Market research has been driving strategic decisions for companies for decades. However, the tools and models that have been predominantly used have not adjusted to reflect today’s digital age and today’s consumer environment. Suzy is a modern, digitally-native enterprise market research platform built for the sophisticated needs of today’s brands. Offering on-demand insights, the company has shifted the pricing paradigm away from cost per response to a SaaS offering with licenses to customers, providing more flexibility and predictability. By integrating technology onto the platform, Suzy is able to deliver actionable insights much faster in an easy-to-use end-to-end cost-effective solution.
AlleyWatch caught up with CEO, serial entrepreneur, and Founder Matt Britton to learn more about the genesis of Suzy from his agency days, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the total funding raised to $104.1M, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
This was a Series D round. The total raised was $50M. Lead Investor is H.I.G. Capital. Existing investors that participated included: Foundry Group, Rho Ventures, BDMI, and Triangle Peak Partners.
Tell us about the product or service that Suzy offers.
Suzy is an enterprise software platform that enables its customers to conduct on-demand “direct to consumer” market research, both quantitative and qualitative.
What inspired the start of Suzy?
Suzy was a pivot from the original business called Crowdtap (which itself was incubated within my former ad agency MRY, acquired by Publicis Group). Crowdtap had built a national network of users who were earning incentives to create and share content on behalf of brands, as it turns out. However, the earliest Crowdtap customers were hacking the tool for what they believed was its most potent user case, real-time consumer insights. After I rejoined Crowdtap as CEO in 2017 it became clear to me that there was a massive opportunity to focus on the insights use case, which was the launch of Suzy in 2018.
How is Suzy different?
Suzy is the only truly vertically integrated market research tool in the market combining advanced research tools with a proprietary consumer panel and support with specialized research services to meet the growing needs of our client base.
What market does Suzy target and how big is it?
Suzy is focused on servicing large enterprises with complex research needs and a focus on the evolving consumer. The enterprise U.S. research market is estimated to be over $25B annually.
What’s your business model?
Suzy sells annual licenses to its customers, which allows them to unlock its research tools and proprietary audience. License sizes range from $50K/year to upwards of $2M/year.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
The pandemic quickly unraveled nearly every closely held belief about the consumer, attitudes, and habits. The seismic shift we saw in 2020 shined a spotlight on the importance of extracting consumer feedback early and often at every stage of the product market lifecycle, from innovation to foundational learning, to user feedback and experience management. Overall, the pandemic was an accelerator to trends we always thought would unfold in the market research space.
What was the funding process like?
As this Series D financing was a later stage funding round in a red-hot market, it wasn’t too difficult to get in front of a large group of diversified investors. Moreover, pitching over Zoom made us far more efficient at casting a wide net as we attempted to uncover the right fit for Suzy at this stage. My biggest takeaway is that the VC world still embraces a herd mentality, and few forward thinkers truly understood our vision and potential in the market.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
We encountered the biggest roadblocks because Suzy was very much a “tweener” between a high growth/high burn company and a low growth/lower burn company. In addition, our history of pivoting from Crowdtap made the story a bit messier than some investors wanted to entertain. I also found that since our management team isn’t full of former Facebook/Google execs, we aren’t seen as a risk-free option for many investors. Lastly, many investors just don’t believe in the consumer insights/market research space, which was surprising to me given its growing importance.
We encountered the biggest roadblocks because Suzy was very much a “tweener” between a high growth/high burn company and a low growth/lower burn company. In addition, our history of pivoting from Crowdtap made the story a bit messier than some investors wanted to entertain. I also found that since our management team isn’t full of former Facebook/Google execs, we aren’t seen as a risk-free option for many investors. Lastly, many investors just don’t believe in the consumer insights/market research space, which was surprising to me given its growing importance.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Suzy has a killer product, a world-class customer roster, a proven and & experienced team, and top-tier SaaS unit economics. All of these elements proved vital in securing our funding.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
The next six months are really about scaling our organization to meet our 2022 goals. Ultimately this comes down to acquiring top-tier talent in all areas of our business, including engineer, sales, marketing, customer success, and operations. As a CEO, my core mandate has just shifted from fundraising to hiring.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Focus on your unit economics. VCs almost always will give your metrics to an analyst plugging them into a template to see how they benchmark across competitors. Post Series A, if your unit economics aren’t at least in the top quartile, it will be challenging for you to raise financing even if you have a great product in a hot space.
Focus on your unit economics. VCs almost always will give your metrics to an analyst plugging them into a template to see how they benchmark across competitors. Post Series A, if your unit economics aren’t at least in the top quartile, it will be challenging for you to raise financing even if you have a great product in a hot space.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
My personal goal is now the same as when we launched for Suzy to complete an Initial Public Offering on the Nasdaq. My dream since graduating college was to ring the bell for a startup that I was leading, and this is my chance to achieve it.
In order for me to achieve this goal, Suzy has to continue to scale and maintain its growth rates while doing so. This will require continued product improvements and diving deeper into machine learning and data visualization to continue offering our valued customers the best market research software in the marketplace.
Ultimately, our business model is straightforward; it’s to connect the “askers” (Customers) to the “tellers” so that we can deliver consumer feedback in aggregate in formats that help drive data-driven decisions. At this point, we know there is tremendous demand for our offering and that we can acquire and grow the best customers in the world. Still, we are in a hyper-competitive environment that keeps us on our toes and forces us to continue to innovate every day.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC?
I have always been a fan of Nobu, and their new outdoor set-up at Nobu57 is just perfect.
