The much-anticipated SurveyMonkey (SVMK) IPO is scheduled for tonight. The proposed price range remains $9-11. For a relatively small deal (13.5M shares) there are a lot of banks on the cover – 11 in all with JPM, Allen, and BofA leading the charge.
Online surveys are a niche market but SurveyMonkey has emerged as a clear category leader in the space. The product has a number of significant advantages which we will outline below.
There are a lot of small competitors in the online survey space including a pretty large “free” offering from Google. By using Google Forms and Google Sheets a simple survey can be conducted with the results accessed and analyzed in a no-nonsense fashion. This solution has been around for a long time is a favorite for small efforts with quasi-technical types of users.
In terms of survey-focused competition, we see a few that are being extra competitive – Forsee has more of an enterprise focus, as does SurveyGizmo and Qualtrics. However, all these companies rely on the old demo/salesperson model of sales. There are no free versions and no visible online pricing. With few exceptions, the self-service model will be a better to-g0-market.
It’s been a while since we’ve used a survey tool so we decided to survey our own clients here at IPO Candy with a short Survey Monkey survey. A few things stood out relative to “basic” solutions like Google Sheets/Forms:
