California-based SurveyMonkey specialises in web-based survey solutions. The company, which recently raised around $800 million (around £487, or AUS$900) in debt and equity financing at a valuation of around $1.3 billion (around £7.9 billion or AUS$2.4 billion), recently expanded its operation by opening an office in London's Tech City area.
The office was opened to generate sales and marketing, in addition to attracting engineers and developers. It capped off a busy 2013 for SurveMonkey, which also launched SurveMonkey Enterprise - a tailored version of its existing product that tracks how employees use and distribute surveys and aggregates data in one place.
We spoke to SurveMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg on why the company was attracted to Tech City, the reception to its new enterprise offering and its plans for integration with other cloud services.
TechRadar Pro: What will SurveMonkey use the re-cap money for?
DG: The recapitalization money was used to provide liquidity to investors and employees who chose to do so. It was not used to run the company.
TRP: What attracted the company to Tech City?
DG: Due to the rise of Tech City, London was a natural fit for us. With the launch of SurveyMonkey Enterprise, we have a huge opportunity to reach customers we couldn't service without a local team. We also feel a sense of responsibility to help educate the market on how to best use the platform to get real answers to help make better decisions.
TechRadar Pro: Why has the company launched SurveyMonkey Enterprise?
David Goldberg: We've been in the enterprise for quite some time. Virtually every member of the FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 has an employee using SurveyMonkey. What SurveyMonkey Enterprise allows is for easier use and deployment of SurveyMonkey throughout an organization.
This new service enables much greater control for companies and it makes it easier for different divisions of a company to use the data for their own purposes.
TRP: What does SurveyMonkey Enterprise offer?
DG: In a nutshell, SurveyMonkey Enterprise offers three main things: control (full visibility and complete data control), collaboration (survey sharing throughout the create, send and analyze process) and comparison (allowing the comparing of data within and across organizations, allowing companies to share data throughout the business to help them make better decisions).
Our hope is that this product gives organizations the ability to fully harness the power of the data they're collecting, and ultimately make better decisions.
TRP: Are there any interesting ways that SurveyMonkey Enterprise is being used by organizations that you can tell us about?
DG: It is being used across different sectors and is already becoming an essential tool for business and governments alike, allowing them to save money, gain scale and be more effective. Chelsea Hospital here in the UK was one of our first customers.
TRP: Can you give us any insight into the company's backend IT that helps power "more than 2 million surveys everyday"?
DG: We have spent much of the past three years rebuilding the technology and infrastructure SurveyMonkey. We handle a tremendous amount of data. There are more than 39 billion survey responses in our database. And, we add 70GB of new data daily. So, the technical challenge is a big one. We have a very talented team of engineers that keep it all running.
TRP: What can you tell us about the integration with Zendesk and MailChimp?
DG: Zendesk and MailChimp are two of our API partners. APIs are an example of how we are evolving SurveyMonkey from a survey tool to a decision making platform. Opening up our create and analyze APIs so that customers can view their survey data along side their email performance data, for example, is powerful. We plan to do more of these types of integrations in the future.
TRP: What does SurveyMonkey have in store for businesses over the course of the year?
DG: We have an aggressive expansion plan and see much of our growth coming from overseas. Not only will we look to make our biggest investment outside the US in London, we will also look to expand in Asia and South America. It is a really exciting time to be at SurveyMonkey and we're looking forward to the future.
