
Mixpanel Lays Off 18 Employees - somesaba
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/08/mixpanel-layoffs/
======
suhail
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.

~~~
no1youknowz
Should the preverbal hit the fan, would you open-source the code and have a
paid support plan... should all else fails to monetize this?

Not sure why the down votes. I don't know the balance sheet of the company.
Also lots of other companies like Aerospike open source their code and make
money from support plans.

~~~
suhail
We aren't having trouble monetizing the business. Our revenue projections
remain the same even though we let some staff go and we are doing fine on that
end. Mixpanel isn't going anywhere if that's your concern. If anything, we are
investing a lot more in engineering, product, and design to make our products
a lot better for all you.

It's too early to say what we'd do in an outcome like that. I certainly
wouldn't want to see everything we've built go to waste.

~~~
atomical
How are you investing a lot more if you let people go?

~~~
nstj
> He confirmed to TechCrunch that 18 people were laid off, mostly in sales.

From the original article

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scurvy
Which is odd. Sales people don't cost much. They either pay for themselves or
they're let go quickly. They're not usually let go in a group like that.
Usually engineers are cut early; they cost more. Not trying to pick a fight,
I've just been through layoffs before and this is how the finance team always
justifies their cuts.

~~~
todd3834
If things are going bad, the engineers become assets for a potential
aquisition. I've never seen engineers let go when things get dicey. Almost
everyone else is let go first.

~~~
scurvy
That's probably a sign of frothy (dare I say bubble?) times. The opposite is
usually the case. Cut the engineers and outsource the work was the M.O. for a
decade+.

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lubos
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 people to pay.

~~~
lyime
If you are doing 25,000 of fewer events, you are probably not making much
money.

~~~
buro9
That's not true.

When I looked at MixPanel we were already at more than 8 million page views
per month and wanting to track more events than that.

But as we wanted to _try_ MixPanel, the best way was to start by sampling a
small number of users and activities.

As our trial of the software progressed we found we got way more value out of
sampling a smaller set that we could make sense of rather than measuring
everything.

For us, MixPanel became one more tool in a wider toolset. We didn't see the
value in jumping up to the paid level as we didn't feel it would replace all
of the other tools.

~~~
iyn
Can you elaborate on the tools in a 'wider toolset'? I'm always eager to learn
about new tools/services.

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benchmark6
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...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Mixpanel-
Reviews-E406910.htm)

~~~
w1ntermute
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?

~~~
boomzilla
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.

~~~
w1ntermute
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSHUha9ABNY)

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apapli
That's a worrying sign - sales are generally the last people to go - if you're
under financial stress you generally need revenue and customers.

Unless they somehow believe they can pull off another Atlassian (who actually
spend a ton of money on marketing, despite being seen as a "no salesperson"
business) I'd say the $65m funding they received is going down the gurgler.

~~~
openforce
'sales are generally the last people to go' \- generally where? In startups ,
especially engineering driven ones, shredding parts of sales team first is not
un-heard of. Also, according to the CEO, they over-hired. Looks like they
tried to expand more than they could handle. Doesn't seem like a worrying sign
to me.

------
1as
Source article: [http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/08/mixpanel-
starts-2016-with-...](http://venturebeat.com/2016/01/08/mixpanel-
starts-2016-with-layoffs-we-just-overhired/)

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gscott
I ran a free service for a long while... they should just dump the free
service or at least not accept any more free customers. They will save a lot
of money and since the customers don't transition up anyway it won't really
affect their business. A business isn't a charity. I learned that the hard
way!

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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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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.

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bankim
Wouldn't this negatively impact hiring in other depts like engineering in near
future?

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wildmXranat
I checked out mixpanel couple years ago and I couldn't get tied down to a
service which didn't have a cheaper than a $150 plan. What if I find it very
useful and then ran out of the free tier quota. That scenario was unacceptable
and thus, we are not a client.

I already see other's comments in this thread of this very scenario. We dodged
that bullet.

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thewarrior
Yahoo,Mixpanel,Instacart,Jawbone,Tango,Hotels tonight,Maker media ..

And so it begins ... ?

[http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/08/burn-slower-or-
vaporize/](http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/08/burn-slower-or-vaporize/)

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ksec
Has anyone try both Gosquared and Mixpanel? How do they compare?

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greensamuelm
The P isn't capitalized. It's Mixpanel.

