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.
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.
