This Entrepreneur Raised $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.

From a working-class upbringing in London to building a global tech company, Ray’s journey displays resilience, focus, and the power of learning through experience. In this exclusive interview, he talks about team building, team engagement, ideating products, and instituting culture.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

A Humble Beginning in West London

Ray Chohan was born in West London to parents who had emigrated from the Punjab region of India. His father was a postman, and his mother worked as a seamstress. Growing up in a tight-knit, loving family, Ray was instilled with strong values and a work ethic.

Reflecting on his upbringing, Ray notes, “I realize with age how precious growing up with parents like that was, but also lucky enough to have extended family where you learn really good values and lots of lifelong learning lessons.”

This simple yet rich foundation would prove invaluable as he embarked on his professional journey.

The Early Days: Cold Calling and Embracing Rejection

Ray’s entry into the workforce was anything but glamorous. He started in media sales at Sterling Publications (now SPG Media) in Paddington. Sterling was one of the largest B2B publishers in Europe and the world at that time.

However, it was also a hardcore sales environment where cold calling was the norm. Ray candidly recalls the difficulty of this role, particularly the sting of rejection. His job description was trying to get a hold of chief executives and selling ad space in magazines and B2B publications.

Ray was tasked with the medical device space and was essentially a young kid trying to learn the industry, personas, and latest paradigms within a space.

“You start to learn how to embrace rejection,” he says. “It’s that mental journey of going home after being punched in the face 50 times… and then coming in the next day with a fresh mind and still keeping that positive attitude.” Most importantly, Ray learned the ability to bounce back.

Though he was eventually fired from this position, the experience was formative. Ray credits his “six-month bootcamp stint” at Sterling with teaching him valuable lessons about commercial framing and resilience that would later help him build Patsnap into a successful company.

Building a Foundation at Datamonitor

After Sterling, Ray joined Datamonitor in 2004, a market intelligence provider, where he spent eight years honing his skills in sales and commercial strategy. This period was crucial in shaping his career.

Datamonitor was at the beginning of a three to four-year exit plan and amid aggressive expansion when Ray joined, offering him opportunities to rise through the ranks and gain global exposure. He recalls the chief executive as highly talented and mega-aggressive on organic growth.

He was trying to expand the market share, so the company was being aggressive on the sales side and also creating a very compelling, generous environment where if employees were good, they could have potentially life-altering outcomes in a relatively small space of time.

Ray ended up working with a highly motivated and talented team, having loads of fun every day. “It felt like I was at a cool university but getting paid to attend,” Ray says, reflecting on the experience.

The relationships and skills he developed at Datamonitor became the bedrock for his future entrepreneurial endeavors, particularly his role in co-founding Patsnap. Ray recalls wryly that he was learning through osmosis, “sitting on a sales floor, learning and growing.”

The timing was perfect in the company, and Ray had opportunities to rise in the sales organization and get exposure to multiple global markets like life sciences, automotive, and academic. This experience helped Ray build robust self-confidence.

Eventually, Datamonitor was acquired by a large group called Informa. But, by that time, Ray was ready to become an entrepreneur and was looking for opportunities.

The Genesis of Patsnap

The idea for Patsnap was born out of a chance meeting at a convention, where Ray met Jeffrey Tiong, the CEO & technical founder of Patsnap. At the time, Patsnap was a free public website called Pat Snapperchat that was struggling to be commercialized and churn revenues.

Recognizing the potential for collaboration, Ray and Jeffrey decided to join forces—Ray brought his commercial acumen while Jeffrey provided the technical expertise. Ray also brought in a highly talented colleague from Datamonitor to join them in kickstarting the commercial machine.

From his apartment in London, Ray began to build out the commercial side of Patsnap, leveraging his network and experience from Datamonitor. This effort paid off as Patsnap transitioned to a SaaS model, a strategy that has remained consistent and successful over the years.

Ray successfully transitioned the website into an annualized upfront payment and pure SaaS subscription model. Customers subscribe for a year or sometimes a two- or three-year contract.

“Earlier this year, we passed over $100M in ARR,” Ray proudly shares, highlighting the company’s growth trajectory.

The Challenges of Scaling and Maintaining Culture

As Patsnap grew, so did the challenges of scaling the team and maintaining the company culture. Ray speaks candidly about the difficulties of managing growth, particularly during the pandemic. Initially, he leveraged his network of people at Datamonitor and invited them to work at Patsnap.

Ray successfully brought in people who were ten times better than him, and they did an excellent job. A few had been in the business for up to seven years and were oriented in not just commercial but several different roles also.

Talking about instituting the culture foundation and cutting through the noise, Ray reveals that up until 2019, they had a healthy, relatively simple, purely focused-on, high-performance culture. The company had highly talented people who led by example, which was ideal for creating culture.

Ray also talks about having amazing people on the team in sales management, customer success, and product organization in Europe. They led the company instead of hiring a flashy HR person and doing fancy PPTs about culture. But then, COVID-19 happened.

“Maintaining that performance, maintaining that rig, that pace became really difficult,” he admits, especially in a virtual work environment. Patsnap lost a lot of its original culture at that time because recruiting and retaining basically in a virtual world was a new strategy they had to learn.

The company faced additional hurdles when they brought in a new management team in 2019, a decision Ray now views as a mistake.

“Not continually backing your team that got you there in the first place to the next stage is a painful mistake,” he reflects. This experience taught Ray the importance of staying true to the original team and the values that helped build the company in the first place.

From 2023 onwards, Ray and his co-founders focused on bringing back old values, accountability, the self-starter culture, and responsibility within the team.

Navigating the World of Venture Capital

Raising over $300M in venture capital is no small feat, and Ray’s experience offers valuable insights into the process. Early funding rounds were driven by Patsnap’s exceptional organic growth, strong market fundamentals, and revenue-based investor attraction.

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Ray talks about displaying excellent momentum, good compound quarter-on-quarter growth, annual growth, and a compelling narrative to back the numbers combined with a fast-growing market. Patsnap sells into the R&D and IP space, which is recession-proof.

However, the pandemic period and the unique challenges of 2021 required a different approach. Despite the obstacles, Patsnap managed to attract top-tier investors, including SoftBank. Ray credits their success to being in the right place at the right time, with the right growth metrics.

“We feel very lucky to have SoftBank on board as one of our lead investors,” he notes.

Looking Ahead: The Future of Patsnap

Looking to the future, Ray is focused on Patsnap’s ultimate goal: becoming the leading AI-enabled intelligence platform for R&D and IP teams worldwide.

The company is already making strides in life sciences and material sciences–areas Ray believes will be pivotal in the coming decade since it sells to biotech and pharma. Patsnap also has tremendous intelligence capabilities in sectors like AI-enabled drug discovery and delivery.

“We think this decade will be a spectacular decade when it comes to advanced materials discovery,” Ray says, highlighting the company’s work in enabling technologies like quantum computing and supersonic air travel at the price of a premium economy ticket.

Ray describes the company’s value proposition as horizontal, with customers from automotive to Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), aerospace and defense to advanced manufacturing.

Patsnap is the leading AI-enabled intelligence platform, the gold standard for R&D populations, companies, and IP teams in technology, Life Sciences, Automotive, Law firms, Chemical, Engineering, Consumer Goods, and Education companies around the world.

Final Thoughts: The Importance of Focus

As Ray reflects on his journey, one key lesson stands out: the importance of focus. Staying true to your core mission is crucial in a world full of shiny new opportunities.

“Focus, focus, focus, and thinking long-term yields healthier results,” he advises, emphasizing the need to keep things simple and execute well. Ray advises software companies to keep their AI platforms and capabilities simple and adapt to customer requirements.

He also suggests going deeper into that part of machine learning and what it can offer customers rather than jumping to the next big thing. Exploring opportunities to grow revenues extensively and executing them to create maximum value is the key.

Ray Chohan’s story is a powerful reminder that success in entrepreneurship is not just about having a great idea but also about resilience, learning from failure, and staying true to your values.

As Patsnap continues to grow and innovate, Ray’s journey inspires aspiring entrepreneurs everywhere.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• 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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