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Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

techcrunch.com

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Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#71

Post by frik »

frozenport wrote: post #65
suhail wrote: post #19

Hey everyone, I am one of the founders at Mixpanel. Layoffs were tough on us, we did over hire a bit, and wanted to make the company more lean. We are deeply sorry for those that are no longer part of Mixpanel - they were our friends and co-workers that we continue to miss. I am happy to answer any questions that I can.

Can you share the presentations you made to prospective investors? I'm particularly interested in how you estimate the market size for your product.

(Not related to them, just read the original source on VentureBeat)

presentation (2014): http://www.slideshare.net/metrics1/mixpanel-our-pitch-deck-t...

original source of the news: http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/08/mixpanel-starts-2016-with-...

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#72

Post by frozenport »

frik wrote: post #71
frozenport wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share the presentations you made to prospective investors? I'm particularly interested in how you estimate the market size for your product.

(Not related to them, just read the original source on VentureBeat) presentation (2014): http://www.slideshare.net/metrics1/mixpanel-our-pitch-deck-t... original source of the news: http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/08/mixpanel-starts-2016-with-...

Hey, all the numbers are redacted!!!

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#73

Post by w1ntermute »

benchmark6 wrote: post #66

Mixpanel is a revolving door. It's only called layoffs because Suhail decided to fire many at once this time https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Mixpanel-Reviews-E406910.h...

From a review posted on Nov 14, 2015:

> the CEO's three favorite things are talking about how much he likes to drink, comparing himself to a gangster rapper, and a juvenile lack of self-awareness

Based on his LinkedIn profile, he can't be older than 30 and has never held a real job. Why exactly is someone like this running a company that has raised $77M instead of working as a junior engineer?

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#74

Post by boomzilla »

w1ntermute wrote: post #73
benchmark6 wrote: post #66

Mixpanel is a revolving door. It's only called layoffs because Suhail decided to fire many at once this time https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Mixpanel-Reviews-E406910.h...

From a review posted on Nov 14, 2015: > the CEO's three favorite things are talking about how much he likes to drink, comparing himself to a gangster rapper, and a juvenile lack of self-awareness Based on his LinkedIn profile, he can't be older than 30 and has never held a real job. Why exactly is someone like this running a company that has raised $77M instead of working as a junior engineer?

Shhtttt don't ask, the YC president never held a real job but that doesn't stop him from talking like he knows everything from astrophysics to socioeconomic stuff either.

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#75

Post by swingbridge »

Mixpanel has a great product but suffers quite a bit from the curse of having a product everyone loves but nobody wants to pay for.

The layoffs are a likely a further materialization of their struggles to get people to pay for the product at the rate they were hoping.

There's a lot of competition in this space out there now. Mixpanel isn't as unique as it once was. There's also the elephant in the room of questioning how much of the revenue in this sector comes from other companies surviving only on VC cash (i.e. cat video site analyzing page traffic that shows ads for a toothpaste delivery iPhone app that analyzes its social media interactions with users that turn out to just be bots in some Russian guy's basement). Point being the rapid downturn in VC funding recently isn't exactly helping Mixpanel's revenue either.

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#76

Post by w1ntermute »

boomzilla wrote: post #74
w1ntermute wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a review posted on Nov 14, 2015: > the CEO's three favorite things are talking about how much he likes to drink, comparing himself to a gangster rapper, and a juvenile lack of self-awareness Based on his LinkedIn profile, he can't be older than 30 and has never held a real job. Why exactly is someone like this running a company that has raised $77M instead of working as a junior engineer?

Shhtttt don't ask, the YC president never held a real job but that doesn't stop him from talking like he knows everything from astrophysics to socioeconomic stuff either.

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with being young or not having ever held a real job. There are certainly great founders who have done an admirable job despite their youth and lack of work experience (Zuckerberg comes to mind), but they are few and far between. It's just that these sorts of complaints about juvenile behavior are entirely understandable when you consider the founder's profile.

And to be fair to sama, I haven't seen any comments from YC alumni about how he compares himself to a gangster rapper. However, the trend of VCs pontificating on Twitter about topics that they don't have a good grasp on is somewhat irritating. The only person who has truly demonstrated the ability to "go deep" on (multiple) extremely complicated subjects, and successfully put his time/money where his mouth is, is Elon Musk. And even he showed a typical lack of self-awareness in his younger days[0].

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSHUha9ABNY

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#78

Post by staunch »

lubos wrote: post #2

MixPanel has very generous free plan and many free users. Sales people were hired to try to convert free users into paying customers. Plan failed, sales people shown the door. This is why companies need to think really hard about freemium model. In case of MixPanel, many of their free users keep adjusting so they send just enough data to stay under free plan. They are probably not going to be persuaded by sales peopl…

Isn't Dropbox having the same problem?

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#79

Post by frik »

frozenport wrote: post #72
frik wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not related to them, just read the original source on VentureBeat) presentation (2014): http://www.slideshare.net/metrics1/mixpanel-our-pitch-deck-t... original source of the news: http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/08/mixpanel-starts-2016-with-...

Hey, all the numbers are redacted!!!

As I mentioned I just found the link in the venturebeat article, ask their CEO for more data.

About half of the numbers are redacted, but you can see if it's a single digit or a double digit number. And you can read in the 2015/2016 plan on page 10:

  * 3x sales headcount and rapidly race towards distribution
  * Reduce sales ramp time by 30-50% via sales enablement
  * Double headcount every 6-9 months
It doesn't add up with the "He confirmed to TechCrunch that 18 people were laid off, mostly in sales"

Re: Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees

#80

Post by danielrhodes »

If it's mostly sales people, it is perfectly reasonable to think they are reassessing their outbound marketing efforts. For example, perhaps their sales channel produced poorer quality leads compared to organic or the type of product they were selling was low enough margin that the sales commission removed any profit they were getting.
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