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Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

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Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#71

Post by Silhouette »

dataminded wrote: post #28
richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

That's the phrase I was looking for. Their sales process is impossible.

They appear to have become a great example of why the small businesses I run typically just walk away from any service we were potentially interested in using if we see a pricing page containing the word "call" but no actual pricing. If you're going to aim for high-touch enterprise sales, that's your choice, it's your business. However, the chances that you will then provide either acceptable quality of service or good value to anyone on the smaller end of the scale tends to zero IME, so it saves everyone time if we look elsewhere immediately. The problems start if it turns out that these companies aren't actually generating enough value to justify the enterprise-level costs either.

For example, say you're running a tool that allows people to quickly experiment with multiple versions of their web site, measure some quantifiable success rate for each version, and perform some basic statistical analysis to guide future changes and improve conversion rates. A basic but useful version of this tool can be implemented in a few days by one competent developer and one competent statistician; I suspect quite a few people reading this discussion have done exactly that. Polishing the tool might take longer and improve its utility somewhat, but it's not as though it's using some secret technique that no normal business can implement for themselves in-house.

At the mostly-self-service end of the spectrum, it might still be worth customers spending a bit of money on the pre-existing tool you make to do that job for them, because you're really competing on immediacy and convenience as much as technical capabilities. At the enterprise level, your competition could instead be some in-house team or some freelancer or agency being brought in from outside just to develop a tool directly for your customer. If they're potentially doing that at a cost less than just the first year of annual fees you're demanding up-front, and according to the customer's exact requirements, both of which seem quite plausible in a case like Optimizely's based on information in other comments here, what exactly is your sales pitch?

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#73

Post by cj »

tptacek wrote: post #60
richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

I have a sort of general question about this narrative, which seems to apply to lots of startups that begin as self-service, developer-focused projects and end in enterprise hell. Is it not the case that these startups begin developer-facing, get market traction, are lavishly funded, and then discover that the self-service offering they've built simply can't satisfy the projections they've made to justify their valua…

I agree with the point you're making.

I think the problem is to become "lavishly funded" means that you need to have a pitch that creates a narrative of how you will reach a lavish level of revenue that is believable.

For B2B SaaS, usually that means moving upmarket and raising prices.

I don't think we can say that Optimizely was necessary wrong in doing what they did with knowing what they knew at the time. There are many examples of B2B SaaS companies successfully starting with SMB, then going enterprise. First company that comes to mind is New Relic ($3.6 billion market cap)

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#74

Post by deedub »

richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

I'm kinda curious about your >$100k loss on your stock. Your strike price from pre series A options was more than the gains on a near $600 million sale price? Maybe I am misunderstanding, but how is that possible?

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#76

Post by adeveloper870 »

Worked at a company that considered Optimizely for one of their possible A/B solutions. We went with another vendor, but I then ended up writing an in-house solution that took about a month [w/o analytics].

It is very easy to implement this in-house so long as you own the systems and don't outsource [too much].

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#77

Post by redshirtrob »

deedub wrote: post #74
richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

I'm kinda curious about your >$100k loss on your stock. Your strike price from pre series A options was more than the gains on a near $600 million sale price? Maybe I am misunderstanding, but how is that possible?

Probably the op spent $100k to exercise the options. It's likely this deal will wipe out all common shareholders and only the VCs will get anything. That's a $100k loss. The op will be spending the next decade writing this loss off against capital gains and earned income.

I've been there.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#78

Post by ryguytilidie »

richardfeynman wrote: post #19

I worked at Optimizely from before its series A in 2012 until the end of 2016, so I have a unique perspective on this. For most of the time when I worked at Optimizely, the company was all the rage. It appeared at the top of most "hot startup" lists, the Glassdoor reviews were 5/5, revenue was skyrocketing, and for a period in 2014 it became the fourth most valuable YCombinator company (after Stripe, AirBnB, and Drop…

I worked there in 2013. I very specifically remember getting a speech about how if we didn't believe that the company would be worth more than google, we should quit. Seems like that may have been a better option for a lot of folks.

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#79

Post by gkop »

redshirtrob wrote: post #77
deedub wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kinda curious about your >$100k loss on your stock. Your strike price from pre series A options was more than the gains on a near $600 million sale price? Maybe I am misunderstanding, but how is that possible?

Probably the op spent $100k to exercise the options. It's likely this deal will wipe out all common shareholders and only the VCs will get anything. That's a $100k loss. The op will be spending the next decade writing this loss off against capital gains and earned income. I've been there.

Can you write off just the exercise price or the fair market value at time of exercise?

Re: Optimizely to be acquired by Episerver

#80

Post by worldsoup »

I interviewed for a marketing role at Optimizely back in 2013...I passed all the interviews with the team and then had a final, short interview with the CEO. He asked me a few basic questions and then asked 'if you only had 3 years to live, would you work at Optimizely?'. I responded honestly and said no. Said that I'd love to work here to help and grow the business, learn, and further my own career but if I had only had 3 years to live I'd spend my time differently. The hiring manager called the next day and said I would not receive an offer and when I asked him if it was because the answer to that question he said yes. That made it obvious they had a strange and not particularly healthy culture...lucky for me as I ended up at a much more successful early stage startup where I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.
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