*By Chloe Aiello* Data collection and analysis is an increasingly crowded field, but SurveyMonkey CEO Zander Lurie told Cheddar he isn't too concerned about industry upstarts ー especially not when he has General Data Protection Regulation compliance on his side. "We know security is top of mind for a lot of folks, especially here in Europe, and so \[General Data Protection Regulation\] GDPR compliance in May was super important for our business. We think it helps differentiate us from some of the upstarts," Lurie told Cheddar from Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. GDPR, which went into effect in May 2018, is a data privacy regulation in the European Union that aims to give control of personal data back to internet users. The regulation, which applies not only to companies located within the EU, but also to those that wish to operate in the EU, has sparked complaints from tech companies big and small who claim it is prohibitively expensive to enforce and encourages monopoly in technology, among other things. But to Lurie, GDPR compliance was a no-brainer, especially for a company like SurveyMonkey ($SVMK) that deals in sensitive data. "Over 20 million questions a day are answered on our platform. If you're in health care, there's HIPAA compliance, credit card transactions ー really sensitive data, so people want to make sure their data is secure. And companies, like ours, have got to be out on the forefront," Lurie said. Founded in 1999, SurveyMonkey is a subscription software as a service company that offers customizable surveys and a suite of back-end data analytics tools for individuals and enterprises. SurveyMonkey now boasts about 16 million unique users and 600,000 paid users on its platform, according to Lurie. SurveyMonkey may have one of the most recognizable names in the industry, but it faces some stiff competition. SurveyMonkey stock plunged as much as 15 percent after rival Qualtrics filed for an IPO, just weeks after SurveyMonkey's own public debut. Qualtrics also revealed financials that showed strong growth and a powerful business model. But Lurie shrugged off the threat, arguing the market is big enough for the both of them. "We feel like this is a massive category. I think if you start with the premise that this is a category worth tens of billions of dollars globally, it can support multiple companies with multi-billion dollar market caps," Lurie said. And it doesn't hurt that SurveyMonkey is a household name. "We created the category, we have the highest unaided brand awareness," he said. SurveyMonkey is set to report quarterly earnings and revenue Tuesday, Nov. 13, in its first financial report report since going public at the end of September. For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/surveymonkey-ceo-zander-lurie-weighs-in-on-competitor-qualtricss-ipo-announcement).
