How Should SurveyMonkey Prioritize Their Avenues for Growth

Grading Criteria
Answer the case study questions specific to your case in a thoughtful and comprehensive way. In addition, provide any additional insights you feel are appropriate, i.e. any connection(s) between the case and the material we have read and discussed in class. Apply judgment and your analytical skills with regard to the key issues in the case. Your ability to “connect the dots” between the various aspects of the case and linkage to the course concepts is an important criterion to consider.
Since this case is written about an actual company, there is a significant amount of material in the business press and on the internet regarding the company and its industry. Although you may find it helpful to reference some of this information (with appropriate footnotes), the majority of the analysis and recommendations should be your own assessments and thoughts.
Take time to assess the consequences of your recommendations. (FYI: Survey Monkey is privately held.). Your paper should be written clearly with a logical flow for each question. It should reflect proofreading and editing.
This assignment is due on April 4th. Your write‐up should be approximately 3 to 5 pages long, double‐spaced.
Case Summary
The SurveyMonkey case portrays the evolution of the company from its founding in 1999 through to 2014. SurveyMonkey was launched by Ryan Finley, a young computer science graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to address the dearth of easy-to-use, affordable online survey tools on the market. In 2009, Finley sold the company to Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital Ventures, having recognized the need for a partner to help the company achieve its full potential. David Goldberg, an entrepreneur, and former Yahoo! Executive, took the helm as CEO and immediately put in place his plan to set the company on track to scale at a consistent and rapid pace of growth. Goldberg’s primary initiatives in the early days were to hire a strong management team, rebuild the entire technology platform, and expand internationally. As it made substantial progress on these fronts, SurveyMonkey completed several acquisitions and began to expand its feature set and product offerings to include SurveyMonkey Audience (panels of survey respondents) and survey templates, among others. The company completed an $800 million secondary financing raise in 2012 to provide liquidity to employees and investors in lieu of an IPO and charged forward on its efforts to transform its survey tool to a full-blown platform. Though SurveyMonkey had established itself as the dominant player in the direct-to-consumer market in 2013, it began building out an enterprise offering to compete against the other large players in the growing enterprise feedback management space.
Having achieved tremendous growth in its 15-year history, the majority of which took place since the 2009 acquisition, as Goldberg and his team looked ahead to 2014, they faced the critical question of how to prioritize SurveyMonkey’s avenues for growth-international expansion, quality initiatives enterprise, platform growth-so as to best position the company to achieve its full potential.
Question
How should SurveyMonkey prioritize their avenues for growth: international expansion, quality initiatives, enterprise solution, and platform growth so as to best position the company to achieve its full potential?