Battery Ventures Achieves 42% Time Savings and Global Compliance with Ontra’s Contract Automation

Challenge

The rising volume and complexity of NDAs and firm globalization burden investment teams

Over the last 10 years, Battery Ventures has been raising larger funds, which has required it to expand its investment teams. Larger teams and more deals create extra work and responsibilities for analysts, associates, and junior investment teams. For most investors, it meant simultaneously managing relationships with bankers, hundreds of deals in progress, and pursuing prospective investments.

At Battery, the historical practice was for the investment teams to handle all aspects of processing NDAs. As a result, the rising volume and increasing complexity of NDAs, along with the growing negotiating savvy among parties to the NDA, significantly increased the amount of time investment teams spent reviewing NDAs.

Since investors are not legal experts, the legal team was often called in to answer questions or help investors negotiate an impasse. In her role as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Lizette Perez-Deisboeck was aware that young investors were spending a significant amount of time negotiating NDAs and felt the firm needed a better system to ease their burden and maintain consistency across the organization on NDA deal terms.

To that end, in-house counsel created a playbook designed to assist investment teams in navigating common NDA language and understanding the firm’s preferences. In this process, onboarding them required a face-to-face meeting with the legal counsel to review the playbook and walk through the NDA process at Battery.

For investment team members with no legal background, however, the addition of a written document didn’t entirely solve the workflow issues and time commitment required to review NDAs or address the problems they faced navigating the nuances of NDA terms.

“When I started, the NDA process was time-consuming. We had to painstakingly compare NDAs to the legal team’s playbook and manually redline the document. I sometimes didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to be looking for, so it took me 30 to 45 minutes every time — three times a week. It was hard,” said Battery Ventures Vice President Becca Jones.

Solution

Ontra automates NDAs to free Battery’s investment team for high-value work

When Battery led Ontra’s Series A funding round in 2019, it recognized its own need to handle a growing volume of NDAs in the US and address the unique localization requirements in European markets.

Contract Automation’s unique combination of purpose-built, industry-specific technology and experienced global network of legal professionals proved to be an effective solution to take the burden of NDAs off Battery’s deal teams.

No longer tasked with managing NDA negotiations, Battery investment teams were able to rely primarily on Ontra for NDAs. They trust Ontra to ensure the terms align with the playbook and adhere to Battery’s preferences. In fact, with Ontra, the firm’s NDAs often reflect more favorable terms, a significant improvement from when investment teams, prioritizing deal closure over competitive clauses, previously managed them.

“When I was responsible for NDAs, I prioritized speed and efficiency, using standard, non-contentious language and hoping for a one-turn process. The addition of Ontra has often allowed us to get better terms when they are available.” Battery Ventures Vice President, Becca Jones.

The addition of Ontra’s Contract Automation platform has allowed the investment teams at Battery to meet the firm’s goal to turn around markups of the agreement in 24 hours or less — ensuring negotiations move forward quickly and shortening the entire NDA process by 3 to 4 days.

“Although there will never be a quick enough turnaround time for NDAs, Ontra has improved ours. Without Ontra, the growing number of NDAs to review would be more burdensome for our investment teams, and turnaround times would be much slower,” Battery Ventures Deputy General Counsel Julie McCann said.

Battery deal teams are no longer weighed down by time-consuming, manual NDA processes and negotiating terms for which they don’t have legal expertise. At the rate of 30 to 45 minutes spent on each NDA, they have reclaimed 40 hours a month for high-value work.

“Since Ontra, I’ve become more productive. I spend my days focusing on value-added work and closing more deals. I also feel like the NDAs are higher quality now,” said Becca.

Ontra delivers a 42% decrease in time to process an increasing number of NDAs

Over the past three years, Battery has experienced a 32% increase in the number of NDAs processed. The addition of Ontra’s Contract Automation platform has allowed the firm to meet these growing demands efficiently.

“Ontra has freed up our investment team to focus on their highest priority work, which is finding good deals for investment. If we can give them each just a few hours a week, that can have a huge effect. And that is invaluable,” Lizette said.

Contract Automation has allowed the deal teams at Battery to do their best work in the most efficient way possible. Using the old way, the end-to-end NDA process could take 7 days or more. Battery found a new way with Ontra, and the time to process NDAs has been reduced to 4 days on average. Using Contract Automation, the NDA process has been shortened by at least 42% compared to the previous time, even with a significantly higher volume of contracts.

In addition to funding activities, Battery is sometimes involved in the sale of companies when an investment exits. As such, they are now the entity requesting NDAs from interested parties. In the past, the firm may have outsourced the work to outside counsel or asked the selling company’s outside counsel to manage the process. Today, Ontra has helped streamline Battery’s sell-side and buy-side NDA processes.

Regardless of which side of the sale Battery is on, the legal team feels confident that the addition of Ontra has helped them stay agile, remain competitive, and win more deals.

“Deals have become more competitive. Successful firms have figured out a fast and cost-effective way to quickly sign that NDA, get access to the data room, and take a look at the deal. There’s a short fuse, and the data room will be opened for whoever signs the NDA first. Those who don’t act quickly could lose. So, this matters,” Lizette said.

Battery Ventures ensures global compliance with Ontra

In addition to the rising volume and intricacies of NDAs over the last few years, Battery’s international expansion significantly contributed to the increasing complexity of its NDA process. The firm’s global footprint has grown substantially in the last two decades, with far more deals being done outside the U.S.

As a result, Battery requires more local legal expertise to navigate provisions common in European countries that would not typically be part of a US NDA. The availability of Ontra legal professionals worldwide has provided additional peace of mind for the legal team at Battery. Having legal representation in local geographies has helped Battery ensure compliance and the use of standard market terms in European locales.

The legal team at Battery relies on Ontra to ensure they have the best positions in line with market standards.

“Our Ontra attorney located in the UK created a couple of first-position fallback provisions that were circulated to the US folks — allowing us to stay current and understand market terms for evolving areas to ensure we aren’t taking too many risks or sticking with positions that will hold us back,” Lizette said.

When asked what it’s like to work with Ontra, the legal team agreed that they have been demanding clients. Since the beginning, they have felt comfortable asking for solutions and providing feedback. The response from Ontra has been a willingness to address their needs promptly, yielding excellent results.

“NDAs are a necessary part of our job, and the volume can be pretty insane. Any time you spend on NDAs is time that you’re not spending reaching out to companies and sourcing. There’s a direct correlation to productivity and value-added work and Ontra’s Contract Automation,” said Becca.

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Published September 2025