Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#51

Post by mtc010170 » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 1:50 AM UTC

sskates wrote: post #42

mtc010170 wrote: post #28

Congratulations, I'm a user and big fan of your product! Three questions: 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?

Thanks! 1) It's not talked about much but this is an AMA so let's do it. Having to change our management team as we scaled. You have so much loyalty to people who made you successful it is brutal to have to hire a different set of people as you change as a company. This is true for almost every founder CEO scaling a fast growing business. Here's Larry Ellison talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzZOfoHz…

Wow, I really appreciate you taking the time to thoughtfully answer these. Thank you!

There's no particular mantra I had in mind. Some examples would be to "do things that don't scale" or "fail fast" or to not focus on what your competitors are doing.

I understand there's no one-size-fits-all of course.. and I suppose that's the reason I'm asking. I'm curious what in your experience has turned out maybe counterintuitive or where you went against the grain. And what standard wisdom you may look back on and say: "Wow if we had done what everyone had advised us to do.. I don't think we would've ever gotten here."

Thank you and congrats again! Best wishes to you and Amplitude moving forward.

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#52

Post by SmellTheGlove » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

I'm really surprised this thread isn't more active! CEO of a newly public startup opened a thread and is active in the comments. This is great stuff.

- Just rewinding back to when you decided to get started - how did you convince yourself to leave a (presumably) comfortable, reasonably paying job to starting your own thing? It's that leap that scares me the most, so curious of your take.

- If you have anything you'd care to speculate, what would be easier and what would be harder about doing a startup now versus when you all kicked off a decade ago?

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#53

Post by sskates » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

neom wrote: post #49

Hi thanks for doing this. I've been very curious how the roadshow process is in the "covid era"? Any Golfstreams? (I also saw you did a direct listing, I'm not sure how that process differs from an underwritten IPO either.)

The roadshow is all virtual now. We talked to 32 different investors in 4.5 days. I tried to push for in person but almost everyone preferred Zoom and it was probably for the best because we could meet more people. The downside is it feels more transactional vs building a relationship. We still had to pay the bankers the same amount even though there was no private jet provided. What a rip off!

RE traditional IPO vs Direct Listing, you hit my rant!

The traditional IPO process sets you up to massively underprice your stock. Instead of selling your stock directly on the open market, investment bankers sell it for you. They're incentivized to give public market investors a "good deal" by advising you to price your stock low (because they do repeat business with them even though we're the ones paying for their services!). As a result, on average in 2020, companies that went through the traditional IPO process underpriced their stock by 50%.

As a CEO I could never sell a dollar for 50 cents. It's against my fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders. I once heard one public company CFO call it "the largest arbitrage opportunity in all of finance". Why would I want to be on the other side of that?

I strongly encourage all other CEOs at taking their companies public to go through this path.

IPO underpricing data: https://site.warrington.ufl.edu/ritter/files/IPOs-Underprici...

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#54

Post by neom » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:03 AM UTC

sskates wrote: post #53

neom wrote: post #49

Hi thanks for doing this. I've been very curious how the roadshow process is in the "covid era"? Any Golfstreams? (I also saw you did a direct listing, I'm not sure how that process differs from an underwritten IPO either.)

The roadshow is all virtual now. We talked to 32 different investors in 4.5 days. I tried to push for in person but almost everyone preferred Zoom and it was probably for the best because we could meet more people. The downside is it feels more transactional vs building a relationship. We still had to pay the bankers the same amount even though there was no private jet provided. What a rip off! RE traditional IPO vs…

What a rip off!!!! I'd demand a free jet ride regardless.

re: TIPO vs DL, points taken - the advantage in theory is that they're also basically incentivised towards market stability for your stock, and a return over time for their retail investors? (Not saying I agree, just, in theory)

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#55

Post by sskates » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

christophergs wrote: post #17

Thanks for doing the AMA! How did you discover your repeatable distribution channel, and what did it end up being?

The key thing to understand is it is a sales-led motion. As much as a lot of HN is not a fan of sales people, it is necessary for any buying process where there are multiple stakeholders involved. As much as I'd like for individual product managers to decide to adopt Amplitude, the reality is it needs the signoff of a full team to implement and adopt. What I have found is that product-led sales people are much more successful than other types of sellers at Amplitude.

There's a lot of ways people find us: events, online search for our content, our free plan, partners, customer referrals. We're still figuring this out as we scale!

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#56

Post by raywu » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

sskates wrote: post #44

nthngtshr wrote: post #33

Tell us about your first enterprise sale. How far along were you? How did you find the customer? How long was the process? Also, congrats!

Our first sale was to an ex-Zynga founder of a casino gaming company (hey Bret!). We walked in, introduced ourselves, and went through the demo (note to past Spenser: spend a little time up front asking about their problems first!). We got to the end of it and he asked "how much does it cost?" I was shocked as I had never been asked that question before. I had in my head some number like $50/month, but I remembered p…

This is amazing. Thank you for sharing this story. As someone who failed a lot with B2B, I appreciate this. Also your bottom-up comment (startups rolls up into bigger customers over time through growth or acquisition).

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#57

Post by raywu » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:25 AM UTC

sskates wrote: post #50

ignoramous wrote: post #8

Congratulations! So happy for you. I'm sure others in this community are too. Some Qs: In as competitive a space that Amplitude operates in, what were some decisions the company took during tough periods or in anticipation of dooms-day scenarios that you think proved invaluable? Consequently, what moments do you think would have killed Amplitude if not for luck or execution or vision or hardwork? What is that unique…

Overall success or failure rarely comes down to a single decision or single event. It's more about having enough compounding success and avoiding compounding failure. Probably our worst failure was our 2016 outage where we were down for an entire week. I remember thinking we would lose a big portion of our customer base. What we did really well was our outage response and customer communication. We proactively reache…

patio11's story on his idempotency issue which led to repeatedly calling customers' customers comes to mind [0]. He personally called all affected customers!

[0] https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1405704339969220615?lang=...

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#58

Post by stevenj » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

Are you gonna buy a lambo?

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#59

Post by dbt00 » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

neom wrote: post #54

sskates wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The roadshow is all virtual now. We talked to 32 different investors in 4.5 days. I tried to push for in person but almost everyone preferred Zoom and it was probably for the best because we could meet more people. The downside is it feels more transactional vs building a relationship. We still had to pay the bankers the same amount even though there was no private jet provided. What a rip off! RE traditional IPO vs…

What a rip off!!!! I'd demand a free jet ride regardless. re: TIPO vs DL, points taken - the advantage in theory is that they're also basically incentivised towards market stability for your stock, and a return over time for their retail investors? (Not saying I agree, just, in theory)

> the advantage in theory is that they're also basically incentivised towards market stability for your stock, and a return over time for their retail investors? (Not saying I agree, just, in theory)

Post hoc justification garbage IMO. It's not like the market isn't littered with the remains of tech stocks that went through a traditional IPO and still crashed.

Re: Tell HN: Amplitude (YC W12) just went public – AMA

#60

Post by sskates » Thu, Sep 30, 2021, 2:34 AM UTC

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #52

I'm really surprised this thread isn't more active! CEO of a newly public startup opened a thread and is active in the comments. This is great stuff. - Just rewinding back to when you decided to get started - how did you convince yourself to leave a (presumably) comfortable, reasonably paying job to starting your own thing? It's that leap that scares me the most, so curious of your take. - If you have anything you'd…

I was doing high frequency trading before starting Amplitude. It was a great job: incredibly smart people, rewarding problems, great money and career progression. The only thing I didn't like was the ethos of secrecy in the industry.

It was clear the long term potential of positive impact on the world was way greater through building a company than anything else. And if you didn't quit you were very likely to get there. One of the things that most resonated with me was one of the Airbnb founders talking about how they were having the same dilemma as you. But then they saw someone who had started a company and realized the only difference was that they had made the decision to start a company and that's what made them realize they could make the same choice. I wouldn't recommend it if you have other life circumstances like debt or significant family obligations that constrain you. But if you don't have that I think it's a great path.

Better: Markets are way bigger and so the ecosystem has adapted around that. Funding is incredibly abundant (kids these days...). Information on how to start a company is more widely available. There's much more experienced help available. Tooling is much easier. What's crazy is people said the funding market was too hot in 2014: https://techcrunch.com/2014/09/05/its-time-for-vcs-to-run-to...

Worse: Hiring is harder. There is a lot more competition but I think it's outweighed by markets being bigger. I think talent is still the rate limiting factor overall for the growth of the ecosystem.