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

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

#61

Post by sskates »

mtc010170 wrote: post #51
sskates wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 counterintuit…

I think part of it is the foundational wisdom is by and large correct. The hard part is knowing which applies to your situation. One place I got tripped up on was thinking the answer to every problem was working harder, preparing more, and being more disciplined. It took me many years to figure out some problems needed a different set of skills (eg listening, setting expectations, running a meeting).

One other place where it was correct to not listen to- everyone hated our market, particularly investors. We didn't listen to them. It was very clear to me that there was a big opportunity: usage of mobile phones was exploding, apps and web 2.0 was so different it would require a totally new form of infrastructure and tooling. Zynga, Facebook, Netflix were already embracing this approach and it was only a matter a time before everyone else did as well. I remember one very prominent venture capitalist told us they'd fund us but IFF we stopped working on Amplitude. We didn't listen to them, thank goodness!

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

#62

Post by sskates »

dbt00 wrote: post #59
neom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, exactly. I always joke that once you're out they won't even pick up your call as they're onto the next IPO. (I know that Morgan Stanley still has our back though!)

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

#64

Post by sskates »

light_triad wrote: post #6

Congrats Spenser & team! I hadn't realised that you pivoted a couple of times before starting Amplitude. Do you have any advice for powering through in the early days and evaluating startup ideas to get beyond the dreaded 0 to 1 stage?

What I say here around not quitting is the most important one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28701942

You'll get better at evaluating what directions will result in traction as you go through more ideas and spend more time.

We went through 6 or 7 different ideas, including: outsourcing website, website for finding photographers, alumni map for MIT students, Sonalight voice recognition, before landing on Amplitude.

Here's our application to TechStars for one of them when we were very early on which is funny to watch now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PIM5wWut5Q

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

#65

Post by caseyf7 »

sskates wrote: post #37
claudiulodro wrote: post #19

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?

I'm going to try to answer the question without divulging how anyone individually did. I took a look at the initial 4 year option grants for the first 10 engineers (this doesn't count refreshers or other follow on grants). The average value at $50/share (yesterday's opening price) is just over $10M. The group varied in experience from just out of school to a few years working when they joined. I feel we were a good d…

While joining a FAANG in the past was most likely the richest path, that may not be true today.

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

#66

Post by sskates »

stevenj wrote: post #58

Are you gonna buy a lambo?

The bankers advised me that getting a private jet would be too much but anything else was cool.

Anne and I are not that flashy. Probably get a nicer house. Give some to family. Hermes handbags is as luxury as it gets for us.

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

#67

Post by gkop »

caseyf7 wrote: post #65
sskates wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to try to answer the question without divulging how anyone individually did. I took a look at the initial 4 year option grants for the first 10 engineers (this doesn't count refreshers or other follow on grants). The average value at $50/share (yesterday's opening price) is just over $10M. The group varied in experience from just out of school to a few years working when they joined. I feel we were a good d…

While joining a FAANG in the past was most likely the richest path, that may not be true today.

Extended exercise options tilt my scales back to start ups.

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

#68

Post by callmeed »

sskates wrote: post #35
andrewljohnson wrote: post #12

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…

It's great to have you as a customer. Make sure you give product feedback to our team! Most of the money in SaaS is in large clients in the enterprise. Almost all large SaaS businesses have been built that way (Salesforce, Adobe, ServiceNow, Workday). Once you figure that out monetizing smaller companies goes way down in priority and it's a better strategy to give your product away for free. For us in particular: 1)…

To be fair Adobe IPO'd in 1986, long before SaaS was a thing. I wouldn't say they quite fit the bill of "built by selling large enterprise software contracts".

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

#70

Post by lifekaizen »

sskates wrote: post #32
tlb wrote: post #3

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?

The other posts have some great screenshots of our product. Giraffe Graph! That brings me back. The fees are actually the same between a traditional IPO as well as a direct listing. We ended up paying $15M or so all in between everyone. The reason some banks push you to a traditional IPO is that their real clients- public market investors like hedge funds who to repeat business with them, get a good deal on your stoc…

I’m glad you went direct. As a small retail investor it allows me to have access, and buying from employees and giving them some liquidity feels good like what a market should do.

They also use restricted supply to keep the price high. Everyone’s locked up, no supply, it’s no wonder the price often jumps.

Curious what you would say about pricing startup raises? There’s a line of logic which says don’t price too high, you never want a down round and that keeps the risk low.

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