Sapphire Ventures
Partnering with expansion-stage, enterprise software companies that we believe can become category leaders.
Sapphire Partners
Limited partner investing in exceptional early-stage venture fund managers.
Sapphire Sport
Partnering with early-stage companies at the nexus of technology and culture.
Menu close
Sapphire
Table of contents
Sapphire & Pendo: Partners in Delighting Users with Better Digital Product Experiences
Published
May 13, 2021
Table of contents
Share

Pendo was founded in 2013 when former leaders from Rally, Google, Cisco, and Red Hat joined forces to build something they wanted, but never had as product managers—an easy way to understand and act on what truly drives product success. 

“When I founded Pendo, I saw two major trends taking shape. First, it was clear that data was super valuable in terms of the quality of decisions it could inform. And two, data could help guide where to take products in the future. But, it was incredibly hard to get this data, requiring a lot of engineering and manual work,” says Todd Olson, founder and CEO of Pendo.

Meanwhile, a third trend was also beginning to emerge. Companies began to release features faster than ever before, making it difficult for customers to keep up. This exposed a gap for customers, and their user experience, which is the opposite effect any product team and company wants to have. So how could Pendo solve this growing problem?

Pendo understands that the largest and most sustainable differentiator from one app to the next isn’t necessarily based on technical complexity. Rather, the ability for end-users to achieve rapid time-to-value and experience ongoing satisfaction with the product is paramount. At its core, Pendo provides a product adoption platform that improves the user experience with the digital products, apps, and services businesses and consumers use daily.

Early on, here at Sapphire, we believed that Pendo was going to be a company of consequence. That’s why in 2018, we decided to back Todd and the Pendo team by leading the company’s Series D round. Since then, Sapphire has been able to partner with Pendo many times over, delivering useful and valuable services to the Pendo team–from meaningful business introductions to more than half a dozen talent placements, including Pendo’s SVP of Product, Chief People Officer, VC of Talent and the Chief of Staff to the CEO.

“Sapphire’s talent team is the best I’ve ever encountered in the VC ecosystem. They not only bring candidates to the table, but they’re active participants in helping us close key leaders across our business,” says Todd. “Furthermore, they’ve helped us bolster diversity at Pendo, an important area of focus for us, by bringing exceptional female leaders to the company.”

About eight years after its founding, Pendo is transforming how products and apps are being developed and delivered to end-users. Major companies like ADP, Cisco, Salesforce, and many others use Pendo daily to inform product decisions and ensure user expectations are being met. Looking ahead, Pendo is seeing a new opportunity crop up in the area of employee experience. As Todd and the Pendo team continue to help teams understand product effectiveness and success, we’re thrilled to be on this journey together.

We’re so excited that we developed a case study highlighting our work together. Check it out here:

Read the Case Study

 

Legal disclaimer

Disclaimer: Nothing presented within this article is intended to constitute investment advice, and under no circumstances should any information provided herein be used or considered as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any investment fund managed by Sapphire Ventures, LLC (“Sapphire”). Information provided reflects Sapphires’ views as of a time, whereby such views are subject to change at any point and Sapphire shall not be obligated to provide notice of any change. Nothing contained in this article may be relied upon as a guarantee or assurance as to the future success of any particular company. Companies mentioned in this article are a representative sample of portfolio companies in which Sapphire has invested in which the author believes such companies fit the objective criteria stated in commentary, which do not reflect all investments made by Sapphire. A complete alphabetical list of Sapphires’ investments made by its direct growth and sports investing strategies is available here. Various content and views contained within this article represent those of third party guests, which do not necessarily reflect the views of Sapphire. Such views are subject to change at any point and do not in any way represent official statements by Sapphire. Various statements made by third party guests about Sapphire relate to the nature and type of management services provided by Sapphire and do not constitute testimonials to Sapphires’ investment advisory services and no inference to the contrary should be made. Sapphire does not solicit or make its services available to the public and none of the funds are currently open to new investors. While the Sapphire has used reasonable efforts to obtain information from reliable sources, we make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of third-party information presented herein, which is subject to change. Past performance is not indicative of future results.