Amplitude Analytics Raises $9 Million To Help Nokia, MapQuest & Others Pinpoint Their Path To User Growth

, a startup that provides behavior analytics for growth-focused companies, has raised $9 million in a Series A led by Benchmark Capital. Several existing investors -- Quest Venture Partners, Data Collective, Merus Capital, Charlie Cheever, Dave Morin and a number of unspecified angel investors -- participated in the round as well. "We started Amplitude three years ago," Spenser Skates, co-founder and CEO of Amplitude, told Benzinga. "We saw what was out there in the market and we realized that the tools that were built were not scaling to the volumes of data we were seeing on mobile. Because of that, it led to all sorts of pain from existing customers." Skates and his co-founder, Curtis Liu, thought they could provide a better alternative. "That's when we started Amplitude," said Skates. "We were app developers before that, so we're pretty familiar with the tradeoffs."

Amplitude launched its beta roughly 18 months ago, but it didn't aggressively promote its real-time analytics product to new customers. The company chose to focus on its existing customers instead. "Now is the first time we're being very, very aggressive about the data volume message," said Skates. "We're also coming out with a bunch of new features that make Amplitude unique."

, MapQuest, DoorDash, Rhapsody, Yik Yak and Rdio are among the companies that have used Amplitude's technology. "[Nokia] HERE was one of our very first customers," said Skates. He added that Amplitude will continue to work with Nokia now that

. "We actually are working with multiple groups within Nokia and the main one is HERE," Skates clarified. "We'll be continuing to work with HERE but we're also still working with some teams within Nokia."

Skates took a moment to explain how Amplitude serves such a diverse client base. "Regardless of what sort of company you're at, whether you're a product manager at Rdio or Rhaposdy, or you work for a mapping application with Nokia and HERE, the sort of things you care about long-term are similar, which is ultimately user engagement and user retention," said Skates. "If you can get your customers to stick around in your application, then you've done a great job as a product manager, and that's exactly what Amplitude helps teams do." Skates also spoke about how

, the world's largest mobile brand, conducted research to find out which element led to the most user engagement. "They looked at a bunch of different possible behaviors," he said. "They looked at how many photos you uploaded, what percent of profile you filled out, what apps you used." Friends turned out to be the most important element. "The key for them was how many friends you added," Skates continued. "If you added friends within the product, you were really likely to stick around long-term. If you didn't, you were very likely to leave." Skates referred to that as a "critical analytics insight" for Facebook. "That was actually the single biggest thing that helped them become a company with a billion users and a $250 billion market cap," he said. Similarly, Skates said that Amplitude helps its clients "find insights to understand what really leads to engagement for them." Disclosure: