggests, fundamentally architects not around the ticket but around the “customer.” All cases, messages, and other forms of data tie back to that person. This approach allows Kustomer, in our view, to deliver a fundamentally different service experience.

The Battery Impact:

• Battery knew the Kustomer founders Brad and Jeremy well. With a stage-agnostic, research-driven approach to investing, Battery had done extensive research on the customer-service software landscape, the forces driving its evolution and the companies to watch. So, when the opportunity to invest arose, Battery was able to make a very quick decision, moving from deep dive meetings with the founders to delivering Kustomer a term sheet in 24 hours.
• Battery General Partner Neeraj Agrawal was a key advisor to the management team as a member of the Kustomer board. When the company received M&A interest, he worked closely with management on the company’s positioning and thesis, evaluating its many options and ultimately helping navigate the M&A process.

Outcome:

In November 2020, Facebook (now Meta) announced its intent to acquire Kustomer. Following regulatory review, the acquisition closed in Q1 of 2022. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The post Kustomer, customer service software appeared first on Battery Ventures.

Background:

Battery first got to know Streamsets’ founders, Girish Pancha and Arvind Prabhakar, shortly after the two founded the company in 2014. Girish was a veteran of first-generation data giant Informatica, while Arvind had experience at both Informatica and Cloudera, a company in which Battery General Partner Dharmesh Thakker had previously invested. Girish and Arvind started the company because they felt large enterprises weren’t being adequately served by existing data-integration/middleware products; organizations were still struggling to deal with 1) ever-increasing amounts of data to parse, and 2) managing data sprawl (or “drift”) across a number of internal silos, including large applications as well as more-niche data repositories like devices, logs and sensors. This made data integration extremely difficult.

Streamsets solved these problems by making open-source software to ingest data directly from these repositories and then transforming it, in real-time, so it was ready for analysis. The company’s roadmap and model fit well into Battery’s existing investment thesis about the broader, increasing need for new types of data technology at companies across industries.

Battery’s Impact:

Battery first invested in Streamsets’ Series A round in late 2015. The company’s product was not yet generally available, and the team had only a handful of beta customers. Battery helped the company grow and scale in a number of ways, including:

• Helped recruit several C-level executives, including the president and CRO, who played a critical role in efficient growth.
• Introduced company to several executive decision makers at Fortune 2000 organizations
• Facilitated strategic relationship with cloud providers and strategic partners during the company’s growth journey.

Outcome:

Streamsets was acquired by Germany’s Software AG for roughly $580 million in 2022.

The post Streamsets, an enterprise-grade provider of data integration for modern analysis. appeared first on Battery Ventures.

Background:

Battery’s first step in creating SPT Labtech occurred in 2015, when the team met the managing director of a company called TTP Labtech, then a subsidiary of diversified, U.K. technology company TTP Group. Battery kept in touch with the executive, David Newble, for several years about the possibility of spinning out TTP Labtech—which focused primarily on sample- management and sample-preparation technology for laboratories–and building a larger business around it.

In 2018, Battery announced the spinout of TTP Labtech and brought in executive Patrick Bennett to work with Newble to help build the company.  The newly branded SPT, based in the Melbourn Science Park near Cambridge, grew into a much larger firm offering a portfolio of automation, instrumentation and consumables products for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and academic-research markets. Some of the company’s products were even used to help sequence the genome of the Covid-19 virus.

Battery’s Impact:

Battery helped the company grow and scale in several ways, helping it create new, profitable workflows in drug discovery, structural biology, sample management, biobanking and genomics. Specific areas of assistance include:

• Recruited a number of C-level executives for the team, including Patrick Bennett, who served initially as CEO and then chairman; David Newble then became CEO and retained that role.
• Helped the company accelerate revenue growth organically and through acquisitions; provided strategic counsel and tactical assistance to help executives flesh out the commercial, and not just the research-and-development, aspect of the business.
• Created a more-efficient capital structure and increased operating leverage in the business.
• Executed an M&A program that resulted in SPT acquiring four companies: Apricot Designs, BioMicroLab, LBD Life Sciences, and Quantifoil.

Outcome:

SPT Labtech was acquired by EQT Private Equity in 2022.

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