Segment launches new program to help early-stage startups achieve product-market fit

Segment, a customer data infrastructure company that helps businesses put their customers first, has launched the Segment Startup Program, a new initiative that will provide early-stage companies with the financial, educational and business support they need to reach key product milestones and effectively grow their business. As part of the program, startups will receive up to two years’ free access to segment’s cdi, alongside great deals for leading applications from google cloud for startups, amplitude, intercom, mode analytics and more.

Founded in 2011 by Calvin French-Owen, Ian Storm Taylor, Ilya Volodarsky, and Peter Reinhardt, Segment provides the customer data infrastructure that businesses use to put their customers first. With Segment, companies can collect, unify, and connect their first-party data to over 200 marketing, analytics, and data warehousing tools. Today, thousands of companies across 71 countries use Segment, from fast-growing businesses such as Atlassian, Bonobos and Instacart to some of the world’s largest organizations like Levi’s, Intuit and Time. Segment enables these companies to achieve a common understanding of their users and make customer-centric decisions

“Having seen thousands of small startups grow into large companies using Segment, we know that even the fastest-growing companies struggle with things such as finding product-market fit, ensuring future revenue streams, and optimizing the sales funnel,” said Ilya Volodarsky, co-founder of Segment. “This is something we certainly experienced ourselves when founding Segment back in 2011, when we were just four friends in a dorm room. Now that we have thousands of customers worldwide and a growing global team, we want to help the next generation of startups get the right data foundations in place, allowing them to build truly customer-first businesses from the very beginning.”

Helping Startups Master Their Data Early On

From day one, every startup has to answer fundamental questions about what its value proposition is and what products it should develop and take to market. A business can only answer these questions if it knows what its customers truly want. This means making the most of every piece of data at its disposal.

For early-stage businesses, this challenge is particularly acute because they often lack the time and resources necessary to effectively collect customer data and connect it to the tools and applications that will help turn their data into actionable insights. Without implementing a strong foundational approach to analytics during those crucial early stages, the problem gets worse as their customer base grows, seriously impacting growth.

The Segment Startup Program is designed to solve this problem by helping early-stage startups use analytics and growth marketing tools effectively so that they can grow their business and reach key product milestones. Qualifying startups receive free access to Segment’s Customer Data Infrastructure – a complete and flexible foundation to gather, manage, and route their customer data to any application with just a flip of a switch.

By offering free access to Segment’s CDI during those crucial early stages, as well as providing educational support and exclusive referral deals with its technology partners, startups will be able to better understand their customers, find the right product-market fit, and grow their company on a strong analytics foundation.

The Segment Startup Program is open to any venture-backed, early-stage startup that is less than two years old and has less than $5M raised in funding.

The program consists of three components:

• Segment Startup Deals. Startups receive up to two years’ free usage of Segment’s Customer Data Infrastructure. Participating companies will be eligible for Segment’s Team Plan, which allows an unlimited number of data sources and destinations.
• Partner Startup Deals. Participating startups will gain access to exclusive referral deals from Segment’s affiliated technology partners. This will help them to easily build the full tech stack that they need to understand their customers and grow their business, including leading analytics, data warehousing, business intelligence and email marketing tools.
• Startup Resources. Segment will also provide learning materials produced by Segment’s in-house experts to help participating startups improve their understanding of data analytics, product-market fit, and how to make the most of Segment’s technology — all delivered in a way that’s practical for founders, with onsite VC training, guidebooks, and additional web resources.

Over $1 million in Value for Early-Stage Startups

As part of the program, Segment is announcing over 15 new Startup Deals in their catalog, representing around $1M in value for an early-stage startup. Initial launch deals include Amplitude, Intercom, Customer.io, Google Cloud, and Mode Analytics.

“We’re delighted that Segment is so focused on helping startups get the right tools and infrastructure in place so early on,” said Sam O’Keefe, Head of Google Cloud for Startups. “Google Cloud provides tremendous benefits for early-stage businesses. Solutions like Google BigQuery, Cloud Dataflow, and Cloud Dataproc can bring valuable insights from data, securely share data with other collaborators, and, importantly, scale alongside fast-growing startups.”

Mark Hansen, co-founder at Upsolve, a nonprofit online legal aid organization and current member of the program, said, “It can be challenging to close the knowledge gap around analytics at an early-stage organization. The Segment Startup Program helped us improve our conversations around measuring goals and the way we operate. Their analytics recommendations brought the team a real sense of business clarity and understanding of our users.”

Gustaf Alströmer, partner at startup accelerator Y Combinator, added, “Getting analytics right is critical for an early-stage startup. Segment helps businesses set up analytics the way it is meant to be—quantifying product-market fit, understanding customers, and trying new tools— all without redundant or time-consuming work. Beyond that, Segment helps founders become analytics experts with a variety of educational materials aimed at making product-market fit attainable for early startups.”

Applications are now open. Any interested can click here to apply.