Snowflake Computing, a Cloud computing startup filed for an IPO on Monday as the company prepares to go public revealing its financial data for the first time.
As per San Mateo, Calif.-based company, in the first half of 2020, it more than doubled revenue to $242 million. Down from $177 million in 2019, with a net loss of $171.3 million. Snowflake’s data warehouse is built for analytical applications which is a specialized type of cloud database. Including Brex, ConAgra Foods, Domino’s, JetBlue, and Nationwide, the company has more than 3,100 customers.
It is one of the most valuable private tech startups in the world and has more than 20 offices worldwide, including a Seattle hub. Snowflake company was founded in 2012. Snowflake partnering with giants such as Amazon and Microsoft but also competing against them. Snowflake listed Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure in its IPO filing under potential risk factors to the business.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform are all three competitors that offer their own data warehousing service. One or more of these public cloud providers could use the respective control of their public clouds which is a risk. Competing products and bundle competing products are embedded with innovations or privileged interoperating capabilities. It provides the company unfavorable pricing and leverages its public cloud customer relationships.
The company and its customers will be treated differently concerning terms and conditions or regulatory requirements and also exclude them from opportunities than it would treat its similarly situated customers. Existing and emerging providers of competing technology can be acquired or made partner by the public cloud providers as they have the resources. The adoption of those competing technologies is thereby accelerated.
Bob Muglia is a long time Microsoft executive who previously led Snowflake as CEO for five years. But Bob Muglia stepped down in May 2019. The company is now lead by Frank Slootman, who ran ServiceNow as chairman and CEO from 2011 to 2017. According to the IPO filing, Slootman owns 5.9% of the company while Muglia owns 3.3%. Sutter Hill Ventures is the largest shareholder with a 20.3% stake. Dragoneer Investment Group led a $479 million Series G round in February in which Salesforce Ventures participated for the first time.
Dragoneer Investment Group is a backer of Airbnb, Slack, Spotify, Uber, and other giants. Snowflake was valued in that round at $12.4 billion. Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group is not listed in IPO documents which are another investor. It is because the firm owns less than 5% of the company. Altimeter; Redpoint Ventures; ICONIQ Capital; and Sequoia includes other backers.
