
SurveyMonkey to Lay Off 100 and Retool Business Product - coloneltcb
http://recode.net/2016/03/01/surveymonkey-to-lay-off-100-and-retool-business-product/
======
courtf
Worked there from 2007-2010, through the sale etc. I had no idea they were up
to 750 employees, and can't guess why they've gotten so big. There were 10-15
employees, 2 engineers in 2008 and that company was printing its own money,
lots of it. I'm sure revenue is much higher today, but that profit amount
isn't a big jump from where the company was headed pre-buyout, on momentum
alone. Really have to wonder what they are spending it all on (besides payroll
tax).

~~~
azernik
Judging from the article, the cuts were mostly in B2B sales. I could
definitely see sales bloating up a SaaS company's headcount very fast. (That's
something I'm having to watch out for in my current company.)

~~~
shostack
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but don't B2B sales people pay for themselves
(assuming you are smart about LTV modeling, commissions and quotas)?

Or is it more that the capital is more profitably invested in other areas of
the business?

~~~
my5thaccount
Sales people are really good about selling themselves, but generally not so
great at actually selling the thing you are hiring them to sell.

~~~
shostack
Right, which is why you let them go if they don't hit quota. What they do is
the most measurable part of the acquisition funnel. Laying off a large group
of them speaks to financial issues/improper planning vs. just regular weeding
out if poor performers.

~~~
my5thaccount
Quotas are fine for an enterprise with a decades old sales process that has
data to measure. SurveyMonkey was entering a new market and growing the sales
force quickly and before they even knew what a reasonable quota was.

You could say that's bad planning, you could also say it's throwing spaghetti
at the wall to see which sales person sticks. Data gathering, if you will.

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jzymbaluk
I'm honestly kind of surprised SurveyMonkey had over 100 employees to begin
with. I always thought of SurveyMonkey as a more fully featured version of
something like [http://strawpoll.me/](http://strawpoll.me/) with more
analytical features and such. I never would have expected them to be a company
of nearly 1000 employees.

~~~
kdkooo
Totally agree! It seems like many of the other comments here make similar
points.

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zbuf
Not calling it "SurveyMonkey" would be a good start for a business product.

For me, and when I try to put myself in others' shoes, I find it hard to see
how a professional organisation linking to "SurveyMonkey" can do anything but
create a negative impression. The product seems good, I'm just surprised the
name has lasted this long.

Does the name stick because the brand recognition is stronger than the
features -- when compared to competitors? What happens when a name like this
has "stuck"?

~~~
bobbles
Heh I'm pretty sure we started using a different survey system purely because
everyone hated sending out 'surveymonkey' links.

They should call their business side 'engage<something>' or whatever...

~~~
sutro
How about EngageMonkey?

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petercooper
_Founded in 1999, SurveyMonkey is valued at $2 billion_

Given the stated revenue of $200M and the recent atmosphere around SaaS
multiples, is a 10x valuation realistic here? (I'm not throwing shade -
genuine semi-naïve question.)

~~~
55555
It's high for even for a b2b saas company. I think another consideration that
should probably bring SurveyMonkey's down is that they have great competitors.

~~~
andrenotgiant
who are their great competitors? would love to find some alternatives

~~~
dabeeeenster
typeform

~~~
diggan
Wow, cool to see Typeform being randomly mentioned on HN!

I'm one of the early developers working at Typeform, if you have any questions
about it, feel free to ask right here.

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malz
Recently signed a deal for 210,000 square feet of office space, 4x the size of
their University Ave space just a year after they moved in with a $6.6
mil/year lease.

[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/17/exclusive...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/17/exclusive-
palo-alto-based-surveymonkey-is-moving.html)

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AlexWest
_" The cuts amount to about 13 percent of SurveyMonkey’s workforce of about
750. The cuts were made primarily among the sales team devoted to SurveyMonkey
for Business."_

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halite
Actually not too surprised. The customer service of SurveyMonkey (and Fluid
Survey that they acquired recently) is of D grade now. Getting some
rudimentary information about service and internals took years. Now we are
looking for other tools as my work publishes few surveys everyday. Their
product has not changed in years and seems likes company is confused about the
future direction.

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Angostura
The thing I find surprising is that they have that many staff and yet the
surveys themselves are still so ugly - the visual design has really changed
since about 2002 from what I can see

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carleverett
I was surprised to see that Google Capital is an investor in SurveyMonkey -
Google Consumer Surveys is a direct competitor:

March 2012 - Google launches GCS

January 2013 - Google invests in SurveyMonkey

Is it common for Google to invest in competitors? Why would they do this?

~~~
adevine
Google Ventures (early stage) and Google Capital (late stage) are focused
solely on profit, rather than strategic alignment with Google. Google's
Corporate Development group is what does investments for alignment and
potential acquisition by Google.

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meshko
How can that company have more than 100 employees i don't understand.

~~~
rtpg
Very likely a lot of it was support/sales.

When you're working with business clients who are not technical, a lot of
support can come in, even if it's just to help onboarding. In a lot of B2B
SAAS, the long term value of each customer means it's totally worth having
support staff spend a day helping out.

Here it seems like they were trying the B2B SAAS route, and they decided
against it, so are firing basically the team on that.

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drelihan
I am shocked that A SaaS survey would ever need 100 people never mind having
100 it was able to let go.

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1123581321
Does anyone know if this is something Dave Goldberg opposed and has finally
gone through?

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throwaway_xx9
They've discussed moving from Palo Alto to Menlo Park, so the layoff may be
related to that.

~~~
kdkooo
I thought they were moving to San Mateo...
[http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/17/exclusive...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2015/08/17/exclusive-
palo-alto-based-surveymonkey-is-moving.html)

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capitan_picard
i've heard there is a lot of "(re)invented here" syndrome in engineering at
surveymonkey. if so, that's a shame

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DrFunke
Oh, god. My sister was literally hired last week...

