4 ms·

edit: Disregard, can't ask an honest question on HN. Understood.

saas_sam 8y ago
They host a lot of forms. Forms that do fancy things. And engineers cost a lot of money in the Bay Area. Hope that helps.
timcederman 8y ago
http://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ http://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ edit: there's a lot of stuff they offer beyond the basic surveys - https://www.surveymonkey.com/what-is-surveymonkey/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/what-is-surveymonkey/.
perryh2 8y ago
Does it also surprise you that DocuSign is a company worth over $10B?
- whorleater 8y ago
  I was originally going to say "man that's wild", then I realized all the documents I've signed electronically lately have been through DocuSign and maybe 10B is actually undervalued.
  - sciurus 8y ago
    I was surprised to begin purchasing a house recently and have the documents go through dotloop instead of docusign. It was my first evidence that docusign isn't completely dominant after all.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    I haven't been forced to use DocuSign for a few years, but there ux was complete shit. I would rather go to an office and physically sign something than deal with their crappy interface.
    - nojvek 8y ago
      Docusign would also go down all the time. My agent and I both absolutely hated it. Much easier for me to wireless print stuff, sign it, scan it and email it from an HP printer. It was a reliable system. I was willing to go through that friction because docusign was just absolutely horrible. UX was aweful, wouldn’t work on mobile well, emails wouldn’t send, site would be down yada yada. But this says something about enterprise companies. With a powerful salesforce, you could dominate a field even with a shitty product if it’s a niche field.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Not at all, given all the businesses (and public sector agencies) that have built essential workflows around it displacing paper processes.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
whitepoplar 8y ago
People are expensive. And they're a profitable company, so they must be doing something right. The market doesn't care that they "host forms." The market cares that SurveyMonkey solves their problems.
jameslevy 8y ago
You could say this about pretty much any unicorn SaaS company. A quick look at the pricing page can make some of this clear: https://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/ Disclosure: former employee of SurveyMonkey
- mrmikes 8y ago
  Hi James!
Spooky23 8y ago
I can think of about a dozen organizations who collectively spend 10x this on tools like Cognos, PowerBI and Tableau. Easily 90% of their use cases could be fulfilled by excel. Solutions cost money.
- lancewiggs 8y ago
  Excel isn't scalable, repeatable, auditable and so on.
clay_the_ripper 8y ago
Out of curiosity, how do you think a company that does not have a team of engineers would survey people?
- deusofnull 8y ago
  They'd use survey monkey.
  - clay_the_ripper 8y ago
    Exactly
sciurus 8y ago
If you replace the phrase "Research and development" with "paying developers", is it any easier to swallow? Because AFAIK R&D is an unintuitive, tax-favorable way of saying just that. https://www.cpajournal.com/2017/10/30/u-s-research-development-tax-credit/ https://www.cpajournal.com/2017/10/30/u-s-research-developme...
- usaphp 8y ago
  > research and development
mikkelewis 8y ago
I promise you that there is a palpable undercurrent as a company grows where you go from "everything is so easy, just be scrappy and talk to the person next to you" to "wow, there are all these scaling edge cases, not everyone is a senior dev/design/marketing/hr who has worked at the company since it's infancy, communication is hard and not everyone is like you" such that you need to spend money on hiring/infrastructure to solve this as the efficiency per person/project/team goes down. Good luck.
youeseh 8y ago
There's more to this than "forms". - Their survey tool was one of the earliest and pretty easy to use - they have brand recognition. #uuge. - If they support any intelligence (skip-logic), then they take bread away from bigger market research companies. - Their biggest competitors in this space (Facebook, Google Docs) require signing away your life to create a simple survey. But back to the brand recognition. They've built something simple that captured the market early and have basically dominated.
par 8y ago
but you didn't ask a sincere question, you were making a snarky comment.
- daxorid 8y ago
  I was legitimately curious, and there was no snark at all.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    It may have been unfair of (a limited number of) people to presume snark when you didn't intend it, but your edited version of the comment was super-snarky too and panned the entire HN community. You could have just said "hey sorry all, didn't mean to sound snarky, here's what I meant...", and a great discussion could have ensued.
shawn 8y ago
Hmmm. FWIW, I saw your question earlier and came back just now to see the answers. Disappointed it was met with hostility.
projectramo 8y ago
You were downvoted and edited out your comment, but apparently you said something along the lines of survey monkey is not that impressive because it just hosts forms. That's not how they make money. They make money by getting people to answer the questions on the forms. You pay approximately $1 per response. If you want to know if users think that they themselves are willing to pay more for electricity, you can just ask them. That's amazing.

They host a lot of forms. Forms that do fancy things. And engineers cost a lot of money in the Bay Area. Hope that helps.

timcederman 8y ago

http://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ http://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ edit: there's a lot of stuff they offer beyond the basic surveys - https://www.surveymonkey.com/what-is-surveymonkey/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/what-is-surveymonkey/.

perryh2 8y ago

Does it also surprise you that DocuSign is a company worth over $10B?

whorleater 8y ago
I was originally going to say "man that's wild", then I realized all the documents I've signed electronically lately have been through DocuSign and maybe 10B is actually undervalued.
- sciurus 8y ago
  I was surprised to begin purchasing a house recently and have the documents go through dotloop instead of docusign. It was my first evidence that docusign isn't completely dominant after all.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  I haven't been forced to use DocuSign for a few years, but there ux was complete shit. I would rather go to an office and physically sign something than deal with their crappy interface.
  - nojvek 8y ago
    Docusign would also go down all the time. My agent and I both absolutely hated it. Much easier for me to wireless print stuff, sign it, scan it and email it from an HP printer. It was a reliable system. I was willing to go through that friction because docusign was just absolutely horrible. UX was aweful, wouldn’t work on mobile well, emails wouldn’t send, site would be down yada yada. But this says something about enterprise companies. With a powerful salesforce, you could dominate a field even with a shitty product if it’s a niche field.
dragonwriter 8y ago
Not at all, given all the businesses (and public sector agencies) that have built essential workflows around it displacing paper processes.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

whitepoplar 8y ago

People are expensive. And they're a profitable company, so they must be doing something right. The market doesn't care that they "host forms." The market cares that SurveyMonkey solves their problems.

jameslevy 8y ago

You could say this about pretty much any unicorn SaaS company. A quick look at the pricing page can make some of this clear: https://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/ https://www.surveymonkey.com/pricing/ Disclosure: former employee of SurveyMonkey

mrmikes 8y ago
Hi James!

Spooky23 8y ago

I can think of about a dozen organizations who collectively spend 10x this on tools like Cognos, PowerBI and Tableau. Easily 90% of their use cases could be fulfilled by excel. Solutions cost money.

lancewiggs 8y ago
Excel isn't scalable, repeatable, auditable and so on.

clay_the_ripper 8y ago

Out of curiosity, how do you think a company that does not have a team of engineers would survey people?

deusofnull 8y ago
They'd use survey monkey.
- clay_the_ripper 8y ago
  Exactly

sciurus 8y ago

If you replace the phrase "Research and development" with "paying developers", is it any easier to swallow? Because AFAIK R&D is an unintuitive, tax-favorable way of saying just that. https://www.cpajournal.com/2017/10/30/u-s-research-development-tax-credit/ https://www.cpajournal.com/2017/10/30/u-s-research-developme...

usaphp 8y ago
> research and development

mikkelewis 8y ago

I promise you that there is a palpable undercurrent as a company grows where you go from "everything is so easy, just be scrappy and talk to the person next to you" to "wow, there are all these scaling edge cases, not everyone is a senior dev/design/marketing/hr who has worked at the company since it's infancy, communication is hard and not everyone is like you" such that you need to spend money on hiring/infrastructure to solve this as the efficiency per person/project/team goes down. Good luck.

youeseh 8y ago

There's more to this than "forms". - Their survey tool was one of the earliest and pretty easy to use - they have brand recognition. #uuge. - If they support any intelligence (skip-logic), then they take bread away from bigger market research companies. - Their biggest competitors in this space (Facebook, Google Docs) require signing away your life to create a simple survey. But back to the brand recognition. They've built something simple that captured the market early and have basically dominated.

par 8y ago

but you didn't ask a sincere question, you were making a snarky comment.

daxorid 8y ago
I was legitimately curious, and there was no snark at all.
- tomhoward 8y ago
  It may have been unfair of (a limited number of) people to presume snark when you didn't intend it, but your edited version of the comment was super-snarky too and panned the entire HN community. You could have just said "hey sorry all, didn't mean to sound snarky, here's what I meant...", and a great discussion could have ensued.

shawn 8y ago

Hmmm. FWIW, I saw your question earlier and came back just now to see the answers. Disappointed it was met with hostility.

projectramo 8y ago

You were downvoted and edited out your comment, but apparently you said something along the lines of survey monkey is not that impressive because it just hosts forms. That's not how they make money. They make money by getting people to answer the questions on the forms. You pay approximately $1 per response. If you want to know if users think that they themselves are willing to pay more for electricity, you can just ask them. That's amazing.