Boston, MA – Nov. 17, 2020 – OpenView, a leading venture capital firm focused on business software, today announced the expansion of its investment team with the addition of Sanjiv Kalevar. With capital to invest from Fund VI, Sanjiv will lead investments and further build the firm’s portfolio of expansion-stage SaaS companies.

Sanjiv Kalevar brings a wealth of business software investing experience, joining OpenView from Battery Ventures, where he spent seven years, most recently as Principal. At Battery, Sanjiv built an impressive portfolio of successful software companies including unicorns ServiceTitan, and InVision, high-growth leaders such as AuditBoard and MX, as well as up and coming businesses like UpKeep and VNDLY while serving on the Board of Directors for Mews and Newforma. Prior to Battery, Sanjiv worked for global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners and Hyde Park Angels, an early-stage angel investment group in Chicago.

“OpenView has been building a portfolio, a value-add platform, and thought leadership around product-led growth that has been resonating with founders, CEOs and the startup ecosystem,” said Sanjiv Kalevar.  “I’m excited to bring my experience and my keen interest of investing in overlooked and legacy industries that are yet to undergo a digital transformation to OpenView’s team to further grow our portfolio.”

Earlier this year, OpenView added Peter Weed to its operating team, to deepen the firm’s relationships with market-leading expansion-stage SaaS startups. Prior to Lumia, he spent over a decade at McKinsey & Company where he was a Partner and Co-Founder, Global Co-Head of the Fast Growth Tech Practice (now Fuel by McKinsey). In that role he worked with hundreds of venture-backed innovators and dozens of best-in-class VC firms, helping achieve and maintain category-leading positions scaling from $10MM to $100MM, and beyond.

“I joined OpenView to enhance our vision and leadership of the product-led growth revolution,” said Peter Weed. “Joining the team has been an exciting opportunity to bring my experience scaling SaaS innovators to our portfolio of startups and help those organizations to shape the future as category leaders.”

“At OpenView, we’re focused on improving people’s working lives by partnering with entrepreneurs who are bringing technology into the workplace to do just that,” said Mackey Craven, partner at OpenView. “Sanjiv’s experience and focus on antiquated industries going through a digital transformation resonated with us deeply—and as we got to know him, we saw that his support of the entrepreneurs he works with and their missions goes even deeper.”

About OpenView

Founded in 2006, OpenView is a venture capital firm investing globally in business software companies. With a mission to improve people’s working lives, OpenView’s focused investment approach across sector and stage enables the firm to identify and partner with category leading business software companies. The firm’s focus extends to operational excellence through its dedicated expansion team working with portfolio companies on go-to-market, sales and marketing, product led growth, talent, and corporate development. The firm is based in Boston and has $1.5 billion in total capital under management. For more information, please visit https://openviewpartners.com/.

BOSTON, Oct. 14, 2020 – OpenView, a leading venture capital firm focused on business software, announced the closing of its sixth fund at the end of the second quarter. The Fund was oversubscribed, reaching its hard cap of $450 million in commitments.

OpenView will maintain its focused strategy of high conviction, concentrated venture investments in business software companies on the path to be large and enduring businesses.

“We are excited to continue to partner with the world’s most promising software companies,” said Mackey Craven, Partner at OpenView. “We are particularly enthusiastic about businesses like Datadog and Calendly that embrace product led growth, an end user-focused growth model that relies on the product itself as the primary driver of customer acquisition, retention and expansion. This approach not only leads to sound businesses, but to products that more directly impact people’s working lives.”

OpenView will manage Fund VI on behalf of a diverse group of endowments, pensions, foundations, and financial institutions, among other investors.

“We are deeply honored by the continued support of our world-class limited partners who have been with us for years, as well as those we have welcomed to the OpenView family as part of Fund VI, and we are grateful for their shared alignment in OpenView’s mission of improving people’s working lives,” said John McCullough, Partner and CFO at OpenView. “Fund VI allows us to further increase our support of the best founders and executive teams while continuing to position OpenView as the partner of choice for the world’s most promising business software companies.”

Since its founding in 2006, OpenView has raised $1.5 billion in commitments across six funds and has partnered with 54 companies, including Datadog, Calendly, Instructure, Expensify, Highspot, and Workfront, among others.

With nearly 60 team members and 29 active portfolio companies, OpenView maintains a two-to-one ratio of people to portfolio companies, ensuring the firm is able to provide a deep partnership and focused support as companies grow into large and enduring businesses.

About OpenView

Founded in 2006, OpenView is a venture capital firm investing globally in business software companies. With a mission to improve people’s working lives, OpenView’s focused investment approach across sector and stage enables the firm to identify and partner with category leading business software companies. The firm’s focus extends to operational excellence through its dedicated expansion team working with portfolio companies on go-to-market, sales and marketing, product led growth, talent, and corporate development. The firm is based in Boston and has $1.5 billion in total capital under management. For more information, please visit https://openviewpartners.com/.

Today, OpenView, the expansion stage venture capital firm, released the results of the 2019 Expansion SaaS Benchmarks survey. This year’s report was based on data from more than 500 SaaS companies, ranging from pre-revenue to $150M+ in ARR.

The 2019 Expansion SaaS Benchmarks Report culls data from SaaS organizations of all sizes and stages to help these businesses understand what does and does not work when it comes to building a generational software company.

From the survey data, it’s clear that there’s still a large parity gap when it comes to leadership positions and seats in the boardroom.

OpenView has been benchmarking gender parity in leadership positions for the past three years, and found that gender parity in leadership positions has increased from 12% in 2017 to 14% in 2019. While there has been growth, there is still a long way to go. At this rate, there won’t be full gender parity in leadership positions until 2055.

Devon McDonald, Partner at OpenView, explains, “We saw a big spike in women taking on leadership positions during the height of the #MeToo movement. Unfortunately, it seems like things have slowed down a bit and that initiative has once again taken a back seat. We’re hoping that legislation will force companies to rethink their leadership and board strategy. Our data shows that companies with an equal or female-dominated leadership team grew at faster rates than their male dominated peers (115% vs. 99% year-on-year growth). The proof is in the numbers, yet people are seemingly scared to take the leap and make diversity a priority.”

Additional findings from the 2019 report include:

• Product led growth (PLG) is becoming the norm: More than four-in-five survey respondents say they’ve adopted at least one PLG tactic such as a free trial offer, in-product self onboarding for new users and product analytics for decision making. However, there is significant room to embrace PLG. Only 33% say that product led growth is truly fundamental to their business strategy.
• What keeps founders up at night: Product execution and go-to-market (GTM) execution were founders’ top two concerns regardless of company size with just one exception (hiring was the #1 priority for those with $1-2.5M in ARR). Despite concerns of an impending economic downturn, fundraising was only a top concern for 22% of founders.
  SaaS founder stereotypes: The data shows that founders over the age of 30 operate companies that perform better. While they might not make headlines, these founders see 65% higher growth and 45% less monthly cash burn than their younger peers.
• The 2019 Expansion SaaS Benchmarks survey is sponsored by Oracle NetSuite and conducted in partnership with High Alpha, Point Nine, Foundry, Boldstart, Karma, MMC, iNovia, U Toronto, Visible, BGV, lool, TLV Partners, Notion Capital, Espresso Capital, Costanoa, RRE, Chicago Ventures and Beacon9.

About OpenView
OpenView, the expansion stage venture firm, helps build rapidly expanding software companies into market leaders. Through our expansion platform, we help companies hire the best talent, acquire and retain the right customers and partner with industry leaders so they can dominate their markets. Our focus on the expansion stage makes us uniquely suited to provide truly tailored operational support to our portfolio companies. Learn more about OpenView at ov.vc.