I'm sure it's just in my head, but it feels like the first tech IPO in several years where there actually seems to be a viable business model.
It has carried them this far, but the real money will be when they turn to advertising (which investors will eventually figure out and insist on).
Remember all the crazy marketing data ISPs wanted to collect, then we pushed everyone to move to TLS? Well Cloudflare unwraps TLS for all their clients and is in a position to collect all the same data.
https://medium.com/@alexfclayton/zoom-ipo-s-1-breakdown-1192...
Growing >100% YoY, profitable, generating cashflow, NPS above 70, just an all around solid business.
Unless you're one of their many competitors, like, say, AWS. From the S-1:
"Our current and potential future competitors include a number of different types of companies, including:
• on-premise hardware network vendors, such as Cisco Systems Inc., F5 Networks, Inc., Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., FireEye, Inc., Imperva, Inc., Palo Alto Networks, Inc., Juniper Networks, Inc., and Riverbed Technology, Inc.;
• point-cloud solution vendors, including cloud security vendors such as Zscaler, Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. through Umbrella (formerly known as OpenDNS), content delivery network vendors such as Akamai Technologies, Inc., Limelight Networks, Inc., Fastly, Inc., and Verizon Communications Inc. through Edgecast, domain name system vendors services such as Oracle Corporation through DYN, NeuStar, Inc., and UltraDNS Corporation, and cloud SD-WAN vendors; and
• traditional public cloud vendors, such as Amazon.com, Inc. through Amazon Web Services, Alphabet Inc. through Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Corporation through Azure, and Alibaba Group Holding Limited through Alibaba Cloud. "
Wow, they grammar goofed "on-premise" 33 times on their filing. (should be on-premises)
Edit: And Now I am getting downvoted for asking a question.
"premise" is a thought or idea. "premises" is a location, like your servers can be "on-premises". Completely different meanings.
I hear lots of people these days mistakenly saying "on-premise" during hybrid-cloud conversations and in documentation when they really mean "on-premises". (And yes, looks like I've been down-voted for my first hacker news comment too.)
But, every competitor that I’ve tried to use is a train wreck. Zoom just works. All the time, every time.
* You won't get allocated any shares
* Trading will start at a ridiculously high valuation, maybe 10x sales or more
> I'm sure it's just in my head, but it feels like the first tech IPO in several years where there actually seems to be a viable business model.
The companies listed above have what appear to be viable business models. I didn't intend to comment on technical merits, but I think you may be underestimating the technical depth of what some of these companies are doing.