App analytics provider Mixpanel becomes latest unicorn

Mixpanel, a service that offers analytics for websites, apps, and other products and services, said it has raised $200 million in a series C round of funding, bringing the company’s valuation to $1.05 billion.

That makes Mixpanel a “unicorn,” or a startup valued at over $1 billion. The funding comes at a time of explosive growth in analytics used by companies to measure user experience. As the pandemic continues, more companies have to rely on digital channels for their business, and customer experience has become a key to success.

The idea behind Mixpanel is that product teams can identify the paths and features that users are taking. The product seeks to help businesses retain users and increase conversion.

Funding to drive UX development

The investment was led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities and is intended to help Mixpanel accelerate product development, the company said.

“Digital products are reinventing how we live our lives. From last-mile deliveries to fintech, to modern media businesses, we’re seeing an explosion of innovation,” said Amir Movafaghi, CEO at Mixpanel.

Becoming a leader in the product analytics market 

The product analytics segment is in a state of growth, with researchers expecting the size of the global analytics market to reach $29.7 billion by 2027, increasing at a CAGR of 20%, according to Research and Markets. Other key players in the market include Amplitude, Heap, Pendo, and ImpactProduct.

MixPanel was early to offer a simple and user-friendly solution designed to enable non-technical users to gain operational insights, in contrast to a tool like Amplitude, which is designed for data scientists who can manage complex configurations.

At the same time, Mixpanel is trying to differentiate itself from tools like Heap, which lack features like push notifications, as well as other products that attempt to implement closed-ecosystem integrations.

Movafaghi said companies don’t want to sign-on to monolithic platforms that try to provide the entire market tech stack. Best-of-breed players that are integrated to one another can deliver more value, more quickly, Movafaghi said, and Mixpanel is aiming to be the product analytics tool of choice.

Mixpanel has the answers

Today, Mixpanel says it answers 70 million product questions a month, regarding how users engage with their websites and apps. That number has grown significantly since the start of the pandemic with weekly active users increasing by 72% since the beginning of 2020 and monthly sign-ups up by 57% year-over-year.

The solution itself is dashboard-driven, enabling users to analyze product use with graphs and charts that detail behavior trends and highlight what days users are most active, what types of content result in highest user retention, and average order values.

Mixpanel offers more than 90 integrations with third-party vendors including Snowflake, Twilio Segment, mParticle, Fivetran, Census, Hightouch, RudderStack, Iterable, and OneSignal.