In IVP's Hypergrowth Stories series, CEOs of the fastest-growing companies share the ins and outs of company building in a hypergrowth environment.
In 2012, M.I.T. graduates Spenser Skates and Curtis Liu noticed an undeniable market opportunity. Companies like Facebook housed internal teams that offered valuable product analytics tools, but no such off-the-shelf counterparts existed at the time. What if Skates and Liu developed an advanced analytics system that helped businesses build better products?
The pair launched San Francisco-based Amplitude in 2012, and in the time since, the company has become a quintessential hypergrowth story that other aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from. Thousands of digital products from a wide array of businesses now depend on Amplitude to grow their digital businesses, including Walmart, Atlassian, NBC Universal, Instacart, and Under Armour. Amplitude has consistently been ranked #1 in Product Analytics by G2 and other firms, and ranks as a top 50 software product in 2021 across all categories.
Amid the throes of the pandemic, as many other businesses struggled to adapt to a new unexpected reality, Amplitude reported a banner year in 2020 and now has more than 1,200 paying customers, including 26 of the Fortune 100. Today, Amplitude (Nasdaq: AMPL) is a public company, after a successful debut through a direct listing in late September.
For Skates and Liu, and their other co-founder Jeffrey Wang, this validation of a successful graduation to public company status is the culmination of years of hard work, sacrifice, and smart decision-making.
Skates, who serves as the company's CEO, reflects on the hard-fought journey to transform a compelling idea into a rocketship.
This Q&A was edited for length and clarity.
How difficult was it to raise funding in those early days, and what did you learn from those experiences?
Kids these days have it so much easier than we did. In 2013 or 2014, it was much, much harder. Our seed round took us six months to raise, and it was brutal. I remember trying to put together $1 million dollars for a seed round $50k at a time.
For those of you who have never raised money, trying to put together $1,000,000 in $50K increments is really hard, because you have to find 20 people that will sign up. But I kept at the process, and we eventually found a set of folks who believed in what we did, and it's a huge credit to them. Folks like Adam Draper, SV Angel, Data Collective, and Merus Capital managed to put together a seed round, and that was enough to help us hire some early folks, really launch the company, and take off from there.
What was the experience like of getting your first check for that seed round?
Actually, the first check that I really remember is the first customer that decided to pay us. We had gone a year of building the product and just giving it away for free, not charging anyone. But the first time we convinced someone to pay us, we showed up to this little mobile gaming company and gave them a demo. We went through the entire thing, they had a bunch of questions, and then we got to the end of the conversation. They asked how much it cost, and I'm like, Whoa. I've never been asked that question.' Then I remembered the advice: charge way more than you think is reasonable. You can always negotiate it down.
So I said it costs $1,000 a month, and they were like, Wow, that's so cheap. Sign us up.' I remember thinking, Oh, my god. Someone is paying us money for software. This is the best thing ever.' That was the real start.
Between you and your cofounder, how did you decide who would become CEO?
We talked about it. There are a few things the CEO has to do. They have to be the one out there pitching and raising money, and I was a more natural fit for that part, especially in the early days. CEOs should also be out there selling the product, and so I was doing that too.
Curtis had always wanted to focus on the technology and the product side and get really good at that. Although, he's worn the most hats of all throughout Amplitude's history: he was our interim CFO, our interim head of recruiting, our interim chief people officer at one point, and he ran engineering for a good chunk of time. I think that is something that's quite important: when it comes to co-founders, they must be willing to play whatever role or do whatever it takes to make the company successful. They need a willingness to embrace a role they might not think they could learn, but they do it because it's needed to build the business and is really important.
None of these skills came naturally. I was so bad at fundraising, I was so bad at sales, and I was not a good manager. I was really really bad at all of these things at first, but I was willing to do it.
How did you refine or hone those skills?
You just have to do it and fail enough times. People try to read books on how to fundraise or books on how to become a salesperson and books on how to manage, but you've learned a fraction of what you need to from those. So you've just got to go do it.
You can also find people who are good at those things, who are willing to take a little bit of time to provide you with advice and coaching on how to do them because that will accelerate your learning so much faster than if you're just trying to figure them out on your own. That'll take you really far.
One of the things we did really early on was to hire someone to coach me on sales. This guy named Mitch Morando came in one day a week and taught me so much of the basics, reviewed my pipeline, gave me coaching, and pushed me to focus in all the right places.
You've said that to be an effective CEO you need to orient your life around it.' What exactly does that mean to you?
Being CEO of a high-growth venture-backed co
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
23/08/2025
At IBC2025 (12-15 September, RAI Amsterdam, stand 1.B73), Imagine Communications is expanding its Selenio Network Processor (SNP) line with the launch of SNP-X...
23/08/2025
At IBC2025, TSL will introduce a series of workflow-driven enhancements across its control, audio monitoring, and power distribution solutions, engineered for i...
23/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - Lightware, industry leaders in signal management, have seen growing demand for their Taurus Smart Dock since its launch in Janu...
23/08/2025
PALO ALTO, Calif. The streaming technology solutions provider Wurl has named Dave Bernath as its new chief executive officer....
23/08/2025
WASHINGTON Newsmax founder and CEO Christopher Ruddy has come out against reducing broadcast ownership caps in a filing with the Federal Communications Commissi...
23/08/2025
$2.2 Million Donation Fuels Next Phase of Berklee Bridge The anonymous gift will amplify the impact of the student success initiative built to support student...
22/08/2025
Utah Scientific Releases NBOSS Software-Based NMOS Control Solution for Hybrid S...
22/08/2025
(L-R) Writer-director Alex Russell, Th odore Pellerin, Archie Madekwe, and Havana Rose Liu on stage for the premiere of Lurker at Eccles Theater in Park City....
22/08/2025
The wait is over: Stray Kids return with their fourth full-length album, KARMA. ...
22/08/2025
With their new album, hickey, out now, Aussie indie darlings Royel Otis decided ...
22/08/2025
We recently spoke with MixedbyEL, a rising force in the world of audio engineering, celebrated for his dynamic work in rap, R&B, and pop. From his early days re...
22/08/2025
BitFire (bitfire.tv), a leader in software-defined live production and IP transmission, today announced the addition of cloud-based live master control capabili...
22/08/2025
Utah Scientific today announced NBOSS, a new software-based control solution designed to streamline the management of NMOS-compliant devices in hybrid SDI/IP en...
22/08/2025
Amagi, a cloud-based SaaS technology solutions provider for broadcast and streaming TV, today announced the release of its 15th Global FAST Report, offering ins...
22/08/2025
Hitomi Broadcast, the market leader in audio/video alignment and latency solutions, announces that ORF ( sterreichischer Rundfunk), Austria s national public br...
22/08/2025
This Berklee Program Turns Class Projects into Career Breakthroughs Experiential Design Lab students take on creative briefs from Red Bull, Disney, and more, ...
22/08/2025
NEW YORK Although FAST channels are becoming ever more omnipresent in the streaming universe, the vast majority of them will need to start providing more live c...
22/08/2025
NEW YORK Independent sell-side advertising company Magnite today announced an integration with Acxiom, the connected data and technology foundation of global ad...
22/08/2025
CINCINNATI The E.W. Scripps Company has announced that six of its channels are now streaming as part of Peacock's 24/7 channel offering and are available to...
22/08/2025
ESPN launched today its new direct-to-consumer streaming service and a set of new features on an enhanced ESPN App, making ESPN's full suite of 12 networks ...
22/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission is once again pressing the delete button as part of its Delete, Delete, Delete regulatory initiative to remov...
22/08/2025
OXFORD, U.K. Solid State Logic will unveil its System T plug-and-play IP-native MPL 16-8 stagebox offering cost-effective connectivity for touring flypack and i...
22/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corporation has officially launched Fox One, a new streaming service that brings together the full portfolio of Foxs sports, news a...
22/08/2025
As the latest member of the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture family, the NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra GPU builds on core innovations to accelerate training and AI reason...
22/08/2025
Little League Baseball World Series: As Championship Weekend Approaches, ESPN Re...
22/08/2025
Friday 22 August 2025
To view this content, please enable our use of cookies. To do so, click Privacy Options below and Accept All
Privacy options
The Brassi...
22/08/2025
Starr Parodi and Jeff Fair rebuild studio life with help from Focusrite and ADAM...
22/08/2025
AI reasoning, inference and networking will be top of mind for attendees of next...
22/08/2025
Join Jacqui Hurley as she leads RT 's television coverage of the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025, with reporting from the Irish camp by Clare MacNamara. Co...
21/08/2025
Spotify and amra, the world's first and only global digital licensing collection society, have entered into a direct multi-territorial, multi-year licensing...
21/08/2025
Spotify is making it easier than ever to connect with your friends on Instagram ...
21/08/2025
From enemies-to-lovers banter to star-crossed soulmates battling curses, romanta...
21/08/2025
Statement on Acting Managing Director arrangements at SBS
21 August, 2025
Insights & articles
The SBS Board of Directors has today confirmed it will appoin...
21/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies Chair and CEO Christopher E. Kubasik speaks at the opening of the 94,000-square-foot satellite integration and test facility. The company ...
21/08/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
21/08/2025
DENVER At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Imagine Communications will introduce the SNP-XS, a versatile addition to its Selenio Network Processor (SN...
21/08/2025
HUDSON, Mass. BitFire, a provider of software-defined live production and IP transmission, today announced the addition of cloud-based live master control capab...
21/08/2025
ATLANTA Gray Media has laid out plans for launching a new cutting-edge, hyper-personalized streaming platform that will start going live in Grays markets in Jan...
21/08/2025
NEW YORK and ZURICH Chyron, a provider of broadcast graphics and live production solutions, has announced a partnership with Asport, a leading sports tech innov...
21/08/2025
NEW YORK swXtch.io has amplified its support for SRT workflows with a new specialized gateway solution primarily targeted at the live event market. To be introd...
21/08/2025
AMSTERDAM Rise Academy, the charity dedicated to delivering practical media technology experiences, careers resources and sharing work experience opportunities ...
21/08/2025
WASHINGTON FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced the appointment of Courtney Cowper as a special assistant in his office. As a special assistant in the Office of ...
21/08/2025
COLUMBUS, Ohio Live Media Group has launched its latest mobile production unit, the MU-28, which is a SMPTE 2110-7 IP-based truck built specifically for remote ...
21/08/2025
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. Sling TV has launched a new offering called Select that provides a package of cable channels for $19.99 a month....
21/08/2025
IRVINE, Calif. CTV and programmatic ad provider Viant Technology Inc. has announced a new integration of its DSP with Wurl that provides advertisers with scene...
21/08/2025
TORRANCE, Calif. Marshall Electronics will highlight several new products at IBC2025, including the CV612 PTZ camera, RCP Plus camera controller and VMV-402-3GS...
21/08/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spolight: MyCaseBuilder's Steve Holand on Creating Custom Ca...
In IVP's Hypergrowth Stories series, CEOs of the fastest-growing companies share the ins and outs of company building in a hypergrowth environment.
