

Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO - alexconrad
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/17/surveymonkey-ipo/

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grzaks
"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 me as an occasional stock investor that sounds like a serious
warning signal. Why should I invest in a company that does IPO only for some
people to do exits? (which was exactly the reason FB did IPO) Stock investors
are looking for growth potential. It's just a conflict of interest.

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Retric
Every time you buy stock someone else is selling it. That does not mean it's a
bad buy, just that the seller has different priorities.

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glaugh
For example: "I've got 100% of my wealth locked into one investment, my
SurveyMonkey equity, and I'd like to have a more balanced portfolio, so I'll
sell half, no matter how much I believe in this company." Seems pretty
rational to me.

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sjg007
I am amazed they did so well. Good execution. I like the new building they are
constructing in Palo Alto as well.

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rschmitty
I'm also amazed how well they are doing. Do they have some kinda online survey
patent or do competitors just suck that much?

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crusso
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.

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jonknee
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.

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disgruntledphd2
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.

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hfsktr
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).

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disgruntledphd2
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.

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jgalt212
maybe all these lenders/investors are interested in buying access to Facebook.
Survey Monkey CEO is married to Facebook COO.

