Sanjiv Kalevar, a partner at the 15-year-old Boston-based venture firm OpenView, believes that two specific strategies have helped the firm succeed.
Neither OpenView nor Kalevar have any official relationship with Stripe, although his firm has invested in other enterprise technology companies like Datadog, Instructure, Workfront, Calendly, and Expensify, and he previously invested in the financial data app MX before he worked at OpenView. He says he's been studying successful startups that operate like Stripe in order to help him find (and invest in) the next smash hit.
Kalevar — who previously worked as a principal at Battery Ventures — believes Stripe is successful because its "product-led growth" strategy and its usage-based product pricing.