Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO | Hacker News Reader

Why SurveyMonkey is holding off on an IPO

tech.fortune.cnn.com

36 pointsalexconrad14 comments

"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.

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.

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.

> Why should I invest in a company that does IPO only for some people to do exits?

Exactly. Companies that are making money hand over fist, with amazing growth potential are rarely looking for people to share their wealth with.

Much of the two tech bubbles would have been avoided if buyers had thought through what is going on the other side of the table.

At the time, FB was also hitting the 500 shareholders which meant they had to start reporting everything to the SEC, same as if they were a public company. So why not just go public? (I guess they learned why...) That number may have been bumped up since then.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

From what I see, they somehow managed to get some top notch clients using their product. I guess it's the level of professionalism their product projects for itself.

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

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