UserLeap raises $16 million to bring better qualitative data to PMs [TechCrunch]

Product managers can only be successful if they can make effective use of both quantitative and qualitative data. But mapping the former to the latter, and collecting high-quality data, is a huge challenge to organizations looking to rapidly productize and innovate.

UserLeap, a company founded by serial product manager Ryan Glasgow, thinks it has found a better way, and so do its investors. The company today announced the close of a $16 million Series A financing led by Accel (Dan Levine led the round), with participation from angels like Elad Gil, Dylan Field, Ben Porterfield, Akshay Kothari, Jack Altman, and Bobby Lo.

One of the main challenges of rapid product development is that the ratio of quantitative data to qualitative data isn’t equal. It can take weeks or even months to get results from user surveys, and that’s only if users actually respond. According to UserLeap, the average response rate for email surveys is between 3 percent and 5 percent. To add to the headache, PMs and data teams usually have to parse that information and organize it manually.

UserLeap offers product teams the ability to put a short line of code into their product that then delivers contextual micro-surveys to users right within the product. The company says that these micro-surveys usually see a 20 percent to 30 percent response rate, and sometimes that even pops all the way to 90 percent.

Plus, the UserLeap dashboard processes the natural language from respondents and organizes the data. For example, if one user references price and another references cost, those responses are grouped together.

Because the surveys are built right into the product and targeted to a specific action or flow, and because the data is parsed and automatically sorted, product teams usually have access to this data within a few hours.

UserLeap charges based on the number of end users tracked, plus the number of surveys sent out per month, offering tiers for those surveys in groupings of five. Glasgow says this is a bit of a differentiator when compared to other survey products like SurveyMonkey or TypeForm.

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“We have a usage based pricing model, where our competitors often have a seat based pricing model,” said Glasgow. “We don’t care how many people have access to us. Really, our goal is to get you to use our product.”

In other words, the insights gleaned from UserLeap can be shared and used across the entire organization without affecting the price.

This latest funding brings UserLeap’s total funding to $20 million — First Round Capital previously led a $4 million seed round.

Customers include Square, Opendoor, And Codecademy. Thus far, the company has tracked more than 500 million visitors, and gotten 600,000 survey question responses.

The UserLeap team is currently made up of 15 people, with females representing 50 percent and people of color making up 33 percent of the leadership team. Across the company, women represent 32 percent of the team are people of color represent 42 percent.

“UserLeap cares deeply about diversity and inclusion,” said Glasgow. “Having a diverse team helps to ensure our employees feel comfortable and valued so that they can bring their whole selves to work. For that reason, UserLeap has a part-time recruiting sourcer dedicated to engaging underrepresented candidates and these efforts have contributed towards our diversity goals.”