Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 167 posts

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

#41

Post by tntn »

dpark wrote: 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?

Right on. "Silicon Slopes" is surprisingly effective attempt by Utah County people to get investors to dump money there.

Quick summary of the companies in "Silicon Slopes": Qualtrics (surveys), Domo (vapor), Adobe, Micron (fab only, but claim to "silicon" in the name), Nu Skin (MLM cosmetics/diet supplements) , doterra (essential oil MLM), NatureSunshine (MLM).

Great place to be. Lots of innovation in MLMs.

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

#42

Post by tntn »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #36
thisisit wrote: 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".

Most of the profitable other companies in the region almost literally sell snake oil.

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

#43

Post by yesimahuman »

dpark wrote: 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?

Amazon has been lumped into Silicon Valley in the media for so long the term is almost becoming a catch-all term for a group of large tech co's

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

#44

Post by mkirklions »

dpark wrote: post #25
jmull wrote: 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. Is it? Up until recently this was not the typical result. Google did this and others have followed, but it’s not how it was done before then.

Typically the founder of a company owns the company.

So unless you want to buy the founder out, the founder still has ownership.

Sure the moment it goes public, you need to ask the question 'who leads?', but you will have to buy out the owenership.

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

#45

Post by 58x14 »

I share the name of the CEO (it’s quite common) and I own the domain hack joshjam.es. A few years back I drove out to Salt Lake City to see if he would have any interest in purchasing it... now that I know the company is throwing money away, I’m tempted to retry!

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

#46

Post by tardo99 »

reaperducer wrote: post #26
randyzwitch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a BI dashboard company with lots of data integration connectors. They've been burning money with ads declaring 'spreadsheets are dead' and silly Domopalooza[1] lifestyle events [1] https://www.domo.com/news/press/domopalooza-2016-to-feature-... [2] https://www.domo.com/news/press/kesha-joins-the-domopalooza-... [3] https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/02/15/1349133/0/...

>silly Domopalooza[1] lifestyle events Reminds me of a particular west coast startup I was associated with that took its final round of funding and blew most of it on a massive out-of-town party. Flew in all of the A-list bankers and tech types it could find. The idea was to make the (failing) app look like a huge deal in the eyes of investors and get bought, thus fulfilling its exit strategy. It worked.

Is the identity of this startup a secret? Maybe someone with a throwaway account could post it? Super curious here...

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

#48

Post by retr0grad3 »

pm90 wrote: post #34
dpark wrote: 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.

Silicon Hills actually refers to the boom in chip manufacturing in ATX in the 80s and 90s. After the dot-can boom and bust it now has the “like Silicon Valley but ‘weirder’” connotation.

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

#49

Post by NorthOf33rd »

I'd love to see the LA Times go back and revisit the Utah Valley region and the culture that helped contribute to this. The Utah Valley is chock full of startups with a serious inferiority complex to their big brothers in Silicon Valley, hence derivative name. More importantly, Utah is the “multi-level marketing capital of the world [1]” This kind of sales and growth tactic is not limited to the diet smoothie and cosmetics world, but is absolutely pervasive in the valley. Note- SLC and the Utah Valley may be united in the Silicon Slopes moniker, but they are about as similar as Austin and Waco, TX.

A few observations on Domo

1) The product is weak. It’s pretty dashboards with very limited “real” BI capabilities. The connectors are custom, not OOB/end user configurable – unless end user happens to be IT.

2) They seem to be aware that the product is weak, as their demos include an NDA. Until recently there was almost no “real” information available on what exactly Domo is or does. Only void marketing speak.

3) Their absurd domopalooza (or DP for short, no joke) events included artists like Kesha and Macklemore.

4) Their totally overblown marketing hype surrounds an incoherent me-too product roadmap. Rather than focusing on building a quality product they are going for checkboxes and chasing after Slack etc with features like Chat

5) They have a billboard that reads “If Hillary Had DOMO She would have won.”

I've been predicting for a while that DOMO’s hubris would cause it to be one of the first in the scene to fail spectacularly. What worries me about that prediction is the economic harm that would do to the rest of the Valley especially given the impact of MLM economics.

1- http://kutv.com/news/local/follow-the-profit-how-mormon-cult...

Post reply on HN