Suzie

Matt Brittney's journey to Suzie is unconventional. He initially incubated software within his agency, MRY, which he eventually sold for $50 million in 2011. That agency's majority shareholders—a private equity firm—became early investors in what would become Suzie. Rather than rest on those laurels, Matt spun out the software product, installed a different CEO initially, then returned to lead a pivot. The core insight was simple but powerful: 99% of decisions at large companies are made without data—they're guesses, hunches, and myopic thinking. "We really want to make market research accessible the same way the iPhone made the camera accessible," Matt explains.

Suzie is built as a two-sided marketplace connecting large brands (the "askers") with Suzie's proprietary consumer network (the "tellers"). The company owns 1.4 million registered users across gamified iOS and Android apps under the CrowdTap brand, with 50,000 to 100,000 active monthly users. Rather than asking users to fill out long-form surveys, Suzie keeps engagement high through quick-hit questions: "What did we eat for dinner last night? Chipotle. What's your favorite color? Blue." Users earn points redeemable for digital rewards like Spotify or Amazon gift cards (roughly 10-15% of revenue spent on rewards). This vertical integration—owning the app, the brand, the users, and the front-end platform—gives Suzie a competitive moat that rivals like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, and UserTesting can't match, since they must buy users from programmatic audience platforms.

Suzie targets large enterprise brands across CPG, food and beverage, and consumer technology. Flagship customers include Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola—blue-chip companies with staying power. Suzie doesn't serve other SaaS companies ("a house of cards" reliant on funded startups), focusing instead on companies that won't disappear in a downturn. The company's business model serves the entire product development lifecycle: naming, packaging, pricing, merchandising, advertising, and go-to-market strategy.

Growth accelerated through three levers: expanding into new industries, identifying new use cases within existing customers, and dramatically scaling the sales organization. Matt built a sophisticated two-team sales structure: 11 net-new AEs hunting logos and 7 expansion AEs focused on strategic upsells at large enterprises. The comp structure targets a 5:1ratio (for every $5 sold, the AE earns $1 on target earnings). Interestingly, the 60-40 split in ARR growth between net new and expansion reveals the expansion power of large accounts. Customer Success is compensated on net revenue retention (145% for big spenders vs. 58% for small-spend customers), incentivizing retention over transactional upsells. Matt made a deliberate strategic choice: "If it's a small company not spending a lot, we're just not going to prioritize it because the unit economics aren't there." Mid-70s gross margins are healthy for SaaS and better than any competing market research platform.

Suzie grew from 250 customers and ~$27M ARR in 2019 to 350 customers and ~$40M ARR by late 2020, with growth reaching 70-75% YoY. The team scaled from 65 to 200 people (~60 engineers, 18 quota-carrying AEs, ~36 SDRs). Matt raised a $46 million Series D with an East Coast PE firm in 2020 (majority went on balance sheet; the company also secured a debt facility). Though he declined to disclose valuation, he noted it was "not above $500 million" but "really close." Matt owns 5-15% of the company after secondary transactions that gave early PE investors liquidity. His ambition is clear: take Suzie public (the "NBA championship of business") and reach $100M ARR with $250k-$400k ACV. The company is actively acquisitive, eyeing syndicated research, international expansion, niche vertical panels (IT decision makers, information workers), and publisher partnerships. At 46 years old with three kids, Matt brings hard-won experience from surviving 9/11 and the 2008 financial crisis—perspective that helps weather storms most founders haven't seen.