Ethnicity Indian Name Neil Patel Organizations founded KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg | Website neilpatel.com Role Entrepreneur | |
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Born April 24, 1985 London, England Known for KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, QuickSprout, Hellobar Similar People Matt Cutts, Krystian Szastok, Andrew Isidoro, Bill Hartzer Profiles | ||
Neil Patel is a Seattle, Washington-based entrepreneur, angel investor, and analytics expert. He is best known for his work in digital marketing, and as the cofounder of the analytics companies KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Quick Sprout.
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Patel is also a contributor to publications such as Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine and TechCrunch.
2000–2006: Advice Monkey, ACS, Crazy Egg
After starting numerous money making schemes and trying to find a job on Monster.com Patel launched his first online venture, a job board named Advice Monkey, while in high school—he had recently turned 15. After the marketing companies Patel hired for the project failed to gain the company any traction, he decided to learn how to drive traffic to his site, thus launching his career in online marketing.
In 2002 Patel co-founded Advantage Consulting Services (ACS), an online search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing company, with business partner Hiten Shah. Patel and ACS eventually served as consultants for numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Hewlett Packard, Samsung, Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, General Motors, and Viacom.
By 2005, he was named one of the top influencers on the web by The Wall Street Journal, and Patel started his first blog, ProNet Advertising, in 2006.
In 2006, Patel and Shah founded Crazy Egg, a company that helps individuals and businesses determine visitor behavior while they are engaging with their website. The information is displayed in "heatmaps," showing where visitors clicked while on the site—a more visual method than the traditional analytics programs available at the time. Shortly after the launch of Crazy Egg, Patel reportedly received a US$5-million offer to sell the company, but he declined, explaining that he felt the company would eventually sell for at least $10 million.
In 2012, Patel and Crazy Egg purchased Hello Bar.
2007–present: Quick Sprout, KISSmetrics
In 2007, ProNet Advertising was named Search Engine Journal's "Best Social Media Blog" and ranked in Technorati's Top 100 for the first time, while ACS generated more than US$2.5 million in annual sales.
Also in 2007, Patel launched the Quick Sprout blog. Initially described as a personal project, Quick Sprout grew to produce annual revenues in excess of US$1 million and was featured in major news outlets, including Inc. Magazine, Forbes, Gigaom, and Business Insider. By 2009, Patel had implemented his marketing and search engine optimization tactics on 30 of the top 100 Technorati blogs.
KISSmetrics
In 2008 Patel co-founded KISSmetrics, a customer analytics platform designed for small and mid-sized companies, again with business partner Shah. Patel described KISSmetrics as "Crazy Egg 2.0": the service shows the demographic data and behavior of website visitors, as well as providing guidance on how companies can use this information.
The company closed a US$1 million seed round led by True Ventures in 2008. In mid-2009, it closed a $3 million round led by Polaris Ventures, and also secured angel investments from Dave McClure, Bobby Yazdani, and Nils Johnson. In total, the company has raised over $17 million.
Since its launch in May 2008, KISSmetrics has registered more than 1,900 customers, and has tracked more than 4.5 billion people and their 36 billion interactions. Patel's advisors at KissMetrics include Eric Ries, Sean Ellis, Jeff Veen, Jeff Hammerbacher, and Ed Baker.
In 2013, Entrepreneur Magazine named KISSMetrics one of their top 100 Brilliant Companies, with Patel being named one of their 50 favorite online influencers the following year. Forbes also named Patel one of the top 10 marketing experts of 2014.
Patel and his partner Hiten Shah moved on from KISSMetrics in 2014.