Why Veeva’s IPO is a huge win for enterprise SaaS and health IT

venturebeat.com

32 points·rmorrison··5 comments

It's amazing that they are doing $200m on 170 customers, but, just to raise it - there aren't that many big pharma companies out there. So what does that say about their future growth?

I do a lot of Veeva applications for healthcare. It's pretty interesting and almost all of our clients are really into it right now. I'd say 50 percent of our work is related to Veeva. If anyone has any questions about it I can answer some.

To add to this a bit. One of the main reasons it is doing so well is that their clients (healthcare) are willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money on software. They emphasize that Veeva only has 170 customers, but these customers are people like <insert giant pharma name here>. It's not like their customers are some mom and pop shops.

It is nice to see healthcare trying out new things. Typically they are a few years behind on the curve due to their demographic.

Investor here. This seems like an unusual arrangement for Salesforce, any idea why they didn't try to acquire Veeva a few years ago? Any idea what will happen in 2015 when the deal comes up for renewal? Thanks

If the deal doesn't renew in 2015, then there is a five year wind down period where Veeva can sell a limited number new licenses but still use the platform. Presumably if this happens, they'll have to rebuild it. It's addressed in the S1.

I saw the wind-down language but it lacks specifics. I figure there's a slim chance of non-renewal anyway but sometimes these things get awkward.

Interesting thing about Veeva is that unlike every other saas company on earth, they actually have a healthy operating margin despite being in hyper-growth mode. This will close on the first day of trading with a $4.5 billion enterprise value.

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