Preact

About Preact

Preact was a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that developed a cloud-based platform to help subscription businesses predict and reduce customer churn. Founded in 2012 by Christopher Gooley and Cory Watilo, the company, initially known as Less Neglect, was based in San Francisco. It secured a total of $21.3 million in funding over six rounds from investors including Atlas Venture, Trinity Ventures, and Harmony Partners, with its largest round being a $7 million Series A in May 2015.

The company’s core offering was a customer success system designed for the B2B SaaS market. By analyzing detailed session-level usage data, user activity metrics, and other behavioral signals, Preact's platform could generate health scores for each user and account. It employed big data analytics, behavioral science, and machine learning to identify customers who were likely to cancel their subscriptions or were prime for an upgrade. This predictive capability allowed customer success teams to intervene proactively, manage their workflow efficiently, and ultimately maximize customer lifetime value. The platform integrated with various business tools like Gmail, Salesforce, Stripe, and Zendesk to provide a comprehensive view of customer health.

In November 2016, the music streaming giant Spotify acquired Preact for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was a strategic move for Spotify to leverage Preact's expertise in analyzing user behavior to grow its premium subscriber base and reduce churn. Following the acquisition, the Preact platform was shut down, and its product and engineering team was integrated into Spotify's offices in New York and San Francisco to apply their technology internally.