14. SurveyMonkey

A way to better answers.

Founder: Ryan Finley
CEO: Zander Lurie
Launched: 1999
Headquarters: San Mateo, California
Funding:
$1.5 billion
Valuation: $2 billion (PitchBook)
Key technologies:
Machine learning, software-defined security
Disrupting:
Surveys, software

George Kavallines | CNBC

If you want to know what your customers, students, donors or any other constituent is thinking, SurveyMonkey, the online survey platform, is the place to go. Nearly all the Fortune 500, private companies, nonprofits, small businesses and the media use the San Mateo, California-based company to send out surveys in order to gather quick feedback on a product, service or issue. SurveyMonkey is responsible for more than 3 million online survey responses every day and last year added AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Salesforce as customers.

Read More: FULL LIST: 2018 DISRUPTOR 50

The company's surveys helped Americans voice their opinions during the contentious presidential election, and it is now working with media companies Vanity Fair and the Skimm on a project called Millennial Takeover 2018. Each month, they will capture the opinions of millennial women on issues such as what matters to them at the polls, what they look for in political candidates and what's driving young women to enter politics in greater numbers.

The company is a bit of an elder statesman in Silicon Valley, having been started in 1999 by Ryan Finley, a computer science graduate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Zander Lurie joined as CEO in 2016 after the sudden death of longtime chief David Goldberg, husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Over the years, SurveyMonkey has raised more than $1 billion from investors, such as T. Rowe Price, Spectrum and Tiger Global Management. The company, with about 750 employees, does more than $200 million in revenue and is profitable. Recode reported earlier this year that SurveyMonkey is expected to go public sometime in late 2018.