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Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

latimes.com

31–40 of 167 posts

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#31
post #9

I first heard of Domo last year when we were trying to find a better alternative our BI system. And boy, we were in for a ride. The first warning sign was that their pitch was full of cool sounding words. They kept referring to the product as a "cloud based operating system", whatever that meant. When we asked them to demo, their presales consultant struggled to create anything other than a canned demo. Personally, I…

Hmm - that was not my experience. They set up a demo environment and allowed us to upload example data sets so that we could fully play around with it.

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#32
post #22

I take this as one of the two central themes of this article: "...points to a persistent flaw in Silicon Valley financing: the willingness to give start-up founders unassailable control of their companies, to the point that investors have no recourse if things go blooey." That's not a flaw, it's a fundamental part of how it is meant to work. The investors generally don't want to invest in companies run by a committee…

> That's not a flaw, it's a fundamental part of how it is meant to work.

And, as the article demonstrates, it is not without risk. A CEO spending huge amounts of company money on other ventures he owns for no discernable reason is a pretty great example of why this SV model can be hugely problematic.

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#33
post #9

I first heard of Domo last year when we were trying to find a better alternative our BI system. And boy, we were in for a ride. The first warning sign was that their pitch was full of cool sounding words. They kept referring to the product as a "cloud based operating system", whatever that meant. When we asked them to demo, their presales consultant struggled to create anything other than a canned demo. Personally, I…

>cloud based operating system

I see: Domo is a fork of Plan9.

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#34
post #29

> Domo actually is part of the Salt Lake City region’s “Silicon Slope,” one of several regional offshoots of Silicon Valley. Going off on a tangent, this is really dumb. It’s not an “offshoot” of Silicon Valley. It’s a distant, unrelated region that happens to also have a tech industry. Are Austin, Seattle, and Portland also “offshoots” of Silicon Valley? How about New York? Zurich?

Its a lazy way to jump on the SV bandwagon. So Austin is/was known as Silicon Hills or something and there are many other Silicon Something monikers for other places.

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#35
post #22

I take this as one of the two central themes of this article: "...points to a persistent flaw in Silicon Valley financing: the willingness to give start-up founders unassailable control of their companies, to the point that investors have no recourse if things go blooey." That's not a flaw, it's a fundamental part of how it is meant to work. The investors generally don't want to invest in companies run by a committee…

Practically speaking Satya Nadella runs MSFT, not the board of directors. Nadella does not have control of MSFT (he isn't the majority holder of shareholder voting rights), though.

Investors don't want to run the company. But the question is should they be able to fire the person running the company, even if that person is acting against the interests of the rest of the shareholders.

* ps, yes, the BoD can fire a CEO even if the the CEO has majority control of voting rights through various share classes. But the CEO can turn around and fire that board in that case (and the CEO has presumably already used their voting power to install a friendly BoD)

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#36
post #9

I first heard of Domo last year when we were trying to find a better alternative our BI system. And boy, we were in for a ride. The first warning sign was that their pitch was full of cool sounding words. They kept referring to the product as a "cloud based operating system", whatever that meant. When we asked them to demo, their presales consultant struggled to create anything other than a canned demo. Personally, I…

Wow. If websites could smell I'd be in trouble. A revolting mixture of bad stock photos and "here be dragons selling Snake Oil".

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#38
post #9

I first heard of Domo last year when we were trying to find a better alternative our BI system. And boy, we were in for a ride. The first warning sign was that their pitch was full of cool sounding words. They kept referring to the product as a "cloud based operating system", whatever that meant. When we asked them to demo, their presales consultant struggled to create anything other than a canned demo. Personally, I…

> When we asked them to demo, their presales consultant struggled to create anything other than a canned demo. The opposite experience is what sold me on Looker - super competent team and very clear in how “the magic works”. All logic and queries are right there to copy/paste into your own editor to fiddle with if you so choose, or use the built-in SQL runner. At the same time, non-tech users need not worry about suc…

Same here... I just wish Looker had visualizations at least on par with ... Excel. They’ve been promising to remedy that for two years now, and now they are promising a move to HighCharts by end of year... but will they fix all the issues, or just slap on a new coat of paint?

I can only wait and see for so long.

Re: Hype and plunder: Domo a new low for self-indulgent IPOs

#40
post #30

Why isn't something like buying goods and services from a company you (or your brother) own with investor money illegal? Unless I'm missing a reason why that would be ok, that should be criminal? And then I don't understand the link between founder control and unethical behaviour. I've seen plenty of cases of corruption in investor-controlled companies. The article doesn't even attempt to make a concrete connection d…

The implication is that because the founder owns so much of the company, there are very few options left to the investors to correct this behavior. Here the options are to not invest in a new round or bring a lawsuit. At a normal company, the investors could force the founder out as CEO, bring in other execs or force the company to address specific issues.
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