Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO • Hacker News Board

Re: Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO

#11

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:25 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #8

crusso wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chalk me up as dumbfounded as well. How you build a business model upon something so simple, easy to replicate, and (to me) value-less is a mystery.

Why do you see user survey's as value-less? Being able to gather and analyze information from a group of people is a great value.

Not the person you asked, but I am always consistently surprised at the success of survey monkey. I was a paying customer for two years though, mostly for reasons of replicibility. Many, many, social scientists use it, even though it doesn't really support useful things like randomisation to entirely different surveys.

The interface is nice, and they appear to have sewn up the marketing world, so well done to them. I still want to build a much better version, but I'm not sure if there's a market for it.

Re: Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO

#12

Post by ksherlock » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 9:48 PM UTC

grzaks wrote: post #2

"And yet, SurveyMonkey [...] has two reasons for raising capital. One is to reward the investment firms, Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital, that bought the company just over four years ago, when it was about a fourth its current size. The other is the perennial tech-industry rationale for an IPO: so SurveyMonkey's employees can sell some of the stock that is a significant portion of their compensation." Honestly, for…

At the time, FB was also hitting the 500 shareholders which meant they had to start reporting everything to the SEC, same as if they were a public company. So why not just go public? (I guess they learned why...) That number may have been bumped up since then.

Re: Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO

#13

Post by hfsktr » Thu, Jan 17, 2013, 10:10 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #11

jonknee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you see user survey's as value-less? Being able to gather and analyze information from a group of people is a great value.

Not the person you asked, but I am always consistently surprised at the success of survey monkey. I was a paying customer for two years though, mostly for reasons of replicibility. Many, many, social scientists use it, even though it doesn't really support useful things like randomisation to entirely different surveys. The interface is nice, and they appear to have sewn up the marketing world, so well done to them. I…

I know this might seem kind of silly but isn't the success of survey monkey a sign that there is a market for what they offer? Unless there is something I'm missing, kind of like there are markets for medicine and the system could use improvement but there are major roadblocks to overcome (in this case I don't know what it is which is why I ask).

Re: Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO

#14

Post by jgalt212 » Fri, Jan 18, 2013, 2:50 AM UTC

maybe all these lenders/investors are interested in buying access to Facebook. Survey Monkey CEO is married to Facebook COO.

Re: Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO

#15

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sat, Jan 19, 2013, 5:40 PM UTC

hfsktr wrote: post #13

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the person you asked, but I am always consistently surprised at the success of survey monkey. I was a paying customer for two years though, mostly for reasons of replicibility. Many, many, social scientists use it, even though it doesn't really support useful things like randomisation to entirely different surveys. The interface is nice, and they appear to have sewn up the marketing world, so well done to them. I…

I know this might seem kind of silly but isn't the success of survey monkey a sign that there is a market for what they offer? Unless there is something I'm missing, kind of like there are markets for medicine and the system could use improvement but there are major roadblocks to overcome (in this case I don't know what it is which is why I ask).

Well yes and no. My idea is a little different, but I'd need the SM crowd to be able to have enough revenue to build it, so my worry would be that I wouldn't be able to get enough people to allow me to work more on developing the part that I'm sure there's a market for.