A Product Market Fit Show | Startup Podcast for Founders

Amplitude is now a $1.5B public company. Here's how they beat competitors with a 10x cheaper product. | Jeffrey Wang, Co-Founder of Amplitude

Feb 20, 2025

Jeffrey Wang, Co-founder of Amplitude, shares his journey in analytics, turning a startup into a $1.5B public company. He reveals how Amplitude outsmarted competitors like Mixpanel by offering superior features at a fraction of the cost. Wang discusses the struggles of securing initial funding and the critical pivot from voice recognition to user insights. He emphasizes storytelling as a tool for attracting investors and the significance of maintaining control and high standards in building a successful company.

57:20

Episode guests

Jeffrey Wang

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Amplitude disrupted the competitive analytics market by offering a significantly cheaper pricing model, attracting users from higher-cost competitors like Mixpanel.

The startup experience included a critical crisis that underscored the necessity of transparent customer communication and building trust to mitigate potential churn.

A pivotal shift in focus from a voice recognition product to an analytics platform demonstrated the importance of aligning offerings with market demand and customer needs.

Deep dives

Importance of Competitive Pricing

Establishing a qualitatively different pricing structure can provide a significant competitive advantage, much like product quality. In the podcast, a strategy of offering 10 million events for free initially attracted customers and disrupted competitors, drawing attention from those using more expensive services like Mixpanel. This pricing model showcased the company's efficiency and ability to serve customer needs without incurring prohibitive costs. The combination of affordability and usability proved successful in appealing to startups eager for analytics solutions.

Intro

2min

From Startup Dreams to Public Success

6min

Achieving User Engagement Through Perfect Voice Recognition

3min

From Startup to Analytics Leader

9min

Pricing Strategies in the Analytics Landscape

19min

Navigating Success: Lessons from the Startup Journey

14min

Embracing Control and High Standards in Entrepreneurship

4min

When Amplitude launched Mixpanel was the big game in town. They were first to market, had raised more money, and had a well-known brand. VCs passed on Amplitude because it seemed like just another Mixpanel.

Today, Amplitude is a $1.5B public company—they're about 2x bigger than Mixpanel. Mixpanel's marketing spend helped educate the market. But before buying an analytics solution most businesses do market research. That's when they'd find out that Amplitude had several features Mixpanel lacked—and they were much, MUCH cheaper.

It's not cool to win on price, but it works. It worked for WalMart, CostCo, Shein, and it worked for Ampltiude.

Here's the story of how it all happened.

Why you should listen:

How to use cheaper prices to win in a crowded market.
Why you often need 12 hour days to win in Startupland.
Why even massive $1B+ successes often have trouble raising early rounds.
How pivoting can often be the key to finding real market pull.
Why big competitors can often be a huge tailwind.
How to use storytelling to raising bigger rounds.

Keywords
startups, entrepreneurship, analytics, Amplitude, pricing strategy, market positioning, data processing, voice recognition, technology pivot, competitive advantage, market dynamics, differentiation, product-market fit, storytelling, fundraising, startup challenges, customer relationships, analytics tools, business strategy, entrepreneurship

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Intro
(00:06:13) A cool demo-- but a bad business
(00:18:36) Why funding was so hard
(00:25:43) Why lower prices are a big differentiator
(00:40:50) Working 24/7
(00:50:35) Product Market Fit

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