The software market, AI moats, and when to go public with Amplitude CEO Spenser Skates

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Alex had Amplitude CEO Spenser Skates on the show to talk about the SaaS market journey since his company went public in late 2021, which happened to be right before investor sentiment changed. After a successful IPO, Amplitude warned analysts and investors alike in early 2022 that it was seeing some macroeconomic pressure, which led to its stock being sharply repriced. (That happened to most companies eventually, to be fair.) Since then, the digital analytics company has shaken up its organizational structure, launched new AI products, and has continued to grow while becoming cash flow positive. All that made Skates the perfect person to talk about: The current state of the business software buyer, and when Skates expects demand for digital goods and services to improve. When to charge for AI products, and when not to; also, the power of data moats in AI, and how they may be more durable than they are in other areas of SaaS. How to know when you have to cut staff. And, critically, how much Baldur's Gate 3 Skates has played so far. Equity will be back with our news roundup Friday morning! We'll see you then! For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website. Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:16.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. My name is Alex and
0:20.6	this is our Wednesday show where we sit down with a guest think about their work and
0:24.4	unpack the rest. Today we are joined by Spencer Skates, CEO and co-founder of
0:29.2	Amplitude. Amplitude is a digital product analytics company which means it helps its customers track and understand user behavior
0:35.9	so that they can build better apps and services.
0:38.6	Previously Spencer helped build an app called Sonelite that detects to, and we have brought Spencer on the show
0:43.9	to chat through the B2B software market
0:46.0	dealing with increasingly parsimonious customers
0:48.2	and AI from a data perspective.
0:49.9	Spencer, welcome to the show.
0:51.5	Alex, fantastic to be here, really excited.
0:54.2	We've spent obviously a lot of time together in the past,
0:56.8	and so really excited to share the Sonolite,
0:59.2	the amplitude story, and what it's like on the inside of the company.
1:02.3	I feel like whenever we talk after earnings we have like seven minutes to compress an entire conversation
1:06.4	and today we have like 30 minutes.
1:07.8	So this is like a full year of earnings call conversations.
1:10.8	Normally you get me right before the earnings call and so my mind is so
1:14.4	focused on that and so I'm just like giving you the exact same highlights but now we
1:18.3	can have a real conversation about it. It's going to be great. I do really enjoy
1:21.4	talking to people pre-earings call and then reading the transcript later on and
1:24.8	realizing that they were just like copy-pasting into my phone call with them because they're so prepped.
	...

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