
Wufoo Sold For $35 Mil. Here's The Story Behind Its Success. - mbansal14
http://mixergy.com/wufoo-sold-for-35-mil-heres-the-story-behind-its-success/
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kingofspain
5 years ago, if you've told me there was money to be made outsourcing HTML
forms, I'd have called you insane. Today I probably still would. Goes to show
that sometimes the things we think are so worthless that noone would ever pay
for might not actually be so.

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patio11
There is huge demand in businesses big and small for "Let me actually get my
work done without needing to talk to IT." (I suppose this is a subset of the
larger opportunity, which is that a) almost all large organizations are
pathological in at least one way and b) people do not enjoy dealing with the
pathological parts, so they'll pay to avoid it.)

Wufoo solved a real problem which was persistently preventing people from
making money or getting their work done. The fact that that problem is perhaps
not the most technically difficult is not relevant, as dealing with it is
still beyond the capabilities of about 99.95% of people who encounter it.

I wish there were a lot more Wufoos.

~~~
silverbax88
It's just tough to spot because there were already so many players in that
space.

~~~
patio11
"Too many fish, not enough barrel" rarely kills startups.

~~~
nostrademons
Except in casual gaming and TODO-lists.

~~~
iamdave
_TODO-lists._

It's funny because it's true.

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progolferyo
The Wufoo guys just created a kick-ass product, they are really talented
javascript and css engineers. Now it's common for a site to be streamlined
with drag and drop interfaces, dynamic lists and the like, but a few years
ago, those kinds of sites were hard to come by. Plus they are just cool guys,
I actually found a bug in the site once, sent them a reference to the bug in
their contact form and one of the team members sent me back a personal note
about fixing it. Those are the kinds of finishing touches to a product that I
think made Wufoo excel, albeit in a kind of weird tech space.

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supahfly_remix
The terms of the deal are $35 million in cash and SurveyMonkey stock (which is
privately-held). The article doesn't give the split between them. It's
premature to declare this a success. It's not like they were bought in an all-
cash deal or bought with Google stock.

~~~
Geekette
Although I haven't watched the video: Why should the mix matter? If the deal
was deemed acceptable by the team and their investors, I assume it's because
the terms left them comparatively better off. The fact is, they have tackled a
need, out-executed others in a certain space, and achieved an exit strategy
(nothing wrong with them not wanting to do forms forever). That is a success.

Not everything has to be Google-level transaction to be declared a success.

~~~
wilzy
Agreed. Eager to see the reasoning behind the 'mix' concept now.

~~~
nostrademons
Privately-held stock is riskier, because it's basically worthless until the
acquirer has its own exit event. When you sell your company for stock, you're
basically just trading stock in your company for stock in the acquirer. If the
acquirer tanks before exiting, your shares are just as worthless as if you'd
tanked before exiting.

Now, it can _sometimes_ work out - I doubt Evan Williams is complaining about
selling Blogger to pre-IPO Google for (presumably - terms were never
disclosed) stock. But in other cases, I'm not sure the founders did so well -
SixApart, for example, isn't quite the darling it was when it purchased
LiveJournal in 2005.

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brackin
Great story, another example of a YC success. One thing, i've never got Wufoo.
I don't think they're providing a better solution in comparison to Google Docs
and PollDaddy, far from a perfect market but I think certain things make the
process too long.

~~~
ssharp
They are definitely better than Google Docs forms in several areas.

The main selling points of Wufoo over GForms in my organization were:

    
    
      - Payment integration
      - Branding
      - Customizable notifications
      - Form/Page/Field Rules
      - API
      - Ease of Use
    

We get all that, and the only difference in price is $29.95 a month. For a
decent-sized organization, that is a paltry sum and it has helped us save time
(probably over 100 hours) and improve our operations. It's been a fantastic
value for us.

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rumblestrut
My daytime employer subscribes to Wufoo's mid-level plan and the experience
has been fantastic. I was worried when they sold the experience might change,
but so far it's been nothing but the rock-solid steady performance and smart
feature enhancements we've had since day one.

I can't remember when, but not too long ago Wufoo sent us a hand-written thank
you note for being their customer. It blew me away.

I second patio11's comment below: "I wish there were a lot more Wufoos."

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fduran
Congratulations.

I had a Wufoo account but moved to Formstack since Wufoo cannot make any
calculations and they plainly said they are not going to implement the
feature; they want to specialize in ease of use I guess. I can't think of an
advantage of Wufoo over Formstack.

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no_gravity
Strange, the transcripts of the interviews are now delivered as google docs. I
always thought it was just search-engine-fodder. Do some people really prefer
to read the interviews?

~~~
count
I read significantly faster than you can talk, and I don't have tons of free
time. Why would you NOT prefer to read an interview, as long as its
transcribed properly?

