Profile

Ravi Mohan

Ravi Mohan has focused his entire career on the software business. Prior to co-founding Shasta Ventures, Ravi was a general partner at Battery Ventures where he led eight investments and served on the boards of 12 software and technology-enabled service companies.

Prior to joining Battery Ventures, Ravi built transaction-processing systems at Accenture, sold and implemented packaged software applications for Hyperion Software Corporation, and ran MIC, a software development firm based in India focused on business intelligence solutions to multinational corporations. Ravi also spent time at McKinsey & Company working with consumer packaged goods companies.

Ravi is very active in entrepreneurial circles and helped found the Silicon Valley Chapter of the Indian Venture Capital Association (IVCA) to leverage entrepreneurial activities between India and America. In addition, he is an active Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and regularly volunteers his time helping put together TiE events. He also serves on the Corporate Advisory Board for the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

Education:

  • M.B.A., Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
  • B.S., Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, Cornell University

Why I Love Working With Entrepreneurs

They’re passionate, they’re optimistic, they’re talented. The meetings I go to are all about creating change and are upbeat in nature. The positive energy from entrepreneurs lifts my spirits.

How I work with Entrepreneurs

For the entrepreneurs I work with, I’m hopefully someone they can trust in both good and bad times, and also someone they can have fun with. I think the main way I can help once we’ve invested in companies is to make sure the right people are working on the right value-creation activities with the right financial plan.

And hopefully bring some unique insight and perspective. It seems that I am able to add value to my portfolio companies in the product area to better nail down product/market fit to accelerate customer adoption.

What I Look for in an Investment Opportunity

The most important thing is the company founders. They have to have what it takes to attract other great people. They have to be energetic and passionate about what they’re doing and they have to be good listeners. And they need to be open, forthright and direct as I am that way.

What I Want to Learn in the First Meeting

When we meet with entrepreneurs for the first time we really want to hear about their backgrounds, why they are working together and why they’re doing what they’re doing, the problem they’re solving, why that’s important to their customer and how many of those customers there are.

They need to provide a product or service that people want and will pay money for in some way. And there have to be enough of those people to build a $100M+ revenue business. If they have built the product or service, we want to see the demo.

Title

  • Managing Director

Expertise

  • Technology-enabled Services
  • Virally adopted Software
  • Business Intelligence
  • Data Center Automation

Contact Info

"The positive energy from entrepreneurs lifts my spirits."

Current Investments

Selected Prior Investments


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