Custom real-time market insights at your fingertips with Matt Britton

About the Episode

Matt Britton, Co-Founder & CEO of Suzy, shares his entrepreneurial journey in marketing, exploring and building products for different markets, and evolving them to become the Suzy it is today.

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From having struggles of raising capital to being turned down by 80 investors at a time, Matt highlights the importance of resilience and determination - today they are used by the world's biggest brands such as Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, and have just raised another US$50M this Summer.

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Transcript

[00:00:09.670] - Morgan

Hey guys, welcome back on Behind the Product. Today, we are with Matt Birtton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Matt, is a multi-entrepreneur that actually started his career in marketing. He used to run Mr. Youth, now it's known as MRY, which was like a social media agency, it still is because it still exists. A social media agency that actually got acquired by Publicis in 2011, something like that. And later on, Matt founded Suzy, a Market Research Platform. So basically, what Suzy is doing like as a brand, you can access Suzy, access to a panel of users and get real-time qualitative and quantitative feedback about a new product you want to launch, a new offer, a new service.

[00:00:48.160] - Morgan

Anything you want, you can get feedback very early on in your journey. So it's very valuable for a brand that wants to launch a product and be sure of like what the market wants. The idea of Suzy actually started in 2002, I think from Matt, and he kept thinking about it, built it, and now it's used by hundreds of big brands such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Procter Gamble and many of others, you know, all the big fish you can think of, they use Suzy.

[00:01:13.030] - Morgan

It's been quite a journey for Matt, so let's go ahead and welcome him.

[00:01:17.140] - Matt

I'm Matt Britton, I'm founder and CEO of Suzy. Suzy is a market research software platform used by leading enterprises around the world. It essentially enables companies to tap into consumers for instant on demand feedback to help drive any decision they're making. Suzy is powered by a panel of over one million U.S. consumers that are always on gamified application. Those consumers are incentivized for answering questions, and Suzy sits on top of this panel and really allows companies during the workday when they're trying to make any decision, target consumers that matter, get their feedback to help make the decisions that will help set their business up for success.

[00:01:56.460] - Morgan

OK, so basically, like you have kind of like a crowd sourcing app that like tons of, like millions of US consumers are using. And from that, you can pull from that some data for your customer? That tries to understand the market they are in.

[00:02:13.590] - Matt

That's right. Yeah. And when you say pull data, it's really having consumers share their opinions and thoughts. So they're actually asked questions. You know, what is your favorite brand of soft drink? What car do you drive? You know, what do you think about X brand or product? How much would you pay for something? And in aggregate, those individual pieces of feedback great data that helps our customers make business decisions.

[00:02:37.620] - Morgan

OK, OK, OK. So it's basically like a market research platform. Exactly. OK. OK, OK. And how did you come up with that idea? Like,

[00:02:45.270] - Matt

Yeah. So the idea behind Suzy dates way back to 2002. In 2002, I founded a marketing services business called Mr. Youth. Mr. Youth was built to help brands target teens and college students with on campus events and promotional activity. In 2004, we were one of the first agencies to ever work with Facebook right when it was started because we were on college campuses marketing to college students. And that's where Facebook was invented and first took off on U.S. college campuses. And it started a long journey for our company, to pivot from just being a college or youth marketing agency, becoming a social media marketing agency.

[00:03:24.030] - Matt

In 2008, we rebranded as MRY and became one of the first social media agencies of record for companies like Microsoft and P&G and Coca-Cola. Along the way, we have built a piece of software called Crowdtap to basically help our clients manage and measure brand and on campus ambassadors. We started to get a lot of interest from third party publishers and agencies to license that software, so I spun out Crowdtap into its own company and help them raise their series A way back in 2011.

[00:03:52.980] - Matt

I went on to sell the agency to the Publicis group based in Paris. And then after I left Publicis, the board of Crowdtap, which I was on, asked me to come back and join as CEO, that the end of 2016. At that point, the Crowdtap business had evolved, but it also kind of had some struggles. They had built a network of over a million U.S. consumers who were being incentivized to essentially create and share content on behalf of brands.

[00:04:18.750] - Matt

So, you know, if you are a diaper brand, you would target moms of babies and say, take a picture of your baby and our product and and share it on social media and earn points. That was kind of the Crowdtap business model. And the issue with that,

[00:04:32.400] - Morgan

So it's kind of like micro nano influencing

[00:04:35.550] - Matt

Exactly exactly. The issue is that Facebook rolled out the programmatic platform, and there are other ways more efficiently for brands to get to newsfeed, and they are more focused on paid media versus just organic user generated content.

[00:04:49.080] - Matt

So the business was really struggling, and when I when I came on board, my first role was to figure out what the strategy was moving forward. And as it turns out, some of the customers of Crowdtap are using it for different purpose instead of them using these million people to create and share content. They were using these people to give them feedback to help drive decisions, and a light bulb went off my head. This is the future of the business.

[00:05:09.660] - Matt

This is where we need to take it. So basically, I kept the Crowdtap ran, which still exists today, but it's just that's the consumer brand. But I built a new platform to sit on top of Crowdtap called Suzy, and Suzy is essentially a different way for customers to use this highly engaged audience. And again, instead of getting these consumers are creating your content, it was to get consumer feedback. And we launched Suzy in March of twenty eighteen.

[00:05:32.490] - Matt

And kind of the rest is history, so to speak.

[00:05:35.900] - Morgan

OK, OK, yeah. And so I really love you to understand, like how was the first version that you launched on the market. Yeah. Of people that fatigue. Can you tell us a bit? I was like, Yeah, my vision.

[00:05:47.330] - Matt

So basically, we didn't have a lot of time to make Suzy work. When I joined Crowdtap at the end of 2016, the company was running out of money and I had a lot of debt and I had to part ways with a lot of employees who just I couldn't afford. And we didn't have as much time as traditional venture fund. The companies due to launch because the Crowdtapped the legacy business had already run through all the venture funding. So there was already 15 million dollars raised on the cap table.

[00:06:15.650] - Matt

So I need to create real value before I could raise the next round. And in order to do that, I had to launch a new product, but we have limited capital to do it. So at first, what we did is we essentially just reskin that original business model, the original Crowdtap micro influencer platform. We risk in that as an insights platform made it purple, called it Suzy, but it had very limited functionality because it wasn't really built for the ground up for the purpose of consumer insights.

[00:06:42.350] - Matt

And, you know, we launched it south by Southwest in March 2018, and it was OK it, but customers were already starting to call out. Well, it doesn't do this. It doesn't do that because we are entering a very competitive space with companies like Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey in it. So we decided, you know, that summer that we were going to rebuild and launch a completely new platform that was built just for the purpose of consumer insights.

[00:07:08.120] - Matt

And we launched it in June 2018. But the issue with which capital did you build that platform? It said. Like basically our existing investor, Foundry Group gave us about a $5 million runway and basically due to pivot like they know that they were not doing well in that investment. When I joined, they had already put $10 million into it. But you know, they trusted me. I had a great relationship with them. I sat on the board with partner Seth Levine and he, you know, he believed in me and said, OK, we'll give you a chance.

[00:07:39.080] - Matt

So there's very limited capital to launch with because we were we offered the service a lot of debt in the business that was already taken on before I joined and we so we decided to relaunch this new platform. The issue is we had to connect data from the old platform and this new platform we built and the product just didn't work. And from June to September of twenty eighteen, it was the hardest time my career because we were starting to get some momentum coming out of south by Southwest with these customers.

[00:08:07.400] - Matt

And we were trying to sell new customers and literally 70 to 80 percent of the time the product wouldn't work, it would just spin. Or would you know it would crash or, you know, the data wouldn't come back and it was very nerve wracking. And I keep the sales teams heads up saying, OK, OK. And finally, around mid-September, we finally got to a point where the platform was stable and we had to really crank and deliver in the fourth quarter because we were running out of money, and by the end of twenty eighteen we needed to have an outside round.

[00:08:39.170] - Matt

You know, the existing investor, they can do all they can. They need it, you know, we need to get outside money. And we went to the market at the end of twenty eighteen and we got rejected by about 80 venture capitalists. Nobody would fund us. And finally, what we were able to do is go to this group called North Atlantic Capital, and they essentially gave us a debt facility which allowed us to restructure the old debt and basically add additional capital.

[00:09:05.700] - Matt

It was it was an interest only facility, so we now have to pay back principle. So the debt servicing costs dropped by a couple of million dollars and we also were able to get debt that was about three million more than we currently had. So we were able to add three million to the balance sheet. So between the additional couple of million dollars and reducing the debt servicing, we had another five to six million for 2019 to basically continue to build the business so we can go out to the market again at the end of 2019.

[00:09:31.550] - Matt

And that's what we did. We went out in 2019. We again got rejected by about 75 to 80 VCs, but we got one of Bertelsmann Group BMI to kind of believe in us and price the round. And then, you know, when you get somebody that priced around, it's a lot easier to get follow on, and that's for sure. So we're able to pull together about 10 12 million bucks for 20 20, 2020. The pandemic hit ended up being a really net positive for our business because we do online market research.

[00:10:01.310] - Matt

And, you know, the notion of wanting to know what consumers are thinking and feeling was heightened during the pandemic, and we just came out of the gates on fire and by the middle of 2020 had another investor to want to pile on to that round we had just raised. So then finally, we were really well capitalized and we just had an amazing year in 2020 wound to the markets again to raise our Series D at the end of 2020. And then, you know, this past summer closed our Series D round for $50 million, and now the company is very well funded.

[00:10:34.910] - Matt

We have enough. Capital to last until 2023, the business is accelerating its growth, and we got kind of I don't want to say we got out of the woods, but we got to a point where now you know, the business has has its eyes on 100 million in annual reports like where, you know, nearly 30 years ago, we didn't we had enough cash to maybe find one month's payroll payroll. So things change really quickly and they not giving up and believing in what you're doing and, you know, persevering.

[00:11:02.850] - Matt

And that's what we were able to do.

[00:11:04.950] - Morgan

Yeah, yeah. And I want to to to go back to the point like where you are going into it's in 2018, so a similar 2018 when you are going on the market and like with your sales team, like selling the product, that wasn't working. How did you manage that like? I think the goods to go on the market was a product that is shaky, that is not working right and keep continuity continuing and like, keep building that momentum with like the customer, with you, with your sales team, with everyone that like you going to have a product that work when they how did you build that trust with everyone?

[00:11:38.380] - Matt

I mean, I was in the trenches with them, you know, I was selling with them, and I remember I would be on slack with somebody who was at our office and I was like, Is it working? Is it working? Because the person that was doing the demo was sitting right next to me and I just and I would hit him in the leg if if we couldn't do the demo, sometimes like, Oh, don't demo, and then we just wouldn't demo it.

[00:12:01.690] - Matt

So we just kind of, you know, winged it, frankly, and we believe that we would get it fixed eventually and really didn't have a choice.

[00:12:11.140] - Morgan

What made you believe that you could get it fixed?

[00:12:13.540] - Matt

Because I believe that my team, we I brought in a chief product officer who had worked with me at my agency for the last 10 years prior. And I just knew it needed time to figure it out, you know, and I just I knew that they were in a tough position because we we want this thing so quickly because we had to I frankly had no other choice but to believe in them. You know, you have a regime in situation, tough times and there was some yelling and screaming and three phone conversations and all those things.

[00:12:45.010] - Matt

But you know, we we we stuck together. We made it work. And you know, today our product has ninety nine point ninety nine percent uptime performance as an issue. But once you saw that you run into other issues, you know there's functionality that your customer needs. We had we had issues in the past with audience quality, so we've gotten attacked like spam and bots on the audience side. So, you know, people were answering questions that weren't real people and we had to fix that.

[00:13:12.490] - Matt

So I think, you know, you're always no matter how big you get, you know, Facebook last month crashed right there, so you're never really quite there and it's a constant journey. And you know, we're in a highly competitive market where a lot of our competitors are are very well-funded as well. So we need to keep innovating and keep pushing the product forward.

[00:13:32.020] - Morgan

Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

[00:13:32.870] - Matt

We're unique, and as a consumer product and a business product in one. We, our consumer product Crowdtap, you know, has to attract and retain consumers.

[00:13:41.410] - Matt

And then we have a business product that needs to be used by enterprises, that makes our business quite unique as well.

[00:13:46.430] - Morgan

Yeah. So you took that decision of like keeping two separate brands for the two sides, if I can say that, the two sides of the market, because it's kind of like a marketplace that you are doing right and we thought about renaming and all Suzy. But the problem is that not a problem, but people liked the crowdtap brand. So the users so like, why fix broken? And I think it's helped us eliminate some confusion in the marketplace.

[00:14:10.490] - Morgan

You know, we don't have people responding to Suzy's Twitter about them not getting their points for answering questions. So we're able to kind of separate the two brands, and I think it's worked out well for us. And the it's pretty good if you try to create other consumer brands that convince Suzy as well. I know you're in trouble, they're pretty different demographics, interest groups, yeah, yeah.

[00:14:30.680] - Morgan

And do you have like two separate team, one that manager the Carrot Top and one those managers who usually in two separate heads of product to separate the two teams? Yeah, there's some synergies. Some of the engineering, obviously. Yeah, for sure. They both that the two pretty speaks together with the design is and obviously the go to market is. Yeah.

[00:14:49.380] - Morgan

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay. Very interesting, interesting. Just earlier you were speaking about like the the competitors and the fact that it's a highly competitive market. What's unfair advantage of Suzy in that market?

[00:15:01.110] - Matt

I mean, so competitive. See, Suzy's kind of key differentiators really all rests on the fact that we have our own audience, which gives us sort of a vertically integrated solution. So all of our other competitors, if you want to conduct market research, you either have to bring your own audience, which comes with challenges in that a you're only talking to your own consumers. So it's like an echo chamber, right? Or B that you have to buy an audience and from a third party exchange, which is really rife with fraud and poor quality because these exchanges don't have proper controls because the exchanges are built in, these large affiliate networks distribute it.

[00:15:37.380] - Matt

So with us, we have a vertically integrated solution, almost like the iPhone and the App Store, right, where basically everything connects and syncs together. And since we have the chance, we can do things like instant retargeting of the same audience. We can overlay data with third party data and we can use our audience in different ways, for example. We launched last year, Suzy Live, which allows our clients to connect quantitative research like multiple choice questions to qualitative research where you can essentially schedule, you know, from cohorts that answer a question a certain way instant in-depth interviews and a Zoom like interface.

[00:16:12.630] - Matt

So you can ask consumers why you have 15 minute discussions with them about why they answered things the way they did. So connecting the quant the qual is something that none of our competitors are able to do because they don't have the ability to go back to that audience and dig deeper because it's not their audience. So there's a lot of interesting things we can do. And then lastly, it's speed. We have the fastest, you know, market research platform that exists in terms of how quickly we turn around.

[00:16:35.220] - Matt

Research literally happens instantly while you're on a Zoom call.

[00:16:40.290] - Morgan

OK, OK, OK. Reinforcing that fact, I would like the quantitative indicator to data. Did you come up with that 80?

[00:16:48.480] - Matt

It's really just little league jingles. You know, we we conduct NPS scores all the time. We have an amazing customer success team and I think we're very attuned to what our customers want. And you know what? We're delivering well and what we're not. So customer feedback really drives our roadmap. We kind of eat our own dog food and that extent, we're telling her, Yeah, that's that's what I would say, you know, because you guys are believing that we believe in customer centricity, you know, and we that you figure out what your customers want, then build it for them is a pretty simple way to go about business now.

[00:17:19.200] - Matt

You need to be innovative, right? So you need that sometimes give them things they don't know they need, but there's a lot of things that they do know they need, and we need to deliver upon that. This kind of table seeks, so to speak.

[00:17:30.560] - Morgan

Yeah. What's a bit your process to fit the product development roadmap with like getting some feedback from users? What's your process to get the feedback from users? Yeah. How did you select what you're going to do? Sure, it's a great and everything. How do you do? How do you fit that development roadmap with with what? You've got the risks? Yeah.

[00:17:48.770] - Matt

So we have various stakeholders at the company who helped drive that. We have our chief customer officer and she is basically overseeing both our sales and our customer success team. So she's doing things like NPS studies and really having a lot of qualitative dialogue with our customers to hear what they're thinking and feeling. So we recently just launched a customer advisory board, which help drives to the well as well. We have a head of market research, and he comes from the enterprise environment, building very sophisticated market, sophisticated market research approaches.

[00:18:17.990] - Matt

So he understands sort of like what the best in class approaches and has that domain expertise for market research. So he's really pushing on that level. And then we have our president who really understands storytelling and simplicity and kind of the new consumer and how they want to use business products. You know, you look at the success of platforms like Slack and you know, it's because it's so simple to use. So he's pushing on making sure that despite the fact that we need to listen to customers and be sophisticated in market research, everyone needs to be a fun and easy to use.

[00:18:51.170] - Matt

So we have multiple stakeholders that each have a voice in the room. And then from that, we kind of have a scoring system where we map out all the potential features that we can roll out. And then, of course, we have our engineering team and our chief product officer who talks about what can be built and how long it's going to take and expensive it is. That's the fourth voice in the room talking about like customers and things like that.

[00:19:11.180] - Matt

What are your your best memories about customers? The best thing that come on top of your mind, you know, like, you know, good stories with them and, you know, good feedback they gave you.

[00:19:23.340] - Matt

Yeah, I mean, we've we've heard amazing things from customers about the impact Suzy has on their business. I think lately some of the very cool things is, you know, we recently learned one of our customers was using Suzy to test spots for the upcoming Super Bowl. So, you know, this is an investment of millions of dollars with TV commercials should they run, and they're trusting Suzy to help decide what creative they're going to put in front of tens of millions of people.

[00:19:47.910] - Matt

So it really made me understand the power and gravity of what we built and how important it is some of these large companies.

[00:19:54.930] - Morgan

OK, OK, OK. So you guys like obviously because you are like a customer customer feedback platform, you are very close to your customer. Oh, our friend, you like like get interview with your customer. Is that like a process where everyone the team engineers, executives said is good or no customer interview to understand really what the customer needs to get to you?

[00:20:18.110] - Matt

Yeah, that's yeah, that's really driven by our customer success team. Our customer success team is really great at what they do. You know, since we service enterprises, we need to over service our customers. We can't rely on just giving them a username and password, expecting them to use it because what we're doing is new. A lot of our customers for decades have trusted agencies to do market research for them versus doing it on their own. So we can't rely on them just logging in and doing it on their own.

[00:20:44.520] - Matt

We need to hold their hand. Throughout this process, and in doing so, we're very close with our customers and, you know, we're very attuned to what their needs are and what types of features that we need to continue to build in the product so it can deliver for them.

[00:21:00.680] - Morgan

OK. OK, very interesting, very interesting. And and what's the future of your marketing tournament? What do you think like if you see you should have like, very good insight about the market research market? Yeah. And what do you think it's going to be going to look like in 10 years?

[00:21:18.770] - Matt

So I think market research is going to continue to grow. And the reason being that if you think about the old way of doing business, brands were kind of in control about how they were perceived. You know, they control if you had a checkbook, you can control the airwaves and you can buy TV spots and that before digital, that was really the only way to get people to know about you at scale. And in that world, the companies were in control of the way a brand was perceived because they were the only ones with a voice.

[00:21:46.070] - Matt

Right? And now fast forward to today, 20 21, and it's really the consumer that has a bigger voice in the companies. Do you know more people are consuming content from other people every day than they are from other companies? And because consumers are now in control of how brands are perceived? It's becoming increasingly important for companies to let consumers drive the products and services that they built. And that's only going to continue to grow over time. So I think what companies are going to start to realize is it doesn't matter what they think, it doesn't matter.

[00:22:18.570] - Matt

You know what they think consumers should want. What is the only? The only thing is important is what consumers actually want, how they actually feel, how they actually think. And the only way to uncover that is through market research. So I think that the category is going to continue to grow. And I think in terms of Suzy, you know, we are in a legacy industry with incumbents who have not changed their business model for decades. And I think it creates a huge opportunity for companies such as ours that come in and really sort of redefine what it means to be a consumer centric enterprise.

[00:22:50.390] - Morgan

Sure, sure. You know, is this quote that I love from Jeff Bezos says, like we said, because tomorrow there is no company. And it's very, very true. You know, like everything that you say, you know, like companies are like switching to like very everyone is becoming like a customer focused and customer center of the company. You know, every company out there needs to be customer focused. It's not like they're going to die.

[00:23:11.610] - Morgan

You know, like the competition is so on now with every tool that we have available on the market that everyone needs to be very focused on their customer 100 percent. So it's very interesting and. What are your top three tips for an entrepreneur that want to launch a new product on the market, new company and the three best tips that you would you like to give to Matt, like maybe five years ago, 10 years ago and before launching Suzy?

[00:23:41.070] - Matt

I think number one is just make the product simple and easy to use. I think that people are not patient as consumers and because of that, they're not patient as business users. A lot of times, you know, we think that the consumer is suddenly going to change when they start using a business product versus a consumer product. But the reality is we're doing it on the same machine. And in this day and age, in his virtual work world, a lot of times are doing it in the same room, right?

[00:24:07.710] - Matt

The place that you shop is this place that you work is where you talk to friends, the places you eat. So I think because of all that, you know, you really need to make a product that's simple and easy to use. I think you need to listen to your customers and driving your product roadmap, which you talked about. I think that's incredibly important if you're going to be able to deliver something that customers expect. And I think you always need to be evolving the product.

[00:24:30.870] - Matt

You can't stay stagnant because it's a very competitive environment. And I think that in order for you to stay ahead of the curve and have your competitive set, you constantly need to be rolling out new features.

[00:24:40.960] - Morgan

Interesting, interesting tips. Interesting tips and and maybe tackle that, but gets into an offense touch. Let's play a quick game. Can you give us two truths and one lie about Suzy's journey? It can be like team-related, product-related, customer-related, or anything. Two truths one lie, but don't tell us which is the truth, don't tell us which is the lie, we let the audience guess.

[00:25:06.940] - Matt

OK, so here are my three. One. The company, Suzy is named after a song from my favorite rock band, too. The company has five times as amount of employees now than we did since the start of the pandemic. And three, we have a very famous football player that's an investor in the company. So two of those are true. And one of those is a lie.

[00:25:35.110] - Morgan

This is great. This is great. This is great. Ireland am saying that it was actually great to record the podcast with you if you have something to say like Adam. Top of that, you're hiring some people looking for a new kids, new partner and you see it's your time. I don't know anything that you want to add to.

[00:25:58.580] - Matt

Sure. So if you want to learn more about Suzy, you can just check out the company at Suzy RT.com. Suzy dot com. And and if you want to learn more about me, you can follow me on Twitter @mattyb

[00:26:15.250] - Morgan

Yeah, so people can can can go on Twitter message you to guess whether the tweets were light and they were cheating, that it was a my record that put gas with you. Yeah. All the all the businesses and the ensuing 10 years to see for the vision that you had is there.

[00:26:38.660] - Matt

Thank you so much. Looking forward to checking this out and following you.

[00:26:41.870] - Morgan

Thank you guys for listening in. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed recording it. Matt actually showed us that in entrepreneurship, you only need two things. Determination and the resilience, you know, and in years of launching product and business ventures might have a lot of trouble. You know, you got to raise cash. You could premises problem with this product. You could premises team clients. Everyone had to pivot a little bit of time.

[00:27:04.310] - Morgan

Yeah, the latter frame. But this guy kept going, you know? And when he spoke about the fact that when you learned the product, when you launched with it the first time, nothing was working for months, you know, and I just kept doing kept building. The momentum can keep building the trust with the people around him. That's very important with your investor, with your client, with your team. You know, you keep like showing that you going to do it, you know, and people just like, you know, believe in you because of your residents and your determination.

[00:27:30.260] - Morgan

And I think that's something very important. Another thing that Matt also showed us, you know, he's like, Yes, you need to be in love with your product. But the thing is like, you need to focus on like what your product is serving on the market and so much entrepreneur, you know, fall into the trap of like being in love the product, polishing the product, doing everything but lose the focus on like what the user, what the people really want you in on that market.

[00:27:52.040] - Morgan

And I think that's something that matches doing super, which is like we focus on like, what's the what's the problem that the product is solving on the market? So this is something you guys need to remain focused on the brand to much under pretty. Even if you are here to speak of a product, we need to focus on the problem. And as usual, if you guys like this episode and even if she if she didn't like, don't hesitate to give a rating, give her feedback.

[00:28:16.070] - Morgan

It helps me to improve the show and bring you more valuable content every week. Thank you, guys, and see you next week for the next episode.