How it started
Founding and early growth (1999-2009)
SurveyMonkey was founded in 1999 by Ryan Finley, who later brought on his brother, Chris Finley. Seeking a simple way to collect customer feedback and finding no suitable tools available, he developed his own solution—SurveyMonkey. In 2005, Finley relocated the company to Portland, Oregon, where he and his brother Chris transported the company’s servers themselves. While the company was initially bootstrapped, it grew in popularity to a rumored $30 million in revenue.
Private equity investment and expansion (2009-2015)
In 2009, Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital acquired a majority stake in the company. During this time, Dave Goldberg, a former Yahoo executive, served as CEO and led the company through a period of rapid growth. This included growing from 12 employees to over 450, and helping the company achieve an almost $2 billion valuation. The company also acquired startups, Wufoo and FluidReview (later renamed to SurveyMonkey Apply), and released its first mobile app and enterprise-focused plan.
In 2010, the company received $100 million in debt financing from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.
In early 2013, SurveyMonkey relocated its headquarters from Portland to Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley.
From Wikipedia’s article on SurveyMonkey, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2