All These Enterprise IPOs: Why It’s Just Getting Good. Why These are The Best of Times for SaaS.
Reading the tech press you might get the sense that The Enterprise is something they are sort of forced to write about because it’s having a good run. We had a great Consumer run, a nice set of Multi-Billion Dollar deals around Social Networking, a WhatsApp/Snapchat fad around mobile messaging, an Alibaba, Instacart, Fab-ulous e-commerce […]
It Ain’t Easy Making Money in Open Source: Thoughts on the Hortonworks S-1
It took me a week or so to get to it, but in this post, I’ll take a dive into the Hortonworks S-1 filing in support of a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of their stock. While Hadoop and big data are unarguably huge trends driving the industry and while the future of Hadoop looks very bright indeed, […]
HubSpot IPO’s, Culture Code Gets a Bigger Audience
Kudos to all HubSpotters for their IPO. If there was ever a company to root for this is it, not because they’re from Boston and their IPO shows a certain resilience in the place where the tech sector got started and not because I’m a hometown boy or because I have an investment. Buy high, sell […]
The Box S-1, Delayed IPO, and the Genius of Tien Tzuo
While I did my own post on the Box S-1, I also noticed that fellow CEO blogger, Tien Tzuo of Zuora, had done a post of his own with the catchy title These Numbers Show That Box CEO Aaron Levie is a Genius. I saw the post, clipped it to Evernote, and I decided to read […]
A Look at the Zendesk S-1 (IPO)
I thought I’d take a quick read of the Zendesk S-1 today, so here are my real-time notes on so doing. Before diving in, let me provide a quick pointer to David Cummings’ summary of the same. My notes: 40,000 customers in 140 countries 2012 revenues of $38.2M 2013 revenues of $72.0M, 88% growth 41% […]
SaaStr on NBC’s Press:Here on Box, DropBox, WhatsApp — And the Lack of Fear
NBC was kind enough to have us back on Press:Here (right after Meet-the-Press) to discuss DropBox’s almost-$1-billion in debt and equity raised this year, Box’s IPO, and beyond that, just what’s Going On in the Enterprise these days. My overall answer: there’s current a Lack of Fear, notwithstanding the (relatively modest) market correction in ’14. […]
Burn Baby Burn: A Look at the Box S-1
I’m pretty busy this week so I was hoping not to dive into the Box S-1, but David Cummings’ excellent summary served only to whet, as opposed to satiate, my appetite. Perhaps it was the $168M FY14 operating loss. Maybe it was the $380M in financing raised during the last three years. Or the average quarterly burn rate […]
The Simple Reason Why There Will be 10-20 Great CRM IPOs in the Next Few Years
I wrote a while back about Room at The Bottom, and how once a space gets big enough (~$100m) or so … the biggest guys end up abandoning many of the smallest customers and segments in their space. Which once a space is at, say $100m in market size, can open up a $10m hole […]
Twitter: Congrats, thank you and WTF?
Twitter’s well-planned and highly successful IPO puts them in a great position. But there is a glaring lack that can ultimately jeopardize that position if they don’t fix it. That would be…read on.
Some Thoughts on Rocket Fuel, Their Voice, and Their Recent S-1
Silicon Valley is a place built by nerds, arguably for nerds, but once big money gets involved there is always tension between the business people and the technical people about control. Think, for example, of the famous Jobs/Sculley falling-out back in 1985 where the business guy beat the technical guy. However, in part because of events […]
