Ray Chohan On Raising $300 Million To Build An AI-Powered Innovation Intelligence Platform To Enable Better Business Decision-Making

In the ever-evolving world of technology and startups, few stories are as inspiring as that of Ray Chohan, co-founder of Patsnap. This company has raised over $300M in funding and is now on a path to becoming a leader in AI-enabled intelligence platforms.

Patsnap has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Vertex Ventures, CITIC Industrial Investment Group, Shunwei Capital, and SoftBank Vision Fund.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Early career experiences in sales taught Ray the invaluable lesson of embracing rejection as a growth opportunity.
• Building a successful team at Patsnap was rooted in leveraging existing networks of trusted, talented individuals.
• Focusing on core strengths and simple strategies is crucial for sustained growth.
• Patsnap’s success in raising over $300 million was driven by strong organic growth and a compelling market narrative.
• Leading by example was key to fostering a high-performance culture at Patsnap, especially pre-pandemic.
• Ray learned that sticking with the original team can be more effective than hiring new leadership based on conventional advice.
• Patsnap’s future lies in becoming the leading AI-enabled intelligence platform for R&D and patent teams globally.

 

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About Ray Chohan:

Ray Chohan is a Co-Founder of Patsnap. He leads efforts in mergers and acquisitions for the R&D-facing market and focuses on creating new partnerships and go-to-market strategies.

Before his tenure at Patsnap, Ray Chohan held several positions at Datamonitor, most recently as head of business development.

Besides his work at Patsnap, Ray Chohan is an investor and mentor at Outlier Ventures, where he focuses on investments in AI and LLM-enabled technologies.

Connect with Ray Chohan:

• LinkedIn
• TheOrg
• Crunchbase
• RocketReach

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: righty Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Dealmaker Show. so Today, we have a really amazing founder, a founder of that you know basically has been at it now for close to 13 years with his company. i mean It’s really an incredible rocket ship. They’ve raised over $300 million. dollars and We’re going to be talking about, for example, like how you go about team building, how to think about product, you know and and and how to have that product focus. Then also, how to think about culture too, you know especially cutting through the noise, through what you hear out there, and really having the fundamental building blocks you know to be able to get that team involved, as well as some of the learnings you know and lessons learned, building the business, especially you know during the last years and how to think about the years to come. So again, brace yourself for a very inspiring conversation, and without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Ray Chohah. Welcome to the show.

Ray Chohan: I am Andrew, looking forward to it. I’m a big fan.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in London, and born in in in West London, and you had there a family you know where your mother was a seamstress, your father was a postman. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?

Ray Chohan: Yeah, really blessed, really wonderful parents. My parents ah originally came from North India, so a district of India called Punjab. Their parents prior to that, well, on my mum’s side, her parents came over from India, I think, in the 50s and 60s. So that typical story Alejandro of kind of first generation immigrant, my parents being. And yeah, just a simple working class upbringing, but lots of love, loads of extended family. And yeah, I realize with age how precious growing up with parents like that, but also lucky enough to have extended family where you learn really good values and lots of lifelong learning lessons. So yeah, just a really simple upbringing and yeah, nothing to complain about. I feel very blessed.

Alejandro Cremades: So you got started you know with media sales out of all things. know so So how are those early early days for you in the and the workforce?

Ray Chohan: Yep. So I joined an organization called Sterling Publications. I think it’s now branded as s SPG Media. And that was a ah throwback organization. So like most young kids at 21, 22, you’re just trying to find your feet, dip your finger in a couple of pies where you think you might find a passion or some form of future. And so I ended up a media sales organization.

Ray Chohan: in the city of London in a part of town called Paddington and and just London as a location globally even till this day is the home of publishing so Sterling was a kind of a 70s 80s and 90s story of being one of the largest B2B publishers within Europe and the world at that time But that organization was a very hardcore, ultra hardcore sales environment where it was pure cold calling and you’re literally trying to get a hold of chief executives and you’re basically selling ad space in magazines, in B2B publications. And I ended up in the medical device space. So as a young kid trying to learn the industry, learn the personas, learn the latest paradigms within a space. but

Ray Chohan: I found that immensely difficult and actually that particular role i ended up getting fired. I remember it very clearly two days before my sister’s wedding. So I learned a ton. I had an amazing manager there, a chap called Andrew Lashu basically treated me like his son and allowed me to stay in his team for close to six months, even though I wasn’t really performing. But in that six months Alejandro learned so many lifelong learning lessons when it comes to commercial and framing a proposition. So that just that time and hint and his patience.

Ray Chohan: I have kind of lifelong gratitude for that period because that six month bootcamp gave me a tremendous platform to go on to a company called Data Monitor where I spent eight years and spent most of my twenties and and how ah had an absolute blast and and built some really really good meaningful relationships.

Ray Chohan: So that was kind of the media sales six months stint in my career.

Alejandro Cremades: Thank And I guess you know when you were doing all that cold calling, one of the things that is very interesting here is founders being exposed to rejection, and they especially during the first times you know that you’re rejected. It’s not easy. It’s not fun.

Alejandro Cremades: I guess when you’re cold calling, especially during the first calls, you know it’s it’s tough. It feels weird. you know You’re embarrassed. You’re shy. I guess, how was that you know for you of going through those motions of really experiencing people rejecting you and rejecting why you had to offer them or sell them?

Ray Chohan: Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say, yeah, that’s probably the most hardcore environment at those 10 years in your early 20s where you have to learn and in time and it’s painful, you start to learn how to embrace rejection. I think that’s the key part. Getting rejected just happens, right? It’s just a force of nature when you’re trying to cold call and reach out to senior decision makers. But then it’s that mental journey of going home and you’ve just got punched in the face 50 times where you literally haven’t got a hold of anyone, no one’s really listened, your colleagues around you can see you’re struggling, that’s part of it as well and then going on that mental journey over the weeks and months where you just start getting used to

Ray Chohan: and in a way ah appreciate the learnings of rejection and kind of learning that bounce back ability and and coming going in the next day with a fresh mind and still keeping that positive attitude. So I would say that’s a key part of it. I think those learnings Alejandro, stay with you throughout your whole career and generally just life because you’ve absorbed so much rejection early in your career on a professional basis.

Ray Chohan: you then get used to getting punched in the stomach generally, right? And you learn that like it’s not game over, it’s more of a ah learning opportunity. So that’s my view on rejection and why I think it’s such a blessing to have that experience, especially when you’re young.

Alejandro Cremades: So the most immediate step, you know, before you got started with becoming an entrepreneur was data monitor. no and And you there spent over ah eight years and you scaled for the ranks, you know, during this time. and And I guess, you know, this was part of the foundation of Pat Snap too. So what was what was the experience there and and how would you say that this you know helped you to get going, you know, with your with your entrepreneurial journey too?

Ray Chohan: Yet for me, that was my foundation. Without Data Monitor, I won’t be speaking to you today. ah Again, and it’s also a little bit of luck as well. The timing of when I joined Alejandro, the business was at a really exciting time. Also, the batch, the cohort I joined, that vintage, was now when I see them on LinkedIn, was an insanely good talented vintage. So during that organization in February 2004 and the cohort I was joining in were.

Ray Chohan: amazing. So that that organization, just to give you the color, what what that business did, that that was a market intelligence provider. So the current analog might be like a gardener, a forester, you might know those intelligence providers and in the IT space and and in the finance world, you might hear on Bloomberg. But basically, it was the information services industry. But what was really special about that company was when I joined I joined right at the beginning of a ah three to four year exit plan. So I joined the business where the chief executive is very talented and gone on to do currently great things was being mega aggressive on organic growth and trying to be really trying to expand market share. So what that meant is

Ray Chohan: but we’re being very aggressive on the sales side and also creating a very compelling, generous environment where if you’re good, you can have potentially life altering. And in some circumstances, for some of my colleagues, life changing outcomes in a relative Small space of time so what ended up manifesting is me working with a bunch of very hungry really talented guys and girls Having loads of fun every day Alejandro was an absolute blast I felt like I was at a cool university but getting paid to attend and then the learnings I was surrounded by so many talented people and some a lot older, some similar age, some younger. And I was literally just learning through osmosis, sitting sitting on a sales floor, learning and growing. And again, because the timing was very fortuitous in that company, opportunity to rise up the sales organization, get global exposure, get exposure to multi markets, life sciences, automotive, the academic markets. So all of that entire experience

Ray Chohan: gave me the foundation and confidence to when I met the founder and CEO of Pat Snapperchat called Jeffrey Tiong to have a lot to offer to joining a founding team and and a building a company. So yeah, Data Monitor was a life changing and I’m forever grateful.

Alejandro Cremades: how does it How does it happen you know with Patzna? Because I know that there was a little story there in Disney World.

Ray Chohan: Yes. So at my last ever business trip with Data Monitor, because the company prior to 2012 got acquired by ah by a large group called Informa, I was attending a convention that I went to every other year and just walking around. And at that time I was reflecting on, look, I need to do something different. I’ve got this entrepreneurial desire desire. I can’t code. I can’t program.

Ray Chohan: and I’m in a situation where I’ve got a really strong commercial background. I need to meet a product orientated stroke technical ah founder. So at this convention, I was just kind of cruising the floor and I walked past a booth and and that was a Pat Snap booth. And that’s where I met Jeff. We just started getting talking and he was like, look, I’m trying to build out the business, but commercialization and turning on the revenue has been a challenge which is typical for for most technical co-founders we just started getting talking so and off the back of that started building out the founding team so he was like like looking for someone more from a commercial background i’m saying i’m looking for more of a product guy i’d love to work in startup land and that’s where the kind of ah the engagement was consummated so i went back to the uk off the convention and basically started that the past that commercial

Ray Chohan: push from my apartment. And again, very fortunate was able to attract a colleague from Data Monitor. Again, he was very hungry, very driven, very talented to also join me to kickstart the commercial machine.

Ray Chohan: so So that’s the kind of genesis of PatSnap in terms of commercially scaling.

Alejandro Cremades: So what ended up being the business model? How do you guys make money at Pat Snap?

Ray Chohan: So before I joined the mission, it was a free public website at that time. And then when I joined the journey, the goal was to take it behind a paywall, classic SaaS Alejandro, annualized upfront payments and a pure SaaS subscription model. So, and we’ve stuck with that model literally ever since and earlier this year, we passed over a hundred million bucks in ARR and that kind of commercial business model hasn’t really changed since then. So pure SaaS.

Ray Chohan: typically annualnular annual upfront payments, and typically customers will subscribe for a year, and in some cases might go for a two, three-year contract.

Alejandro Cremades: so then So then for you guys too, you know like what was that? um And you were alluding to it. you know like How did you guys go about having consistency about building the team and and also not listening to the typical text VC advice?

Ray Chohan: Yeah, that story’s interesting. So the beginning thesis, If I look back was very correct. So I really leveraged my data monitor network to try to invite and get really talented people into the business early on. I was successful in kind of selling that story and getting people who are 10X better than me to join the business. And they’d done a great job. A bunch of them were were in the business for four, five, six, seven years orientated in commercials. Some done slightly different roles, but net.

Ray Chohan: me leveraging my existing network of people who are really capable and also I trust was like pivotal it from that kind of zero to 40 million bucks in ARR where I think we made the typical mistake and I’ve learnt now it’s quite a typical mistake is getting sucked into that kind of textbook advice of okay you’ve gone past your original team, you now need to hire someone who’s got said experience, said resume, more of a dashboard type revenue leader to scale to that next level. And my learning was, in most situations, but but I can comment on our context, that wasn’t the right decision. Like not continually backing your team, that got you there in the first place to the next stage.

Ray Chohan: is a great is is a painful mistake and it took us a good three, four years to get that momentum because during that time we hired a new management team in 2019, lots of change, a lot of the original guys started leaving the business and it was kind of a very transitional period I felt we really lost some of those original roots in the business and it was just a painful and expensive learning lesson so my takeaway is like think very clearly before you start thinking about making adaptations changes to the original team to help which helped get you there in the first place so and um and I see that similar mistake across so many startups who

Ray Chohan: end up running the same typical VC playbook and end up paying the price and and it’s an expensive price.

Alejandro Cremades: So tell us too about culture, you know because obviously we’re talking about people, let’s talk about culture you know and that foundation and also cutting through the noise to have the proper culture in place.

Ray Chohan: Yeah, I mean, culture to me now, I think about post pandemic. So leading up to pre pandemic, I would say 2012 to 2018 to 2019, we had a healthy, relatively simple, purely focused on high performance culture. So we did get to complicated and overbearing on sending culture messages. I think a lot of the culture was we had really talented people Alejandro and a lot of them led by example. To me that was probably the best way to create a culture right by doing and I was lucky enough to have some amazing people in the team in sales management, in customer success. We had small part of the product organization in Europe at that time as well. So people were just leading

Ray Chohan: By example, rather than hiring a flashy HR person and doing fancy ppts talking about culture so it was very much by example where things changed a lot was during lockdown where.

Ray Chohan: maintaining that performance, maintaining that rig of that pace became really difficult because you were trying to build and scale and manage a team virtually. And I think for us, we lost a lot of that original culture during that period, probably like a bunch of other companies right, because you’re recruiting and retaining basically in a virtual world, which was a new muscle for anyone to learn and flex during that period. So coming out of lockdown, when we started getting face to face,

Ray Chohan: we’d learn, holy shit, we haven’t probably hired correctly. And now we’ve got to rebuild again, but more in an in-office style and be closer to the detail. And again, from 21 to late 22, that was a body of work to realign and bring back that high performance culture. While managing all the hangover from the money printing, 2021 was peak woke, peak,

Ray Chohan: Oh, employees, there’s employees that everyone’s just challenged by the littlest thing. And as you probably saw, right, a bunch of technology companies going, God, we’ve got this debt now on just being too laissez-fait with our standards. So we spent a good one and a half years trying to bring back that accountability, that self-starter culture and and responsibility within the team. And I think now Touchwood going,

Ray Chohan: um i Look at 2023 onwards, I think we’ve brought a lot of those people might call it old school Alejandro, but some of those classic values back and that’s manifesting in the revenue performance for us.

Alejandro Cremades: So then, as we’re talking about people too and culture, ah let’s talk about VC, you know, raising money because you guys have raised over $300 million. What has been the, what have been the motions to and the cycles that you guys have gone through, you know, in order to to be able to bring those investors as part of the journey?

Ray Chohan: Yeah, I would say i mean if ah if I break it down into the early round, so if I look at our Series A and B, that was pure revenue-based investor attraction, right? like We had exceptional organic growth back between 2012 and 2016. And at that time, if you recall, all those kind of early stage investors Let’s face it, where they really lean in is looking at momentum and good compound quarteron quarter on quarter growth, stroke annual growth. And we had those numbers in the bag combined with a really compelling narrative.

Ray Chohan: of a fast-growing market, which had exceptional fundamentals. Well, I mean fundamentals. We sell into the R and&D and patent space, and that industry, literally for the last 30, 40 years, if you look at corporate R and&D spend worldwide, Alejandro, that number’s gone north for the last 50 years. It’s bulletproof, recession-proof. So we had good ARR growth.

Ray Chohan: backing into an industry and persona which has exceptional fundamentals. So from Series A to Series C, I would say that was the nuts and bolt bolts of attracting some really good brands in the venture markets. Post that, I would say during that pandemic period, and 2021 was a ah champagne year and crazy year for everyone, let’s face it, right? But we were able to somehow sustain meaningful organic growth during lockdown. So we were kind of trending right on the fairway of attracting great investors and we feel very lucky to have SoftBank on board as kind of one of our lead investors and and various other names. so

Ray Chohan: So I would say in 2021 it was that 2020 momentum and revenue still trending well and then being in the right place at the right time to raise a meaningful round at a meaningful valuation. And that puts us in really good stead this year and hopefully going into the future. So

Alejandro Cremades: I’m talking about the future. You guys have recently gone through the motions of what you know things are going to look like you know in the next decade. So I guess in that regard, if you were to go to sleep tonight, Ray, and and you wake up in a world where the vision of path snap is fully realized, what does that world look like?

Ray Chohan: Well, the ultimate north star for us is becoming the lead AI enabled intelligence platform for R and&D teams and also patent teams around the world.

Ray Chohan: We’re on that journey now. So if you look at our value proposition, we have a horizontal value proposition where we have customers from automotive to FMCG to aerospace and defense to advance manufacturing. But also four or five years ago, we’ve built a life sciences business, which sells to biotech and pharma, that part of the organization is an absolute rocket ship at the moment. So that whole AI-enabled drug discovery, drug delivery, we have some tremendous intelligence capabilities in that market and some very unique value edges in that space. Also, we’re doing the equivalent in material science. So again, stepping back,

Ray Chohan: we think this decade will be a spectacular decade when it comes to advanced materials discovery. So next generation materials which enable quantum computing, bringing back supersonic air travel at the price of a premium economy ticket, all of that are fundamentally material science problems. And again, we’ve got AI enabled intelligence intelligence tools attacking the materials market. So if i like if I hopefully projected to four or five years,

Ray Chohan: I’d like to think Pat’s that is considered one of the main AI enabled intelligence platforms which are the gold standard for R and&D populations and companies and also IP teams at technology companies around the world.

Alejandro Cremades: Thank you.

Alejandro Cremades: So talking about the future here now, I want to talk about the past, but doing so with a lens or reflection because you know close to 13 years that you’ve been pushing this you know gives for a lot. I mean, 13 years in startup world is like 200 years in corporate, right? So I guess you know throughout the cycles that you guys have gone through and all of that, imagine if I was to bring you back in time. you know Perhaps I bring you back to Disney World. you know Maybe you’re still in one of those rides, you know having a blast, you know wondering about the future and And let’s say you’re able to sit right next to your younger self, to that younger ray, and you’re able to give that younger ray a piece of advice, one piece of advice, before launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?

Ray Chohan: Good question.

Ray Chohan: Focus. Keep it simple and execute well. One one learning I found, and I’m not a victim to this, I sometimes the instigator of this because it’s my personality, you can sometimes get attracted by shiny toys.

Ray Chohan: where you’ve got momentum in a particular market, things are going well, but human nature is curious, isn’t it? You want to do more, you want to amplify what you have. And I sometimes found when you lose focus and you get sucked into certain rabbit holes, all with good intention, the next situation can sometimes be negative because you’re going away from your core.

Ray Chohan: You’re going away from what’s giving you that momentum and that quality in the first place. So focus, focus, focus, and thinking long-term, I find yields healthier results.

Alejandro Cremades: So like keeping it simple, can you can you um double click on keeping it simple?

Ray Chohan: That would be a takeaway for me.

Ray Chohan: Yeah, so an example being, look at this current AI paradigm, right? Like there’s so many ways to slice and position yourself in this new technological wave we’re in, right? And I sometimes think even in this current AI enabled paradigm, many software companies are trying to be a lot more complex with what their AI capability can offer then the needs from the customer are required. So for example, let’s look at summarization, right? Like if you look at OpenAI and various other tools, people are completely blown away out of their chairs on summarizing long form text, right? I’m sure you use it in your media business Alejandro, and I’m sure you’re probably using some of it within your your your podcasting.

Ray Chohan: The opportunity within summarize ah workflow is huge. That’s quite a simple use case, right? And I think a lot of businesses, and probably one of them could offer that in their platform, but then jump onto the next thing without even going deeper on that part of machine learning and what that can offer the customers. So that’s what I that’s what i mean by double clicking on keeping it simple. If you have something good, spend more time with it.

Ray Chohan: like go deeper on the use case go deep from the technology don’t just jump and go okay we’ve cracked that because you haven’t cracked that the opportunity to grow revenues in that beachhead which is working there’s a lot more juice in the lemon a lot more and i think software companies in particular fall victim to getting momentum and then quickly jumping on to the next fruit on the tree not knowing they’ve probably walked away from

Ray Chohan: a piece of fruit which has a lot more juice and a lot more value to be created. but That’s what I mean by keeping it simple and executing well.

Alejandro Cremades: I love it. So, Ray, for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi, what is the best way for them to do so?

Ray Chohan: LinkedIn. LinkedIn is probably my go-to. So just Ray Chan and Pat Snap and you can find me. I’m not as active as I used to be, but in terms of checking in daily, yet always a big LinkedIn fan. So that’s the place to find me.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, hey, well, Ray, thank you so much for being on The Dealmaker Show today. It has been an honor to have you with us.

Ray Chohan: Cheers, Alejandro, take care.

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