Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
Battery Ventures
The Boston-born, technology-only firm that runs early-stage venture, growth equity and control buyouts from a single fund family. It is a technology-only, stage-agnostic specialist in B2B software, known for sector theses (cloud, OpenCloud, industrial tech), for steady fund growth, and for treating buyouts of mature software businesses as part of the same practice as venture.
At a glance
- Founded
- 1983, Boston (Wellesley/Waltham area originally)
- Founders
- Rick Frisbie, Howard Anderson (founder of the Yankee Group research firm) and Bob Barrett
- Headquarters
- Boston (Back Bay); offices in San Francisco, Menlo Park, New York, London and Tel Aviv
- Ownership / structure
- Private partnership; general partners own the management company
- Leadership (2026)
- No single CEO; general partners include Neeraj Agrawal, Chelsea Stoner, Dharmesh Thakker, Michael Brown, Morad Elhafed, Roland Anderson, Jesse Feldman, Brandon Gleklen, Dave Tabors (private equity) and Itzik Parnafes (Israel); senior advisors include Roger Lee and Scott Tobin (roster verify)
- AUM / capital raised
- $16bn+ raised since inception (firm); Battery Ventures XV $3.25bn (closed February 2026, verify); Form ADV regulatory AUM ~$15–18bn (reported, varies by source)
- Stage focus
- Seed/early, growth, and control buyouts of technology businesses; sectors: application software, infrastructure software, consumer, industrial tech + life-science tools
- Signature investments
- Akamai, Coupa, Groupon, Wayfair, Glassdoor, Sprinklr, Marketo, Splunk, Nutanix, JFrog, Braze, Coinbase, Confluent, Guidewire, ServiceTitan, Habana Labs (Intel), Guardicore (Akamai), Forterro (buyout); instructive: BlueJeans, Groupon's post-IPO collapse
10 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
1998
Akamai
Early Venture Round
2008
Coupa
Early Venture Round
2010
Groupon
Growth Round
2011
Glassdoor
Venture Round
2011
Sprinklr
Series A
2011
Wayfair
Growth Round
2012
Forterro
Buyout
2013
BlueJeans
Growth Round
2016
JFrog
Growth Round
2018
Habana Labs
Venture Round