One of the important distinctions between Optimizely and most developer-first platforms is that experimentation is a hard practice to pick up. Most companies have difficulties getting their programs off the ground and keeping them funded, let alone grow or scale them. Small digital businesses struggle more for several reasons: 1) they have few resources, so teams are understaffed and resources are pulled easily, 2) they have little money, so the percentage uplifts are rarely motivating, 3) they have little traffic, so it is harder to get a statistically significant measure in their experiments
Because of these issues, Optimizely always had really poor retention in the SMB space. Nonetheless, the SMB customers helped Optimizely build up a brand name, build up legions of practitioners, and get the skills and experience to go after the Enterprise market. When Optimizely started acquiring enterprise customers, retention improved substantially.
This isn't to say that there aren't lots of problems with Enterprise sales and that Optimizely didn't make tons of cultural mistakes in that pivot. But on the core financials, Enterprise kept Optimizely afloat. The problem wasn't the pivot to enterprise, but the trade-offs that were mismanaged along the way. The path to enterprise was inevitable and correct.
