Entrepreneur Network
Fostering the Entrepreneurial Community
It’s
not enough to sit back, consider the present, and evaluate only those opportunities
that come to us. Battery plays an active role in fueling the
next generation of market leaders and in mentoring, fostering and promoting
the entrepreneurial community.
We support these efforts through two programs that bring selected entrepreneurs together with our investment team. This serves multiple purposes: the entrepreneurs may be searching for their next big thing, and we can help. At the same time, their passion, leadership skills and knowledge may be equally helpful to us in evaluating new investments and helping our portfolio companies.
Our Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) Program
We think of our EIRs as “great athletes”: people we want to work with in some capacity. This structured program matches successful entrepreneurs with Battery team sponsors to formally evaluate market sectors and companies. We search together for the right investment opportunity, combining the EIR’s domain expertise and experience with our resources and investing knowledge. EIRs typically work with us for at least six months on a full-time basis, and usually transition to the investee company once we make an investment.
Our EIR program has given shape to many outstanding portfolio companies: Ruckus Network (Vincent Han and David Galper); Made2Manage Systems (now Consona) (Jeff Tognoni, CEO); BladeLogic (Vijay Manwani, CTO); @stake (Ted Julian); and TheLoanPage (Stein Kretsinger, CEO).
The Battery Leadership Program
Our Leadership Program brings entrepreneurs together with the Battery team in an informal manner to evaluate investments, conduct due diligence, and explore new technologies and market opportunities. Battery Leaders are talented entrepreneurs and executives who bring valuable insight and experience to our investment process. They typically work with us for three to six months on a part-time basis, and many have gone on to join a portfolio company.
Alumni of the Battery Leadership Program include Bart Foster, CEO of former Battery portfolio company DecisionPoint Software; Larry Link, former Vice President Sales, Secure Products Group, Juniper Networks; Walter Kelt, who managed the East Coast content switching division for Cisco Systems; Dominique Trempont, former Chairman, CEO and President of Kanisa, Inc.; Shawn Price, CEO of Savvion; David Gai, Vice President and General Manager of Worldwide Customer Support for BEA Systems; John McMahon; and Narry Singh.
If you are interested in learning more about these programs, please contact our Recruiting Partner, Cornel Faucher.