OTTAWA — SurveyMonkey may be dropping AI from its branding, but the feedback platform’s vast repository of responses gives it an advantage in using the technology, according to new CEO Eric Johnson. “The dataset is incredibly valuable,” he said. 

Long a recognizable name in Silicon Valley’s business-to-business SaaS landscape, SurveyMonkey listed in a US$180-million IPO in September 2018. Revenue spiked early in the COVID-19 pandemic. “People were confused about what was going on, and it was an amazing driver for the product,” said Johnson. In June 2021, it took the name Momentive, adding “.ai” to its brand and domain address to reflect its growing use of the technology. But as businesses stopped buying as much software, growth slowed. In March, private equity firm Symphony Technology Group announced it would take Momentive private in a US$1.5-billion deal.

The firm has now returned to the SurveyMonkey name, but it’s not shifting away from AI technology, said Johnson, who took the top job in June. 

For example, it’s built an AI prompt box into its questionnaire-creation tool, simplifying and speeding up the process for clients. The feature uses SurveyMonkey’s templates and query data, as well as a large language model (LLM) from a provider Johnson declined to name. The firm has made the tool available to some users, with a wide release scheduled for next quarter.

“Creating a survey is not the difficult part—you can do that in ChatGPT today,” Johnson said. But writing one that produces “reliable responses [and] actual insights and information you can use is very difficult,” he added. SurveyMonkey has seen more than two billion responses, so it can help users frame questions that aren’t leading and that get answered.

SurveyMonkey is also using machine learning to identify and combat bots and spammers responding to clients’ surveys, auto-suspending users if the system sees “a pattern of malicious behaviour.” And the firm’s upcoming data studio will give customers AI-assisted insights about their respondents.  “The differentiation for us is that dataset,” said Johnson, noting that its system trained on survey answers should outperform an LLM drawing from broad Internet scrapes.

While the firm is updating many of its features with AI, it’s dialing back its sales and marketing model to an older version. “We were one of these early product-led growth stories,” said Johnson, noting that in sending out a survey, clients share the platform with many more potential users. In its late days on the public market, the company chased enterprise clients. But as of last year, self-serve sales still accounted for US$299.6 million of the firm’s US$480.9 million in revenue. 

The company is now focusing on features that most of its clients can use, rather than enterprise sales processes and integrations that could take several quarters and require a lot of custom work. “The beauty of our product is that it could be a coffee shop on the corner who’s using it or it could be Tim Hortons,” Johnson said, speaking to The Logic in SurveyMonkey’s Ottawa office. 

The company arrived in the capital via the August 2014 acquisition of Fluidware, an online survey competitor, for more than US$20 million. The Ottawa office is now SurveyMonkey’s second-largest, and some 300 of its 1,000 or so workers are in Canada. While the company hasn’t expanded its overall workforce recently—it laid off about 11 per cent of staff last October—Johnson expects to continue growing its team here.

Canada is SurveyMonkey’s third-largest market by bookings, and the top six countries comprise much of its business. But Johnson sees room to grow overseas, particularly in places where the company gets high traffic but makes relatively little revenue. He cited Brazil, India and the Philippines. 

Having been bought off the public markets, SurveyMonkey could also do some deals of its own. Johnson cited Fluidware as an example of a successful purchase and product integration, saying, “Over time, we’ll definitely look for acquisitions.”