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Tag: SurveyMonkey

  • SurveyMonkey CEO: Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful

    SurveyMonkey CEO: Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful

    “We really took a strategic imperative about two and a half to three years ago to step up our enterprise game,” says SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie. “This has been a company that has thrived in going direct to end-users. We’ve built up a user base, a paid customer base, today of almost 700,000 people. But over the last three years, we’ve elevated our game. Today, enterprise represents 20 percent of our business. It helped us deliver our best quarter in history. We’re now growing 20 percent year-over-year.”

    Zander Lurie, CEO of SurveyMonkey, discusses how the company is driving its massive growth by focusing on enterprise solutions that are sold by the seat, in an interview on CNBC:

    The Category For Experience Management Is Massive

    The category for experience management is massive. Companies today are differentiating their products and services by their ability to be customer-centric. Everybody has access to off-the-shelf software and you can buy keywords on Google and you can target folks on Facebook but the ability to really be sensitive to what your customers care about and want is critical. Usabilla is the solution that we acquired earlier this year. They have a customer in KLM Dutch Airlines who was able to improve their app experience by a 2.8 to a 4.2 rating using our product. It really is about, can your managers and can your marketers listen to that feedback, understand the bugs, and then deliver and take action. That’s what survey software can do.

    We don’t compete with Adobe and Salesforce at all. Frankly, there are hundreds of thousands of Salesforce customers who need to be buying enterprise survey software. We exist in the Salesforce ecosystem and really try and help Salesforce customers get better data and get sentiment data from what their customers really care about. Salesforce, Microsoft, Adobe, those are big systems of record. They provide you a lot of operational data. Where SurveyMonkey competes and thrives is delivering for customers that sentiment data. How am I really doing? What can we improve upon? That’s where we’re selling a solution into the Salesforce ecosystem and we partner with Salesforce in a really productive way. It’s part of the reason they bought into our IPO last year. 

    Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful

    We really took a strategic imperative about two and a half to three years ago to step up our enterprise game. This has been a company that has thrived in going direct to end-users. We’ve built up a user base, a paid customer base, today of almost 700,000 people. But over the last three years, we’ve elevated our game. Today, enterprise represents 20 percent of our business. It helped us deliver our best quarter in history. We’re now growing 20 percent year-over-year. 

    We set about on our IPO last year and told investors our plan to make this business a lot more valuable. The two key driving factors first is to elevate our sales motion to sell directly to the enterprise. That has been wildly successful. We doubled year-over-year a hundred percent growth in revenue in the sales channel. We now have almost 5,000 customers, up 60 percent year over year. We now compete in that ecosystem and we have a really disruptive product. Consumers love our product. We’re now selling into the organization with a really talented sales team. 

    There’s Been So Much Account Sharing On SurveyMonkey

    Our team’s product is the collaborative self-serve product. We have a unique opportunity here. There’s been so much account sharing on SurveyMonkey over the years and in the current security environment, we’re asking people to pay for their own seat. That has driven a really healthy paid user growth. We see continued growth in those two areas. As I said, growth for us we’ve accelerated growth now twenty percent year-over-year, but we do it a disciplined way. We’re still able to deliver over $13 million dollars of unleveraged free cash flow in the quarter. We’re just not a company that’s going to grow at all cost. We want to have both healthy growth and disciplined cash flow.

    We use politics in a fun way to help get a beat on what’s going on out in the world. Just like we ask questions about if you are potentially interested in buying an electric car or what do you think of Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat, we also ask questions of the two and a half to three million people on our platform every day of who might you vote for and what issues are important to you. That really does give us a particular read on what American consumers are thinking.

    Selling To the Enterprise Has Been Wildly Successful, Says SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie
  • SurveyMonkey CEO: Our Enterprise Business is in Hyper-Growth Mode

    SurveyMonkey CEO: Our Enterprise Business is in Hyper-Growth Mode

    Our business on the enterprise side is in hyper-growth mode, says SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie. “We grew our new bookings 80 percent year-over-year,” says Lurie. “We booked our first $10 million quarter, our first million-dollar customer, and we signed up 11 percent more customers in the last quarter alone than we had over all these years. We’re a super disruptive survey software for the enterprise.”

    Zander Lurie, CEO of SurveyMonkey, discussed the company’s Q4 earnings and their massive growth in enterprise bookings in an interview on CNBC and during their earnings announcement:

    Our Enterprise Business is in Hyper-Growth Mode

    We were thrilled with our earnings report for Q4. 2018 was a transformational year for the company where we reaccelerated revenue, generated really robust cash flow, and went public. We’re a 19-year-old company. We have had a lot of private shareholders for a long time and the lock-up expiration could well contribute to some of the selling supply today. But I’m super confident in our in our long term focus. If we deliver results, I know shareholders will profit as well.

    We have a beloved brand and one of the largest footprints of users around the world with over 17.5 million active users. If you look at our business today, we have over 647,000 paying customers who sit inside of 345,000 different organizations, including paying user in 98% of the Fortune 500. Our business on the enterprise side is in hyper-growth mode. We grew our new bookings 80 percent year-over-year. We booked our first $10 million quarter, our first million-dollar customer, and we signed up 11 percent more customers in the last quarter alone than we had over all these years. We’ve got a lot of traction with a really world-class leadership team.

    We’re a Super Disruptive Survey Software for the Enterprise

    We’re a super disruptive survey software for the enterprise. We have a large footprint inside of so many companies where we have not been bought at a corporate IT level. These organizations in this environment need that secure collaborative software that we offer. Our open integration strategy has proven to be a winner. It’s a really competitive market, but it’s a huge multi-billion dollar global market.

    Our largest competitor in Qualtrics just sold to SAP. That opens up a lot of greenfield for us as they steer into SAPs business. We’re steering more into a Microsoft and Salesforce ecosystem where we see a lot of room to grow in customer experience management, HR, and market research.

    Critical to Understand the Sentiment of Your Constituents

    It’s so critical to understand the sentiment and voices of the people who are your constituents. Whether it’s your employees or your customers or you are doing market research, trying to understand these really dynamic environments, understanding the voices and opinions of the people who matter to your business, is critical.

    I too am surprised about Amazon pulling out there. I think the reaction and how quickly that’s changed in several months has been very surprising. Your gut instinct is helpful, but what’s really helpful is actually collecting the opinion data of the people who matter to you if you’re trying to launch a new product or doing a campaign test or to understand where to expand and what the reaction will be like from the community or government.

    Organizations need to collect feedback from their most important constituents, so they can drive innovation and growth. In the internet economy, businesses must be data-driven and responsive to their customers. Companies must test campaign messages and pricing to renew customers. In an increasingly competitive war for talent, organizations are investing more in their employee culture. Understanding how to measure, benchmark, and act on the sentiment data define today’s agile and successful companies.

    SurveyMonkey CEO: Our Enterprise Business is in Hyper-Growth Mode


  • SAP CEO on Qualtrics Deal: A Global Growth Juggernaut in the Cloud

    SAP CEO on Qualtrics Deal: A Global Growth Juggernaut in the Cloud

    SAP CEO Bill McDermott says that buying Qualtrics creates a “global growth juggernaut in the cloud, the number one business software growing in the cloud in the world.” McDermott says that he’s here to build a company for the generations, not just for a few days and that this is a fundamentally transformational deal, one that will reshape the entire industry.

    Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith says that combining forces with SAP will change the experience economy forever. “This is by far a once in a generational opportunity and it’s going to change how everyone thinks about cloud and SAAS and CRM and ERP and HCM forever,” said Smith. “Why wouldn’t we want to be a part of that?”

    Both SAP CEO Bill McDermott and Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith talked about the acquisition on CNBC Squawk Box this morning (Watch Video Below):

    SAP CEO: If You Can Combine X-Data and O-Data You Can Change the World

    We’re reshaping the enterprise application software industry. What led us to this deal is that all CEOs you talk to want to run their companies on an end-to-end basis. They want to deal with their customers in every channel, they want to fulfill, and that requires operational data. SAP touches 77 percent of the world’s transactions, but the operational data doesn’t ask the right question. It doesn’t say, why does the customer feel a certain way about your brand, about your products, and about their experience. This new category called experience management is all about x-data and if you can combine o-data and x-data you can change the world.

    Ryan I have known each other about three months. We spent a lot of time together, a lot of text, a lot of phone calls, and we fundamentally wanted a transformational deal, one that would reshape the entire industry and here we are.

    SAP CEO: If You Want to Survey Somebody You Hire Survey Monkey…

    Have you looked at acquiring SurveyMonkey? No, they do surveys we reinvent customer experiences in a whole new category called experience management. If you want to survey somebody you hire Survey Monkey, if you want to fundamentally change the way an enterprise thinks about its culture, its brand, its products, and its people, now you’re talking Qualtrics, the leader in the marketplace by a factor of 10x. We’ve always bought the biggest and the best one and thankfully with the high trust that Ryan and I developed and our companies developed we’re ready to go.

    SAP CEO: A Global Growth Juggernaut in the Cloud

    When you’re talking about this particular company, Qualtrics, they’re growing at 40 percent on a year-over-year basis in the cloud. They have a very serious go-to-market strategy, but it’s modest in size. We’re growing at 41 percent year-over-year in the cloud and we have a very large go-to-market machine, more than 15,000 people touching the customer every day. If you combine that rate of growth you have a global growth juggernaut in the cloud, the number one business software growing in the cloud in the world. So digest that dear shareholders.

    We’re saying and we’re very clear on this, we’re going to grow total revenue in double-digit, operating income in double-digit, not to mention being the fastest growing cloud company in the world. So today this will be digested. Now they’ll know, why did he do a big one when he said he was more likely gonna do tuck-ins? Because I never thought I would get Qualtrics and it takes some skill to pull deals like this off and convince a great entrepreneur like Ryan that he’s better off with SAP than going it alone when he’s 13x oversubscribed in his IPO.

    SAP CEO: I’m Here to Build a Company for the Generations

    So that’s what took a little bit of time and when we pulled it off together this weekend we were literally crossing each other in the air at 39,000 feet, so this was high-stakes. Now that we’re here, we’re doing all-hands meetings, we’re talking to the media, we’re talking to the bankers, and I expect the stock to do extremely well as the day progresses, and more importantly in the mid and the long term. I’m here to build a company for the generations, not just for a few days.

    Qualtrics CEO: We Created the Experience Management Category

    We were planning on ringing the bell on Thursday. I was home this weekend just to kind of take a little break after a week on the road it was going really well. We were 13 times oversubscribed with the best still ahead of us and then we had an opportunity to combine forces with SAP and change the experience economy forever. I think in my conversations with Bill it’s something that we only dreamed of that we could make this happen. It’s pretty special.

    We’ve been doing this for 16 years. We transformed the entire experience management category, we’ve created it. We’re powering the feedback for 14 different airlines, 200 financial institutions, and we’ve really created this category to go do something big, that was the goal. We never had a financial reason to go public, we bootstrapped our company longer than anyone and we had no investor pressure. We’re one of the only companies that has been cashflow positive and high growth since its inception. The reason why we were going public was to create this massive new category.

    Qualtrics CEO: A Once in a Generational Opportunity

    When Bill approached us with a once in a generational opportunity that we could take all the power of Qualtrics and our 9,000 brands and have that sit alongside SAP and have every ounce of customer feedback go into the entire product process with an ERP system, reshape how the world thinks about CRM, and everything that we’re doing to power all the employee experience of the whole world that’s all available overnight. That’s something that we couldn’t turn down and we chose to be here.

    Our IPO was already way oversubscribed, it was gonna take off and everyone was looking at us saying, hey this is the next $20 or $30 billion dollar standalone company. But we want to win and this is what winning looks like and we’re going to reshape the entire industry and Bill’s on board and we’re excited.

    We were pretty set on going public and so it wasn’t till this opportunity came through this weekend where we said, hey look, this is by far a once in a generational opportunity and it’s going to change how everyone thinks about cloud and SAAS and CRM and ERP and HCM forever. Why wouldn’t we want to be a part of that? We couldn’t be more excited and like I said this is a pretty special team with Bill and me.

  • Sheryl Sandberg Posts Touching Tribute to Late Husband

    Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has spoken publicly for the first time since the sudden death of her husband, SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg. Sandberg’s first comments came in the form of a Facebook post.

    “Dave was my rock. When I got upset, he stayed calm. When I was worried, he said it would be ok. When I wasn’t sure what to do, he figured it out. He was completely dedicated to his children in every way – and their strength these past few days is the best sign I could have that Dave is still here with us in spirit,” said Sandberg.

    “Dave and I did not get nearly enough time together. But as heartbroken as I am today, I am equally grateful. Even in these last few days of completely unexpected hell – the darkest and saddest moments of my life – I know how lucky I have been. If the day I walked down that aisle with Dave someone had told me that this would happen – that he would be taken from us all in just 11 years – I would still have walked down that aisle. Because 11 years of being Dave Goldberg’s wife, and 10 years of being a parent with him is perhaps more luck and more happiness than I could have ever imagined. I am grateful for every minute we had.”

    I want to thank all of our friends and family for the outpouring of love over the past few days. It has been…

    Posted by Sheryl Sandberg on Tuesday, May 5, 2015

    Goldberg died of head trauma after collapsing while exercising in a villa near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. According to officials, it is thought that Goldberg collapsed, struck his head on a treadmill, and suffered massive blood loss.

    He was 47.

    Sandberg’s full eulogy is below:

    I want to thank all of our friends and family for the outpouring of love over the past few days. It has been extraordinary – and each story you have shared will help keep Dave alive in our hearts and memories.

    I met Dave nearly 20 years ago when I first moved to LA. He became my best friend. He showed me the internet for the first time, planned fun outings, took me to temple for the Jewish holidays, introduced me to much cooler music than I had ever heard.

    We had 11 truly joyful years of the deepest love, happiest marriage, and truest partnership that I could imagine… He gave me the experience of being deeply understood, truly supported and completely and utterly loved – and I will carry that with me always. Most importantly, he gave me the two most amazing children in the world.

    Dave was my rock. When I got upset, he stayed calm. When I was worried, he said it would be ok. When I wasn’t sure what to do, he figured it out. He was completely dedicated to his children in every way – and their strength these past few days is the best sign I could have that Dave is still here with us in spirit.

    Dave and I did not get nearly enough time together. But as heartbroken as I am today, I am equally grateful. Even in these last few days of completely unexpected hell – the darkest and saddest moments of my life – I know how lucky I have been. If the day I walked down that aisle with Dave someone had told me that this would happen – that he would be taken from us all in just 11 years – I would still have walked down that aisle. Because 11 years of being Dave Goldberg’s wife, and 10 years of being a parent with him is perhaps more luck and more happiness than I could have ever imagined. I am grateful for every minute we had.

    As we put the love of my life to rest today, we buried only his body. His spirit, his soul, his amazing ability to give is still with it. It lives on in the stories people are sharing of how he touched their lives, in the love that is visible in the eyes of our family and friends, in the spirit and resilience of our children. Things will never be the same – but the world is better for the years my beloved husband lived.

  • Dave Goldberg Died After Exercising on Vacation: Report

    Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Dave Goldberg, SurveyMonkey CEO and husband to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, died after exercising while on vacation in Mexico.

    He was 47.

    From the Times:

    Mr. Goldberg, 47, who was on vacation with family and friends, collapsed [in a gym] while exercising, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the family wished to keep the details private. “Efforts to revive him at the gym and at a hospital were unsuccessful,” the person said.

    His death was first announced by his brother Robert.

    “No words can express the depth of loss we feel, but we want his children to learn how much he meant to all of you. In lieu of donations, we want to celebrate his life in a manner that respects the family’s privacy as they cope with this tragic, life changing event: Sheryl, their children, and our family would be grateful if people would post their memories and pictures of Dave to his Facebook profile,” he said.

    It’s with incredible shock and sadness that I’m letting our friends and family know that my amazing brother, Dave…

    Posted by Robert Goldberg on Saturday, May 2, 2015

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Goldberg an “amazing person.”

    “Dave Goldberg was an amazing person and I am glad I got to know him. My thoughts and prayers are with Sheryl and her family. I hope friends will join me in celebrating his life by sharing your memories of Dave on his proflle, as his brother Rob suggests,” he said.

    Sandberg has yet to make a public statement.

  • Google-Backed SurveyMonkey Teams Up With Pew, Westat

    SurveyMonkey, one of the initial companies in Google Captial’s portfolio, announced that it has teamed up with Pew Research Center and Westat to “examine non-probability sampling and potential frameworks for measurement and evaluation.”

    The primary focus of the collaboration, SurveyMonkey says, is to better understand non-probability research and different ways of gauging survey quality.

    “We’re excited to be working in association with the nation’s top research organizations to help create a consistent set of measures and techniques,” said Jon Cohen, SurveyMonkey VP of Survey Research. “We hope to improve understanding of this new era of opinion research and move the entire industry forward.”

    “Having no singular framework for non-probability sampling is limiting the insights market researchers and opinion pollsters can deliver,” said Mike Brick, a Westat Senior Statistician. “Collectively, we want to explore the assumptions of the underlying model and if, or how, revisions should be made to rethink quality in our industry.”

    Each of the organizations will contribute data and staff time to the initiative. SurveyMonkey will provide access to its online panel.

    SurveyMonkey was the first of three initial Google Capital investments, raising $800 million early last year in a round that included Google and others.

    Image via SurveyMonkey

  • Google Capital-Backed SurveyMonkey Launches New iOS App

    Google announced its new growth-stage business investment fund Google Capital this week. SurveyMonkey, one of three companies in its portfolio, just announced a new mobile app and SDK.

    The app is available for iOS, and lets organizations create surveys and monitor/analyze results in real time. It includes an “intuitive” user interface with templates for more in-depth surveys. It allows for response collection via email, social and website, and includes kiosk functionality for on-site customer feedback.

    The analytics engine lets users filter, compare and analyze survey results in realtime. Survey results can be exported as PDF, Excel and CSV files.

    “The demand for making decisions quickly, no matter where you are, keeps increasing,” said CEO Dave Goldberg. “We’ve seen a 14x increase in our mobile traffic over the past three years. The old model of making decisions only while you’re in the office no longer exists, thanks to trends like BYOD, and now Bring Your Own Services. SurveyMonkey was one of the first services people brought into the office and we’ve always offered a robust mobile solution for people to take surveys. Now, our mobile app allows organizations to gather and analyze critical data needed for real time decisions from any location, any time, fueling a smarter, agile and ultimately more productive workforce.”

    “Untethered employees will now be able to easily send surveys while working outside the office, like in field or lab environments,” the company explains. “Additionally, the app will now make it easier for employees to monitor results and react immediately to trends the survey identifies, like issues with customer satisfaction or campaign effectiveness”

    The mobile feedback SDK lets you get feedback at any point during a user’s experience within an app. It will be released this year for both iOS and Android. Developers can sign up now.

    SurveyMonkey says it knows users want an Android app, but gives no timeframe on when one might become available. The company notes, however, that its site and surveys are optimized for all mobile devices.

    SurveyMonkey was the first of the three Google Capital investments, raising $800 million early last year in a round that included Google and others.

    Image via SurveyMonkey

  • Google Announces Google Capital Investment Fund For Growth-Stage Businesses

    Google announced the launch of a new growth equity fund called Google Capital. It’s backed by the company, and led by partners David Lawee, Scott Tierney and Gene Frantz.

    Google describes the fund as a growth-stage business counterpart to Google Ventures, which launched five years ago.

    “Like our colleagues at Google Ventures, our goal is to invest in the most promising companies of tomorrow, with one important difference,” says Lawee. “While Google Ventures focuses mainly on early-stage investments, we’ll be looking to invest in companies solely as they hit their growth phase. That means finding companies that have already built a solid foundation and are really ready to expand their business in big ways. We’ll look across a range of industries for companies with new technologies and proven track records in their fields. Our investments to date include SurveyMonkey, Lending Club and Renaissance Learning—with many more to come.”

    Google Capital, while previously unnamed officially, has been around for over a year. The SurveyMonkey investment took place in January 2013. The LendingClub investment followed in May. The Renaissance Learning investment is new though (it’s $40 million).

    If you’re unfamiliar with these companies, SurveyMonkey provides online survey solutions, LendingClub is a low-rate banking alternative, and Renaissance Learning provides cloud-based education solutions.

    “But it’s not just a monetary investment for us,” says Lawee. “The most important—and distinctive—feature of Google Capital is how we work with our portfolio companies. Over the past 15 years, Google has built a strong business, and that’s mostly thanks to the great people who work here. Our portfolio companies have abundant access to the talent, passion and strategic expertise of some of Google’s technology and product leaders. While many investors may contribute money and advice to the companies they support, Google Capital is going beyond that and tapping into our greatest assets: our people. They help us succeed, and we believe they can help our portfolio companies do the same.”

    Here’s the full Google Capital investment team:

    Advisors include a number of high profile Googlers including Sundar Pichai, David Drummond, Alan Eustace, Amit Singh and quite a few others. You can see the full list here.

    Image via Google