Chelsea Stoner

General Partner at Battery Ventures

Background:
Chelsea is a San Francisco-based General Partner at Battery and joined the firm in 2006. Prior to Battery, she was an associate at the private equity firm Key Principal Partners. Earlier in her career, Chelsea was a manager at Accenture, where she led technology and strategy projects. She also has held positions with Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong and with Classified Ventures. She received a BS with honors in chemical engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Currently Chelsea serves on the Healthcare Technology Advisory Council for the Cleveland Clinic. She also currently sits on the Northwestern University Engineering School Board.

You had a unique path to investing coming from a chemical engineering background. Can you share some background on your journey into investing?  
I would frame my journey to finding my dream job as a 10-year experience in learning what I didn’t want to do, which was extremely important.  I studied chemical engineering in college and after 2 internships in labs, decided it was not a good fit.  I wasn’t sure what to do with a chemE degree, so I became a management consultant after graduation.  I loved it.  The work was exhilarating, the travel was exciting, but I realized it would be a hard career with a family given the constant travel.  I went back to get my MBA in finance and learned about investing, and I’ve never looked back.  The field combines the problem solving and quantitative skills I learned as an engineer, with the people side as well.  I feel so lucky to have found something I love to do – we get to be around super smart, passionate founders all day and learn about their businesses.  Every day is different and I’m rarely bored.

What is your favorite aspect of your current role?
As mentioned above, being around entrepreneurs who are so driven and passionate about their mission.  I also love learning about new business models and ideas.  

What advice would you share for women early on in an investing career?  
Well, I could give an entire semester long class with all the material I’ve collected over 18 years of investing.  A few come to mind:
•    Work harder and smarter than your competitors.  Always know your strengths v. other players and determine how to use them.  For example, I was very self-aware early on that I’m a quant nerd and need to go deep in data to gain the confidence to invest in a particular end-market or company.  As such, early-stage investing is not for me, but I love the growth stage.  This has allowed me to focus and hone a toolbox to help growth-stage companies scale.  
•    Speak up, speak up, speak up.  I was always reticent to speak up unless I was 99.9% positive that I was right, while the guys’ ratio was more like 70% (if that).  I would turn the dial down a bit to ~90% for a better balance--after all, it’s ok to be wrong sometimes.  It’s all about balancing risk of downside with benefit of upside!  
•    Find an incredible investor who is investing in the end market or deal type you are interested in and do whatever you can to work with them.  I strongly believe this is an apprenticeship business, so it’s important to learn from other strong investors.  This is a business where all the gains go to the top quartile, so it’s a challenging job to be part of those top companies.  I was lucky enough to learn from the best and have great mentors, both men and women, along the way.  There is so much nuance in this business, both in the selection of great deals and on the people side of how to offer the most help to CEOs and teams.   
•    Also, there are no dumb questions.  Always be curious and ask away!

What do you think is the most underrated skillset in analyzing potential investments?
The nuance of pulling together quantitative data with the more qualitative direct customer/market calls (I’ve never outsourced this) to put the puzzle together and understand all the signals of whether the company is sustainable, or has a sustainable market position, or if it has insurmountable flaws.  I’m not sure what to call this, but it’s the combo of the quant and qual skills – the puzzle master.  I’m always aspiring to be better and faster at this.   

What was the most helpful advice you’ve received in your career?
A very astute woman at a company we were investing in invited me to an impromptu lunch after one of our meetings.  She told me she could tell I was smart and should speak up more, because nobody else in the room even knew I was there.  She said I carried myself like a 20-year-old (I was 30) and needed to build up my presence, my confidence.  While it was difficult to hear, it was an honest assessment and I’m so thankful she took the effort to do me that huge favor.  For me, my confidence was built once I had experienced success – it was challenging road to get there though, and she gave me the nice boost I needed.        

What have you been reading and/or listening to recently?
Michael Lewis’s new book ‘Premonition: A Pandemic Story’.  Becky, our Battery marketing lead, gave me a copy.  It’s about our CDC and public healthcare policy – it’s fascinating and horrifying all at the same time. 

Thank you for your time, Chelsea! To learn more about Battery Ventures check out https://www.battery.com/