Billion Dollar Unicorns: How Does Domo’s Valuation Compare with Tableau’s?

According to a report published last year, the global BI Market is expected to grow 11% annually over the next few years to $29.5 billion by 2022 from $15.64 billion in 2016. One of the leading players in cloud-based BI solutions is Utah-based Billion Dollar Unicorn Domo.

Domo’s Financials

Domo was founded in 2010 by Omniture co-founder Josh James as a solution that could access relevant business data from multiple sources to publish visualized, interactive dashboards. Domo is able to collect data from sources ranging from Salesforce.com, Google Analytics, Box, LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Instagram to publish these visually impressive dashboards.

It operates on a subscription-based model. Its basic model is available for free for a year and allows access to 5 users to analyze up to 5 million rows of data. After a year, the users have to choose from its menu of three pricing tiers ranging from $83 per user per month to $190 per user per month. The highest tier subscription comes with features such as the ability to analyze up to 2 billion rows of data, advanced governance and security, HIPAA Compliance capability, consulting from certified partners, and premium support.

Domo does not disclose its financial performance at all. It had last reported 2015 bookings of $100 million with revenues doubling each year. Last year, it was recognized among the 500 fastest growing firms in North America on Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 list. It was ranked 71st on the list, by displaying a nearly 2,250% growth rate in revenues over the 2013 to 2016 period.

It has been venture funded so far and has raised $690 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark, Ben Horowitz, Bezos Expeditions, BlackRock, BYU Cougar Capital, Capital Group, Credit Suisse, Dan Rose, David Lee, Dragoneer Investment Group, Fidelity Investments, Founders Fund, Frank Wilder, GGV Capital, Glynn Capital Management, Greylock Partners, Hiroshi Mikitani, HWVP, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, IVP, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Kearl, John Pestana, Lars Dalgaard, Marc Benioff, Mark Gorenberg, Mercato Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Morgan Stanley, Paul Sagan, Pelion Venture Partners, Ronald Conway, Salesforce Ventures, SharesPost Investment Management, SV Angel, TPG Growth, Transmedia Capital, T. Rowe Price, Viking Venture Management, WPP, and Zetta Venture Partners. Its last round of funding was held in April 2017 when it raised $100 million at a valuation of $2.3 billion.

Domo’s Cloud Expansion

Domo prides itself on being a cloud-based service, and it continues to enhance its cloud features. It recently announced the launch of Domo BYOK, the first Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) enterprise software solution for cloud analytics and business intelligence. Domo BYOK allows organizations of all sizes to get the benefit of tighter enterprise security within the cloud space. It builds on Domo’s existing security, compliance and privacy protocols and is geared toward meeting the security needs of customers, especially those in tightly regulated industries like financial services, health care, and government. Some of the key features of the service include key management capabilities that allow the creation of keys based on a per time model, the presence of a Kill Switch in the customer’s interface; and a detailed event log that automatically records all activity within a customer’s instance.

Last quarter, Domo also achieved the Amazon Web Services Big Data Competency status. The recognition will allow Domo to be a Big Data Competency Partner within the AWS partner network. The program recognizes organizations who have demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success in specialized segments.

Last year, when Domo raised its funding, it put its plans to go public on hold. Domo has maintained that it would like to remain privately held for as long as it can. Recent reports doesn’t suggest that Domo is budging from that stance.

But it would be interesting to get some more insight into Domo’s financials to analyze whether its valuation is warranted. Its competitor Tableau is trading at a valuation of $5.9 billion with revenue run rates just shy of $215 million a quarter. For 2018, analysts estimate that Tableau will generate revenues of $945 million. That translates to a revenue multiplier of 6.2. If we extrapolate from its 2015 revenue number, we could estimate Domo’s 2017 revenue at $400 million. Applying the Tableau revenue multiple, that would peg Domo’s valuation at $2.5 billion.

More investigation and analysis of Unicorn companies can be found in my latest Entrepreneur Journeys book, Billion Dollar Unicorns.

This segment is a part in the series : Billion Dollar Unicorns