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In the meantime, Geoff's article from yesterday is here: https://blog.ycombinator.com/amplitude-w12-is-going-public/
It seemed critical early on that Amplitude basically made what MixPanel charged a lot for free, by providing a huge free tier. This is how my company ended up on Amplitude... and then we didn't pay for years, until we eventually ended up paying $40K/year then more. That pricing structure seems like a very long-viewed approach that could have easily been ruined by short-term product thinking. Was there ever internal o…
Amplitude, from the moment I was aware of it, was more about productizing the Facebook/Zynga style product analytics approach.
I left Zynga for an early startup in 2011. At that time, I tried to use Mixpanel for acquisition and retention analysis - it fell woefully short. I wasn’t able to use any of the built-in reporting.
Meanwhile, I have been a mega fan of Amplitude from the first time I ever used it. It was built for the “product data” use case first, not as a Google analytics replacement. That positioning made it easier for them to demand premium pricing.
Do you have any screen shots from the first version you put in front of customers? It'd be fun to see how far it's come. I assume investment banks were trying to convince you to do a traditional IPO instead of a direct listing, so they could collect some fat fees. What were their best arguments?
In addition to claudiulodro's question about whether the employees, especially the early ones, made a good chunk.
- Could you explain the reasons you took it public? What were the parameters and different tradeoffs? Did you want to take it public? Was there a consensus? What were the conversations about that?
- How long have you been preparing for and do you have a playbook for this?
- Who did you hire to take it public, and how have you selected them?
- What was your relation with the underwriters? How did you choose? What did you optimize for?
- How has your cap table evolved from formation to now? How did you ensure fairness?
- Hindsight is 20/20, but what would you differently?
1) What was the hardest part of your journey to IPO?
2) If you could give just one piece of advice to early-stage founders, what would it be?
3) Of all the common startup mantras you hear repeated, what one would you would advise people to ignore?
Hmm - I re-upped* this post after seeing it, but I wonder if Spenser is now busy with other things, since more than "a couple hours" have passed. In the meantime, Geoff's article from yesterday is here: https://blog.ycombinator.com/amplitude-w12-is-going-public/ * a la https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
Congrats! HN is always saying that working for a FAANG is better money than working for a startup even if it IPOs, so my question to you is: How did your employees make out during the IPO? Is the prevailing HN wisdom correct? Did your average developer employee that stuck it through with you on your journey end up with more or less than what they would have made working at FAANG?