Scaling Amplitude to $300M ARR with Co-founder and CEO Spenser Skates

Spenser Skates is the Co-founder and CEO of Amplitude.

Our conversation gets into the importance of data in product design and company building, how Amplitude is thinking about AI, and the future of user responsive software.

We also get into the early days of building Amplitude, when to go multi-product, how to construct your board as a startup, hiring executives at various company stages, lessons from closing three acquisitions, lessons scaling to $300 million in ARR, inside Amplitude’s 2021 IPO, and what most people get wrong about Founder Mode.

Thanks to Numeral for supporting this episode, the end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance. Try it here: https://bit.ly/NumeralThePeel

Timestamps:

(4:45) Using data to build great products

(8:31) Why data is existential to every business

(13:14) How to go multi-product

(15:48) Every startup becomes a distribution company

(19:29) Lessons from three acquisitions

(29:09) AI hasn’t changed B2B SaaS yet

(31:24) Challenges of incorporating AI in B2B SaaS

(33:09) Amplitude’s AI experiments

(36:29) Navigating technology hype cycles as a public company

(39:40) Amplitude’s opportunity in LLMs

(43:08) User responsive software

(46:16) Surprising things that slow your speed of execution

(51:27) What people get wrong about Founder Mode

(59:48) Pivoting into Amplitude after YC

(1:04:42) Nine months to raise Amplitude’s first round

(1:08:31) Surprises from closing the first customers

(1:12:46) Two sales lessons for technical founders

(1:13:44) Scaling to $300M+ ARR

(1:17:14) How to choose board members

(1:19:55) Inside Amplitude’s IPO

(1:21:56) “Stock price is an output of the business”

(1:26:36) Evolving from startup founder to public company CEO

(1:31:54) How hiring execs changes as you scale

(1:34:32) Why DEI is important at Amplitude

(1:39:46) Relevance of gaming and startups

Referenced

Try Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/

Careers at Amplitude: https://amplitude.com/careers

Moxie Marlinspike’s web3 article:https://moxie.org/2022/01/07/web3-first-impressions.html

Sheep Logic: https://www.epsilontheory.com/sheep-logic/

Follow Spenser

Twitter: https://x.com/spenserskates

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spenserskates

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