Hotjar has joined forces with Contentsquare

What Hotjar is to entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and mid-market companies, Contentsquare is to enterprises. Founded in Paris in 2012, today they help over 750 enterprises in 26 countries deliver better digital experiences for their customers.

Choosing to join Contentsquare was a decision that stemmed from years of relationship building and following each others’ journeys. Over the last few years we’ve seen each other grow, evolve and develop complementary strengths. And as our relationship developed, we also built mutual respect for each other. While the two companies are different in many ways, our visions share a lot in common. In fact, Contentsquare’s vision is to ”deliver better experiences to all” while Hotjar’s original vision back in 2014 spoke to “democratizing user analytics and feedback”.

Looking back, both visions could not have been more needed in a world where more businesses than ever had started putting customers at the center of how they build and innovate their products and services.

This shift was the main driver for starting Hotjar back in 2014. We identified a need for affordable and intuitive tools that help businesses understand their customers’ behavior and evolving expectations. Our dream was to provide these tools to anyone around the world, no matter how big or small they might be. And in doing so, change the way we all build and improve experiences, by putting people at the center of every product.

This dream comes from a core belief at Hotjar; that long-lasting business success starts by putting people first.

This is true not just because the best way to compete—and stay ahead—is to focus on being as close as possible to your customers, but because we also recognize a major shift unfolding in how people expect to interact with the products and services they use everyday. In all aspects of our lives, we are done accepting a status quo that doesn’t serve us, and we’re starting to push back against companies that don’t demonstrate an authentic people-first approach.

At Hotjar, our dream of enabling long-lasting business success by putting people first is the thread that ties together who we are as a company and what we offer as a business. To this effect, this year, our vision evolved into the Hotjar Dream, or our ‘Just Cause’. At Hotjar we believe in a world where all businesses treat you with love.

I cannot describe it better than our VP of Marketing, Sharon Biggar, who called it:

As we reflect on Hotjar’s origins, its journey since, and what’s to come in the future, we are so very excited to write our next chapter with Contentsquare. After sharing our just cause with Contentsquare’s leadership team, spending time together, and understanding each others’ visions for the future, we quickly shared in the excitement about how we can pursue our goals as one team, by bringing together our different strengths, perspectives and most importantly, our teams.

While the two companies will continue to operate independently from each other for the foreseeable future, we will immediately start learning from each other (in fact, we already have!). To the over 33,800 Hotjar customers this translates into a faster evolving product and accelerated research and development as we leverage Contentsquare’s technology and resources; such as their recently launched cookieless technology, their acquisition of machine and deep learning startup Upstride, and their recent $500 million Series E investment round.

Finally, it’s important to highlight what is not changing. Mohannad Ali will continue in his role as CEO of Hotjar, while I will move to a Strategy Advisory role to both Hotjar and Contentsquare – where I look forward to playing a key role in supporting the development of the group’s products, brand, and go-to-market strategies.

Hotjar will continue to be a 100% distributed team (staying true to our remote-native roots) and we are proud to continue our 1% revenue Giving Back pledge dedicated to Climate Justice.

As a final note, we reflect on how well the Hotjar core values have guided us throughout our journey these last seven years. We see our next chapter as a great opportunity to put you, our customers, even more at the heart of what we do, whilst being bolder, moving faster and continuing to challenge ourselves to grow. And while things will evolve at Hotjar (no doubt for the better), we promise to stay true to working with respect and gaining your continued trust with transparency.

David Darmanin Hotjar Founder