This former Twitter exec took over as CEO of an $865 million company - now, he explains his master plan to take on Google, and his unusual reason to want to IPO

Mixpanel

Mixpanel CEO Amir Movafaghi

• In April, Mixpanel cofounder Suhail Doshi relinquished his CEO title to Amir Movafaghi. Mixpanel is an app analytics company, last valued at $865 million in 2014.
• Movafaghi says that the game plan for Mixpanel is to take on Google and Adobe by creating an ecosystem of partners - it believes it can establish its niche while the market is still relatively new.
• To that end, Mixpanel is announcing a partnership with Zendesk, allowing customer service agents to see exactly what's going wrong when an app user calls in for help.
• Movafaghi says that Mixpanel doesn't need to raise funding, and isn't necessarily in the market for an IPO. At the same time, though, he says he admires the financial discipline of public companies, where it's obvious if a business is doing well or not.

In April, Suhail Doshi dropped a bomb on his employees: He was stepping down as CEO of Mixpanel, the company that he had cofounded, and handing over the reins to Amir Movafaghi, who had been chief operating officer.

As Doshi told CNBC at the time, he was exhausted. He had founded Mixpanel in 2009, at 20 years old, and led it to an $865 million valuation. Over time, though, the waters got a little murky, and by 2016 Mixpanel experienced layoffs amid a strategy shift, even as it brought on new executive talent to try to bring the company back on track for an IPO.

At that meeting, the incoming CEO received a compliment from Doshi that he's come to cherish, Movafaghi tells Business Insider.

"The truth about Amir is, he gets me more excited about Mixpanel," Doshi told employees, as Movafaghi now recalls. Movafaghi calls Doshi's comments "humbling" - while Doshi is staying on as chairman of the board (after some time off), he was basically saying that it was up to Movafaghi to take his vision for Mixpanel to the next level.

Now, Movafaghi says that things are moving in the right direction. The company will come close to $100 million in annual revenue this year, Movafaghi says, even as Mixpanel has blown away its own internal financial targets for three quarters running.

Mixpanel's investors include well-known Silicon Valley firms Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, with $77 million in funding so far - most recently, a $65 million round in 2014. Movafaghi says the company is "really well-capitalized," and doesn't have to raise money any time soon, though it still could.

"Our velocity is very encouraging for where we're heading," says Movafaghi.

And where Mixpanel is heading could well involve an IPO - but not for the reasons you might think.

Mixpanel helps companies track customers

The whole idea behind Mixpanel is that it helps companies track the way that customers use their websites and apps. That data can be used to squash bugs, guide customers toward new features, or eliminate common frustrations.

"What your customers do on the website, how they navigate, matters greatly," says Movafaghi. He says that the company's business is split pretty evenly between smaller developers and large customers like Ticketmaster and Intel Security.

There are no shortage of competitors in that space, including Google and Adobe. What sets Mixpanel apart, says Movafaghi, is a focus on individual customers. Most other app analytics software takes a bunch of data and presents it in aggregate, says Movafaghi.

Mixpanel gives more visibility into demographics and user habits, says Movafaghi. Everything is viewed through the lens of the user, including how many times a user accesses certain features, or how often they click on ads that are presented in certain ways.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel

The next big thing for Mixpanel, says Movafaghi, is putting that data to new uses by partnering up with other companies. For instance, Mixpanel is today announcing a partnership with help desk company Zendesk to combine their powers.

If a customer uses Zendesk to get in touch with customer support, the agent can use Mixpanel to see exactly what they were doing in the app that led to the problem. By that same token, if a lot of customers are reporting the same problem, it can be escalated back to the app developers for a potential fix.

"There's an evolution of how you maniacally focus on your customer," says Movafaghi.

With Google and Adobe nipping at Mixpanel's heels, Movafaghi believes that rallying allies like Zendesk is the key to the company's continued viability. Mixpanel doesn't need to totally vanquish Google, Movafaghi says - it just needs to establish its niche right now, today, before the market settles out and it's too late.

"If you invest, build the right ecosystem, you'll have a competitive advantage," says Movafaghi. "When the dust settles, there are going to be standards."

That push will include signing more partners, expanding further into the European and Asia Pacific regions, and hiring beyond its current 300 employees, says Movafaghi.

A nontraditional reason to IPO

Notably, Movafaghi hadn't been with Mixpanel for very long before being named CEO, having joined in 2017. Before that, Movafaghi was at IT management software company Spiceworks as chief financial officer.

But Movafaghi is best known for his 5 years at Twitter, where he ultimately served as VP of global business operations. Following the Twitter IPO in 2013, Movafaghi was tasked by former CEO Dick Costolo to come up with a way to pay down the operating debt incurred by its years of "fast and furious" growth, he says.

Now, Movafaghi tells Business Insider that while Mixpanel isn't necessarily looking for the kind of money you'd get from an IPO - he says he's "philosophically opposed" to the idea of raising money for the sake of raising money - he does miss some aspects of being at a publicly-traded company.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel cofounder Suhail Doshi

Mostly, being a public company requires you to have "discipline," says Movafaghi. Startups often prioritize Twitter-like growth over any kind of financial game plan - behavior that's incentivized by the fact that venture capitalists are willing to overlook a lot if a startup is growing like crazy.

"You become pretty loose," Movafaghi says.

As a public company, however, Movafaghi says that the proof is in the pudding. If your financials aren't good, there's no hiding it. Mixpanel may or may not IPO in the foreseeable future, Movafaghi says, but it's that kind of discipline that he'd like the company to continue adopting.

"If you can't demonstrate that the foundation is strong," says Movafaghi, "you're building a very fragile business."