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

latimes.com

71–80 of 167 posts

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

#71
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, founders always have ownership, but it is not always the case for the founders to own more than 50% of the company after a few financing rounds. Startups that do super well can pull this off, but I think it is safe to assume most normal startups do have super majority voting schemes that give founders total control of the company.

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

#72

"Domo also has spent $600,000 for catering services from Cubby's Chicago Beef, which describes itself as 'a cute little sandwich and salad restaurant.' It’s owned by Josh James and his brother Cubby. ('The menu does look delicious, but there must be caterers in American Fork, Utah, that aren’t owned by the boss,' remarked Shira Ovide of Bloomberg). Domo also has bought $200,000 in furnishings from Alice Lane Home Col…

For real though Cubby's is so good. If I worked there, I wouldn't be upset about the relationship because it's a very popular restaurant.

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

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Haven’t ran into much as our needs are fairly basic right now.

Biggest gripe for me is the lack of comparison period within the tiles that display numbers. For example you have 1k users doing X. Is that good or bad?

Data in context is much more usable - if X is leaving and it’s a 50% drop from last week, that’s great news!

Conversely, if X is feature use, you have 100m users and the change is 2% from last year, maybe it’s not so good.

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

#74

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 cos…

I work in Utah Valley at a tech startup in the space.

While I agree that there are some startups with 'inferiority complex' etc, there is a growing number who are happy and proud to be a Utah startup and what that entails, not just chasing Silicon Valley.

The instant connection to MLMs is unfortunate and something we are trying to move past. I would argue Utah has a very strong sales culture not solely because of MLMs but for other reasons.

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

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even look at those numbers? One might safely assume that parent did just that, given the detail of what they posted. How do people pulling down six figures a year (in somewhere other than SV) not have any money at the end of the month? One $4 latte and NewEgg impulse buy at a time. I get the impression that you're looking for the big ticket item(s). Maybe there isn't one. Maybe it's just one $1.8MM jet rental…

Man, if people really are going to be this blasé about it, I guess it really is a routine occurrence.

I don't know if I'd say I'm blasé about it, but incredulous I'm not. Now, this is one of the more egregious examples, probably why it's in the LA Times. And $800 MM is a number that would take some effort to blow on stupid shit. So if one were to ask, "how on earth did they manage to spend...", as you did, I might not be able to give you an exact accounting, but I can make some educated guesses along with being not at all shocked by their spending.

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

#77

>putative Never heard that word before. Other than that, the isn't really anything new in this article. Successful startups are rare. It's rare that they even survive going public.

It's the almost forgotten cousin to the much overused "alleged".

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

#78
post #67
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate MLMs as much as the next guy, but "Silicon Slopes" does have some legitimate tech companies as well: Podium, Canopy Tax, MX, InsideSales, Pluralsight, Lucid, HireVue, Entrata, Workfront, Ancestry, Jolt, Teem to name a few.

I know. I also listed some (Qualtrics, Adobe). However, I have no way of telling if some of the companies on your list are any more legitimate than Domo, which has for years been heralded as a legitimate tech company in the area. To clarify (since not all of the companies you listed are in Utah Valley), my criticism was directed specifically at Utah County, not the whole state (i.e. not Salt Lake City or Davis county…

I don't know why people never mention https://instructure.com for Utah startups but I work for them and they seem great!

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Great place to be. Lots of innovation in MLMs. Religion and MLM companies seem to be strongly correlated.

Built-in social network. Most church-goers automatically have access to a couple hundred people in the neighborhood. I live in Utah and I hate MLMs so much.

Also it pre-selects for people who don't say, "But this story makes no sense whatsoever" after your pitch.

419 scammers use deliberately poor grammar and other choices to weed out the people who will figure out it's a scam before they hand over any money, same for an MLM. You want the people who'll lie and cheat and pump every dime they have into your MLM, not the ones who attend a seminar, make interested noises then walk away after losing less that $100.

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

#80
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Shouldn't the law prevent the CEO from doing just that? I mean, the board is presumably the only check on the CEO's power, so even if the CEO is the majority shareholder, they shouldn't be able to control the board.

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