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

latimes.com

101–110 of 167 posts

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

#101
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other reasons Like door to door summer sales, and the massive bro culture associated with that. That gripe aside, there are a lot of lifestyle companies. And it's great. They aren't chasing silicon valley, they are just some small business owners trying to make a good living and provide employment for people in the region.

> Like door to door summer sales, and the massive bro culture associated with that. But just sign up, you'll make $50000 in 3 months! /s

I feel explaining this for everyone not in the know is appropriate.

Mormon missionaries are usually young men ages 18-20 who go out into various places around the world for two years. They learn a lot, generally work really hard, and when they return they usually go off to school.

Someone figured out that 2 years knocking on doors to talk about God isn't that different from knocking on doors to talk about . Various companies selling pest control, home security systems, etc. have set up summer sales programs. You sign up, get sent to a random city for the summer and sell the crap out of whatever it is you are selling. Top sellers will clear $50k for the summer. Even moderately successful sellers will make $10k or so.

After a summer of sales, many of the companies will allow their top sellers to get recruitment bonuses. So they spend the school year holding information meetings with free pizza to try and recruit for the next summer.

This leads to a huge bro culture. The top sellers flaunt their success by driving BMWs to school, wearing high end designer watches and stuff. Some of the bigger sales companies even have lounges close to school where sales people can hang out and study. It ends up being very clear who is into summer sales, and most students shake their heads and try to just ignore it all.

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

#102
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.

It takes more than not being an MLM to be a legitimate company. Many you named overspend, spread massive hype, and acquired funding with a story that doesn't match their product and its quality. All traits they share with Domo. As a Utah native I hope we can all start thinking a bit more critically about the companies we work for. Domo's collapse will be felt.

> Many you named overspend, spread massive hype, and acquired funding with a story that doesn't match their product and its quality.

Sounds a lot like SV to me?

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

#103
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.

That's not what's being discussed at all. There is no question of ownership, but of voting rights. e.g., Brin and Page own something like 14% of Google stock combined, but control >50% of the votes.

That's the exact setup that Domo is attempting, giving its CEO >90% of votes by virtue of getting 40 votes per share.

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

#104

I find it weird that the article doesn't actually say what Domo does.

Domo is an analytics company: "The pitch for Domo was that it would fill in some of the gaps in enterprise data analysis that Omniture had left open, providing access to real-time marketing information that would help CEOs run their companies more efficiently."

Oh god. Omniture is one of the worst software I've had the misfortune of being forced to implement.

I'm not surprised the same founder is running into issues here.

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

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes more than not being an MLM to be a legitimate company. Many you named overspend, spread massive hype, and acquired funding with a story that doesn't match their product and its quality. All traits they share with Domo. As a Utah native I hope we can all start thinking a bit more critically about the companies we work for. Domo's collapse will be felt.

> Many you named overspend, spread massive hype, and acquired funding with a story that doesn't match their product and its quality. Sounds a lot like SV to me?

The history is important. Silicon Valley has a history of creating undeniably valuable innovations and legitimate companies dating back 60+ years: HP, Shockley, SRI, Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Apple, etc. This is the backdrop for Silicon Valley.

In contrast, Utah Valley has a history of MLMs. This is the backdrop for Silicon Slopes.

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

#106
post #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.

I wonder which state will be Silicon Commode ...

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

#107

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.

At least? Excel has excellent, top-level visualizations. They might not look sexy, but for everyone who works in the area of data visualization it's obvious how much effort and thought have been put into designing Excel charts. Getting data visualization right is far far less trivial than it might seem.

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

#109
post #97
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few alternative links in the comments here that are GDPR friendly

Oh yes, and I've used those. It just seems ridiculous that an organisation as big as the LA Times can't manage a develop a solution on time. It doesn't provide a great deal of faith in the quality of their technology department.

Or maybe it shows that the LA Times still tries to be, ya know, a paper for people in LA so they are happy to wait for a one click GDPR solution from upstream or whatever, and prioritize the technology investment for something else.

It bit me too but it's their fundamental right.

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

#110
post #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.

Well, at least they copied the meaningful part of "Silicon Valley". In Korea we have Pangyo Valley and Teheran Valley. (And no, they aren't valleys.)
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