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Optimizely Raises $58M

76 points by dsiroker 11y ago

cft 11y ago
Never mind the bubble babble!
georgemonck 11y ago
"Every morning, we all wake up to a world that isn’t optimized. Reading the news, commuting to work, ordering coffee, planning a vacation; far too few of these experiences were optimized using data. As a result, our lives are filled with experiences that are never as good as they could be." Oh the horror! Just the other day I was getting a cappuccino from my local cafe, and as the barista expertly poured out a perfect latte-art fern, I thought to myself, "man, if only this process could be optimized using data, like they do at Starbucks." Then I sat at my computer and read some idiosyncratic posts from my favorite blogger. After enjoying a few posts I said to myself, "man, if only he could optimize his blog posts for maximum clicks like Buzzfeed does. Why doesn't he use data to make his experience better?" </sarcasm> I do generally dislike cheap negativity when responding to startup news. But this first paragraph was really tone-deaf and deserving of ridicule. Let me try to balance my criticism with some constructive advice for rewriting this press release. Drop the first four sentences. Start off with, "When Pete Koomen and I founded Optimizely five years ago, very few companies had even heard of A/B Testing, and optimization software was about the last thing anyone considered putting in their technology stack." Then give an example. "When we first helped XYZ Sporting Goods optimize their site, we knew we were on to something. Not only did we help them write more compelling copy and better imagery that bettered their sales, we also created a much better experience for their customers. No longer would visitors click away because they could not understand what the site did, or what their message actually was. A/B Testing and data based optimization allowed us to match the website to the people who were actually visiting their site. Fast forward to 2015 and much has changed...." Not every company is going to change the world. But you can still write a compelling, feel-good narrative without making me want to throw a shoe at the screen.
- leftnode 11y ago
  I'm not sure why you're being down-voted but this was completely spot on.
  - pka 11y ago
    Agreed, upvoted.
RussianCow 11y ago
Genuine question: How do companies with such vague and unimformative home pages become so widely-used? I'm sure their platform is great, but I couldn't tell from their home page what they do, and wasn't interested enough to keep reading. And Optimizely isn't the only culprit by any measure. Is it just word of mouth? Or are most people somehow more likely to use a product with a vague and buzzword-laden description over something more succinct and to the point?
- dangrossman 11y ago
  If you're on their homepage, it's probably because you were referred there by someone or something that already told you about them. The homepage has just what a referral needs: a one-field signup form, some other brands using them so you trust the referral gave you good advice, and enough branding to show you you're in the right place. If you're coming from anywhere else, like an ad, it's going to be linked to a landing page tailored to that source. For example, if you search "A/B testing" on Google, you'll find an ad that links here, not to their homepage: https://www.optimizely.com/ab-testing https://www.optimizely.com/ab-testing
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    It certainly isn't because you were on their blog and removed "blog." as https://optimizely.com https://optimizely.com doesn't load. (HTTP only, which does a redirect to https://www. https://www.)
    - kamilszybalski 11y ago
      Great, now i've got optimizely ads following me everywhere on the internet ; ). Congrats on the raise.
- davidu 11y ago
  Consider that you may not be their target customer, so it might seem vague to you -- but to people in their target customer market, it may be perfect. To me, they clearly communicate their value prop, which is, to help me "Deliver the best experiences for every customer across desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps."
PhilWright 11y ago
You just know that when the pricing page says "Call us" that they are going to try and rip you off. This is a classis sales technique for expensive products, they ascertain how much you can probably afford and then that becomes the price. Very off putting.
- trjordan 11y ago
  Optimizely ain't cheap, dude, and scaling doesn't work the way you want it to at a lot of volumes. I worked at a company where we paid $400 / month for Optimizely, based on having ~20k uniques. That seemed fair. If you take that up by 100x, $40k / month might not sound fair. You can cut the pricing at that point and say it's $10k / month, but there's a world of difference between a B2B site and an ecommerce site. The usage patterns are different, so the value received and load put on Optimizely are different. It bears different pricing. Beyond that, sales reps aren't all bad. If you're going to lay out $200k for a product like this for a year, you probably don't want something that you just email out a bunch of logins and say "hey team, try it out, let me know what you think." Talking to a human being can help an exec figure out the way their organization can use it the best and help them get that implemented. Yeah, they're biased, but people who deal with sales reps know how to mitigate that bias, and a good rep can be the difference between a successful implementation and a failed one.
  - shostack 11y ago
    I am an ex customer of theirs in one of the highest tiers. Their sales reps were better than most, but in general I'd agree with parent poster. I'm the target of a lot of analytics and ad tech/network sales people and at this point in my career I loathe talking to them. Many try to blow smoke up my ass, try to mask deficiencies about their product instead of just being honest about shortcomings and trying to explain why the value is still worth it, and the list goes on. Hell, I've had some ad tech sales people flat out lie to me and then had their executive boss get mad at me when I called them on it because I was lied to. They tried to say the sales guy made a mistake and couldn't offer what they had offered. Oops! As soon as someone comes up with a way to cut out sales people from enterprise sales I will shower them with money.
bojackeden 11y ago
I think Optimzely's drag and drop software is great but I think Qubit (which is in occupying a similar space) has a data analytics platform that far out weighs Optimizely. If anyone is interested in the actual data aspect of personalization then Qubit's discover software is incredible.
- dangrossman 11y ago
  Disclaimer: Eden is a sales rep ("client services") at Qubit.
username223 11y ago
Cupcakely also "just got bukkaked with fat term sheets." Oh, wait, that was the fake company in that TV show. But good luck searching for it, because non-fake companies apparently jumped all over the temporary search engine juice. Then again, I like cupcakes, and I like being optimal, so what the heck?
hayksaakian 11y ago
Can anyone here honestly claim the optimizely is better than visual website optimizer? I've used both extensively and I constantly run into problems where I'm required to do things a certain way with optimizely where I can just do it like I want with vwo. Genuine question. I'll give them a 2nd chance if someone can convince me.
turing_bot_3c 11y ago
... wow, we live _SO_ in the advertisement bubble! And the first few sentences are just absolutely ridicolous.
- mrits 11y ago
  I know. Sometimes on my morning run I don't take the shortest route. I also don't drink the my coffee while on this run.
- shostack 11y ago
  And what are you basing this incredibly broad and unsupported statement on exactly? Optimizely is providing the companies that use it with value that exceeds the cost or they wouldn't continue using it.
Rambition 11y ago
Huge fan and proponent of Optimizely and the platform they offer, we made them an integral part of our agency for our performance based CRO clients as a tool we could bring to the table to help execute our ideas for the past 3 years. That is, until they changed their model and began to push agencies off the platform by insisting that the client and not the agency must have the account relationship with Optimizely, and the agency can then "work" on the account but no longer under one account spread across multiple clients. I have no objections to pricing changes and strategy pivots, more power to them and I understand to develop more and more features, pricing must be raised to match usage. We would happily pay more per month, however we don't see the business sense in handing over our client relationships directly to Optimizely so that our clients could then choose to drop us as an agency at anytime, but keep the Optimizely account. An account that would be full of our work product, testing ideas and custom code developed to implement tests that a client could now easily take to another agency and continue benefiting from the work. (Yes, we have contracts with our clients, but we are not naive enough to think that clients won't look for a way to do away with our fees if they can take our services and work product with them.) Our ability to utilize the tools provided by Optimizely and build winning tests has helped us grow our business, but this change in agency support has caused us to need to look for alternate solutions. It would be great if some of this latest raise could be used to re-invest in agencies again, providing a client manager style interface where multiple accounts/sub-accounts can reside under one login. Even if each client needs to have a different pricing structure based on their usage patterns, can't share visits across clients, but could be arranged and managed by the agency as one point of contact and billing. I'd love to kick back up our usage of the platform, as the new features I see them rolling out are enticing and I am sure this raise will only accelerate that, but we can't commit to a vendor that seems to actively enable and almost encourage our clients to circumvent our own service model.

76 points by dsiroker 11y ago

cft 11y ago

Never mind the bubble babble!

"Every morning, we all wake up to a world that isn’t optimized. Reading the news, commuting to work, ordering coffee, planning a vacation; far too few of these experiences were optimized using data. As a result, our lives are filled with experiences that are never as good as they could be." Oh the horror! Just the other day I was getting a cappuccino from my local cafe, and as the barista expertly poured out a perfect latte-art fern, I thought to myself, "man, if only this process could be optimized using data, like they do at Starbucks." Then I sat at my computer and read some idiosyncratic posts from my favorite blogger. After enjoying a few posts I said to myself, "man, if only he could optimize his blog posts for maximum clicks like Buzzfeed does. Why doesn't he use data to make his experience better?" </sarcasm> I do generally dislike cheap negativity when responding to startup news. But this first paragraph was really tone-deaf and deserving of ridicule. Let me try to balance my criticism with some constructive advice for rewriting this press release. Drop the first four sentences. Start off with, "When Pete Koomen and I founded Optimizely five years ago, very few companies had even heard of A/B Testing, and optimization software was about the last thing anyone considered putting in their technology stack." Then give an example. "When we first helped XYZ Sporting Goods optimize their site, we knew we were on to something. Not only did we help them write more compelling copy and better imagery that bettered their sales, we also created a much better experience for their customers. No longer would visitors click away because they could not understand what the site did, or what their message actually was. A/B Testing and data based optimization allowed us to match the website to the people who were actually visiting their site. Fast forward to 2015 and much has changed...." Not every company is going to change the world. But you can still write a compelling, feel-good narrative without making me want to throw a shoe at the screen.

leftnode 11y ago
I'm not sure why you're being down-voted but this was completely spot on.
- pka 11y ago
  Agreed, upvoted.

RussianCow 11y ago

Genuine question: How do companies with such vague and unimformative home pages become so widely-used? I'm sure their platform is great, but I couldn't tell from their home page what they do, and wasn't interested enough to keep reading. And Optimizely isn't the only culprit by any measure. Is it just word of mouth? Or are most people somehow more likely to use a product with a vague and buzzword-laden description over something more succinct and to the point?

dangrossman 11y ago
If you're on their homepage, it's probably because you were referred there by someone or something that already told you about them. The homepage has just what a referral needs: a one-field signup form, some other brands using them so you trust the referral gave you good advice, and enough branding to show you you're in the right place. If you're coming from anywhere else, like an ad, it's going to be linked to a landing page tailored to that source. For example, if you search "A/B testing" on Google, you'll find an ad that links here, not to their homepage: https://www.optimizely.com/ab-testing https://www.optimizely.com/ab-testing
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  It certainly isn't because you were on their blog and removed "blog." as https://optimizely.com https://optimizely.com doesn't load. (HTTP only, which does a redirect to https://www. https://www.)
  - kamilszybalski 11y ago
    Great, now i've got optimizely ads following me everywhere on the internet ; ). Congrats on the raise.
davidu 11y ago
Consider that you may not be their target customer, so it might seem vague to you -- but to people in their target customer market, it may be perfect. To me, they clearly communicate their value prop, which is, to help me "Deliver the best experiences for every customer across desktop, mobile web, and mobile apps."

PhilWright 11y ago

You just know that when the pricing page says "Call us" that they are going to try and rip you off. This is a classis sales technique for expensive products, they ascertain how much you can probably afford and then that becomes the price. Very off putting.

trjordan 11y ago
Optimizely ain't cheap, dude, and scaling doesn't work the way you want it to at a lot of volumes. I worked at a company where we paid $400 / month for Optimizely, based on having ~20k uniques. That seemed fair. If you take that up by 100x, $40k / month might not sound fair. You can cut the pricing at that point and say it's $10k / month, but there's a world of difference between a B2B site and an ecommerce site. The usage patterns are different, so the value received and load put on Optimizely are different. It bears different pricing. Beyond that, sales reps aren't all bad. If you're going to lay out $200k for a product like this for a year, you probably don't want something that you just email out a bunch of logins and say "hey team, try it out, let me know what you think." Talking to a human being can help an exec figure out the way their organization can use it the best and help them get that implemented. Yeah, they're biased, but people who deal with sales reps know how to mitigate that bias, and a good rep can be the difference between a successful implementation and a failed one.
- shostack 11y ago
  I am an ex customer of theirs in one of the highest tiers. Their sales reps were better than most, but in general I'd agree with parent poster. I'm the target of a lot of analytics and ad tech/network sales people and at this point in my career I loathe talking to them. Many try to blow smoke up my ass, try to mask deficiencies about their product instead of just being honest about shortcomings and trying to explain why the value is still worth it, and the list goes on. Hell, I've had some ad tech sales people flat out lie to me and then had their executive boss get mad at me when I called them on it because I was lied to. They tried to say the sales guy made a mistake and couldn't offer what they had offered. Oops! As soon as someone comes up with a way to cut out sales people from enterprise sales I will shower them with money.

bojackeden 11y ago

I think Optimzely's drag and drop software is great but I think Qubit (which is in occupying a similar space) has a data analytics platform that far out weighs Optimizely. If anyone is interested in the actual data aspect of personalization then Qubit's discover software is incredible.

dangrossman 11y ago
Disclaimer: Eden is a sales rep ("client services") at Qubit.

username223 11y ago

Cupcakely also "just got bukkaked with fat term sheets." Oh, wait, that was the fake company in that TV show. But good luck searching for it, because non-fake companies apparently jumped all over the temporary search engine juice. Then again, I like cupcakes, and I like being optimal, so what the heck?

hayksaakian 11y ago

Can anyone here honestly claim the optimizely is better than visual website optimizer? I've used both extensively and I constantly run into problems where I'm required to do things a certain way with optimizely where I can just do it like I want with vwo. Genuine question. I'll give them a 2nd chance if someone can convince me.

turing_bot_3c 11y ago

... wow, we live _SO_ in the advertisement bubble! And the first few sentences are just absolutely ridicolous.

mrits 11y ago
I know. Sometimes on my morning run I don't take the shortest route. I also don't drink the my coffee while on this run.
shostack 11y ago
And what are you basing this incredibly broad and unsupported statement on exactly? Optimizely is providing the companies that use it with value that exceeds the cost or they wouldn't continue using it.

Rambition 11y ago

Huge fan and proponent of Optimizely and the platform they offer, we made them an integral part of our agency for our performance based CRO clients as a tool we could bring to the table to help execute our ideas for the past 3 years. That is, until they changed their model and began to push agencies off the platform by insisting that the client and not the agency must have the account relationship with Optimizely, and the agency can then "work" on the account but no longer under one account spread across multiple clients. I have no objections to pricing changes and strategy pivots, more power to them and I understand to develop more and more features, pricing must be raised to match usage. We would happily pay more per month, however we don't see the business sense in handing over our client relationships directly to Optimizely so that our clients could then choose to drop us as an agency at anytime, but keep the Optimizely account. An account that would be full of our work product, testing ideas and custom code developed to implement tests that a client could now easily take to another agency and continue benefiting from the work. (Yes, we have contracts with our clients, but we are not naive enough to think that clients won't look for a way to do away with our fees if they can take our services and work product with them.) Our ability to utilize the tools provided by Optimizely and build winning tests has helped us grow our business, but this change in agency support has caused us to need to look for alternate solutions. It would be great if some of this latest raise could be used to re-invest in agencies again, providing a client manager style interface where multiple accounts/sub-accounts can reside under one login. Even if each client needs to have a different pricing structure based on their usage patterns, can't share visits across clients, but could be arranged and managed by the agency as one point of contact and billing. I'd love to kick back up our usage of the platform, as the new features I see them rolling out are enticing and I am sure this raise will only accelerate that, but we can't commit to a vendor that seems to actively enable and almost encourage our clients to circumvent our own service model.