Logan Bartlett on Growth Investing, Valuations and Board Responsibilities in 2022

Logan Bartlett says he discovered venture investing indirectly through software advisory work in investment banking. Battery Ventures hired him after other firms, including Redpoint, initially passed. After roughly six years at Battery, he joined Redpoint around the beginning of 2020.

At Battery, he learned to assess opportunities across early and late venture, growth equity and buyouts. He credits the firm with discipline around returning money to limited partners and exposure to several investment styles. Those are his assessments of a former employer, not independently verified fund-return figures.

Asked in 2022 whether the downturn is a good time to invest, Bartlett says it is among the more attractive periods he has seen because prices are recalibrating and founders may be more selective about investors. He also sees opportunities in software, financial technology and healthcare. This is a contemporaneous investor view, not evidence about subsequent vintage returns.

Stebbings discloses that he was an early investor in BeReal, one consumer company they discuss. He then challenges the pricing claim: at seed and Series A, he sees little reduction because growth investors have moved earlier and may even be pushing prices up.

Bartlett describes a funnel from public markets to private valuations. Later-stage deals were becoming scarce or using structured terms, while many Series B and C companies with substantial cash were waiting rather than raising at potentially lower prices. Some growth investors, he says, were spreading the capital they might have used for one large round across smaller earlier investments.

He agrees this could inflate earlier-stage pricing, where investors may reason that a few million dollars of valuation difference matters less if a company becomes very large. The comparison is an account of the 2022 market, not a measure of current prices.

Stebbings argues that founders cannot reliably time the macro environment and should raise if they need money. Bartlett agrees that capital is a prerequisite for survival. For founders with enough runway, he says he had suggested waiting until later in 2022, when investors might be more active and pricing more coherent.

He says the preceding months had produced a confusing process: some investors claimed to be active but did not commit, while others offered widely different valuations. Waiting was intended to make partner selection and financing more efficient, not a promise that prices would improve.

Stebbings wonders whether investors should aggressively concentrate money in existing winners at lower prices or avoid catching a falling knife. Bartlett distinguishes stages: late-stage investments must ultimately relate to public-market exit valuations, while early-stage follow-ons may be attractive if absolute entry prices, blended cost and fund concentration make sense.

He cites private deals reportedly priced at 200–300 times ARR during the recent period against much lower public-market multiples. The comparison uses his illustrative figures and different forward-looking measures; it does not establish a common valuation methodology or a realized return.

Can a fund truly build ownership in its best companies? Bartlett says firms that support an initial investment seriously, rather than treat it only as a call option, may earn future opportunities. He criticizes aggressive tactics that box out other investors, saying they may damage the founder relationship in later rounds.

The host notes that such hands-on support requires good selection because time is scarce. Bartlett agrees: treating a small position like a major one can consume substantial time even if the company does not succeed.

Bartlett says some venture investors became accustomed to founders seeking them out and may have mistaken favorable timing for skill. In his account, the power balance moved sharply toward founders in the preceding two years, forcing investors to compete more actively for opportunities. This is his characterization of the market and other investors.

Asked where Redpoint faces competition, he compares the evolution of venture to media moving from a few broadcast channels to more personalized offerings. Founders can choose specialist funds, large brands or investors with different service models; Redpoint, he says, needs both individual expertise and a coherent firm identity.

Stebbings questions whether promoting individual partners and the firm brand simultaneously is realistic, suggesting firms often choose one orientation. Bartlett agrees there is tension but cites firms that have elevated both individual investors and the institution. His description of Redpoint's positioning reflects his professional interest in the firm.

The conversation turns to private valuations. Stebbings argues managers should mark down portfolios transparently rather than pretend old prices still apply. Bartlett agrees that asserting every company has the same value as six months earlier can damage trust, while arguing that a uniform markdown may ignore company-specific circumstances.

He notes that limited partners can have different incentives: a fund of funds may prefer stable marks for its own reporting, while another institution may need lower private values to rebalance its allocation after public markets fall. These are examples of incentives, not evidence that either preference determines fair value.

Bartlett says a disciplined methodology and clear communication are essential because private assets are illiquid and hard to price until a financing, sale or public trading event. A reported valuation is an estimate and should not be confused with cash returned to investors.

Asked whether he lost price sensitivity in 2021, he says he changed underwriting as public-market multiples rose. Redpoint's growth framework still sought a three-to-five-times outcome with tenfold or greater upside, but a higher market reference naturally changed what investors were prepared to pay.

He says he does not regret owning the companies selected even though he wishes he had invested at later, lower prices. He recognizes that potential multiples could compress from the original upside case. His confidence in the portfolio is an investor's assessment, not a guarantee of realized returns.

Stebbings worries that scenario planning makes investors underestimate exceptional winners and reject them. Bartlett agrees it can be dangerous but uses a distribution of possible outcomes to make risk-adjusted decisions. He distinguishes a good decision that has a bad result from a poor decision that happens to succeed.

He recalls negotiating the price of Braze, then called Appboy, over an extended period and initially considering a $300–400 million acquisition more likely than a much larger public outcome. In the interview he refers to Braze as a public company worth about $5 billion. That was a historical market-value observation, not cash proceeds or a current valuation.

The lesson, Bartlett says, is not to lose an attractive company over a relatively small valuation difference, while recognizing that the eventual result was not inevitable. He still finds probability-based thinking useful despite the false precision it can create.

At growth stage, he focuses on a return multiple on dollars invested rather than a fixed ownership requirement. He says an exceptional outcome on a small ownership stake can exceed the result of owning a larger share of a more modest company; early-stage colleagues may put more emphasis on ownership.

Stebbings shares his view that a truly untenable market or political shock can overwhelm a strong founder. Bartlett describes a different missed opportunity: at Battery, he was concerned about Snowflake's early customer feedback and Amazon's competitive strength. He says Redpoint later invested in Snowflake, but he had passed on the earlier opportunity at Battery.

In hindsight, Bartlett believes he should have looked further ahead at demand for cloud data performance and the founding team's ability to execute, rather than overweighting individual early objections. His claim that the opportunity felt inevitable is a retrospective lesson, not proof that the outcome was knowable at the time.

Asked whether he has lost faith in a founder, he describes an opportunity he believes was missed through execution decisions. Another board member led the difficult conversation. He says he hopes to establish enough trust for a founder and board to discuss a different leadership path openly.

Stebbings notes that hiring and firing the CEO is part of a board's formal role. Bartlett agrees it can be an element but prefers to act as a trusted confidant and seek agreement rather than immediately use a vote to remove a founder. He acknowledges that a future situation could require a board vote; the speakers emphasize different aspects of governance.

He estimates that the board load he admires is around eight to ten seats, though the right number depends on other work such as fundraising, managing teams and podcasting. He does not give a fixed universal limit or claim to have reached his own.

Bartlett names Crossbeam as a board he enjoys because of the people involved, and praises mentors and fellow directors including Eric Vishria. He values a director who understands a company's details, cares about the founder, contributes work and can push back tactfully rather than simply agree.

In quick-fire questions, he recommends Team of Rivals for its account of Abraham Lincoln assembling people with different views. On crypto, he sees potential uses in speculation and cross-border exchange but doubts that near-term value justifies all recent venture funding. These are his 2022 opinions and predictions.

Asked provocatively why business-to-business marketers are weak, he speculates that talented marketers may be drawn to consumer budgets or to other functions in B2B companies. This is a broad personal opinion, not evidence about the abilities of B2B marketers as a group.

On public relations, he advises early founders to build direct relationships with relevant reporters and learn which messages resonate. He worries that handing the whole task to an outside agency can leave the founder without feedback or relationships even if the campaign fails. This is his preferred approach, not a finding that agencies never add value.

His hardest immediate task at Redpoint is exercising patience amid a slow Series B and C market, distinguishing good businesses from exceptional ones and resisting fear of missing out. He praises several growth and crossover investors while saying some recently expanded funds may face difficulties; these are 2022 assessments, not later performance results.

He highlights his podcast cohost Zach Weinberg and Matt Turner at Operators as investors he respects. He says their analysis focuses on the founder and a specific insight rather than only market size or another investor's participation.

Bartlett says he had not yet had an investment go bust, though he had inherited a board seat at a company that underwent a recapitalization. He says the founder later achieved a good outcome for those who participated in the recap. That does not establish the outcome for earlier investors who did not participate.

His lesson is to document the risks an investment team can identify before investing, including dependence on large platforms. A loss can happen, he says, but he wants the team to have considered foreseeable risks rather than discover them only after they materialize.

His most recently announced investment at the time was AcuityMD. He describes a customer-relationship and targeting product for medical-device businesses and says he backed the founders' insight, discipline and opportunity. Redpoint's investment gives him a financial interest; his statements about the company and its prospects are his own, not independent validation.