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Fastly S-1

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Re: Fastly S-1

#21

Post by formercoder »

mxstbr wrote: post #4

> We generated a net loss of $30.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $146.2 million. Wow, I did not think an "enterprise-y" company like Fastly could be burning that much cash on growth!

It’s important to note that this is on an earnings basis. Looking at their cash flows presents a slightly better view of operations, with an outflow of 16M, though some would argue their stock based comp of 4M should be included. But it also shows a huge capex expense of almost 20M. This is clearly not just a software business and must be considered like a business that requires real PP&E.

Re: Fastly S-1

#22

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

lathiat wrote: post #7
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #3

I haven't looked at any other details, but Googling Fastly says this: "Fastly, Inc. is an American cloud computing services provider. Fastly's edge cloud platform provides a content delivery network, Internet security services, load balancing, and video & streaming services" Just judging by that statement, I feel they're going to be eaten by AWS, GCP, and maybe Azure. However, it seems their focus may be on creating…

They are more like Cloudflare or Akamai

I think I would invest in Cloudflare before this, but that'd be based on name recognition.

Re: Fastly S-1

#23

Post by tyingq »

The whole "edge compute" space seems poised to do well to me. Cloudflare's edge KV store and edge server-side JavaScript are obvious, but great ideas.

The wildcard seems to be the companies that own cell towers. If they build a credible edge offering, that's a moat that is hard to beat.

Re: Fastly S-1

#25

Post by whttheuuu »

pault wrote: post #19
mxstbr wrote: post #4

> We generated a net loss of $30.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $146.2 million. Wow, I did not think an "enterprise-y" company like Fastly could be burning that much cash on growth!

It says something about the industry when "only" a $30.9M annual burn rate sounds small.

It is quite small though compared to potential profits.

Re: Fastly S-1

#27

Post by ArtWomb »

mxstbr wrote: post #4

> We generated a net loss of $30.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $146.2 million. Wow, I did not think an "enterprise-y" company like Fastly could be burning that much cash on growth!

It's also interesting that the $30M figure is approx their R&D spend! Underscores the importance of offsetting those startup costs with policies that promote public-private partnerships and other subsidies for innovation ;)

Re: Fastly S-1

#28

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ArtWomb wrote: post #27
mxstbr wrote: post #4

> We generated a net loss of $30.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $146.2 million. Wow, I did not think an "enterprise-y" company like Fastly could be burning that much cash on growth!

It's also interesting that the $30M figure is approx their R&D spend! Underscores the importance of offsetting those startup costs with policies that promote public-private partnerships and other subsidies for innovation ;)

Why? Fastly will make a couple people very rich, and they seem to be doing fine without subsidies. Why should public funds go toward concentrating wealth even further?

Re: Fastly S-1

#29

Post by reza_n »

tyingq wrote: post #23

The whole "edge compute" space seems poised to do well to me. Cloudflare's edge KV store and edge server-side JavaScript are obvious, but great ideas. The wildcard seems to be the companies that own cell towers. If they build a credible edge offering, that's a moat that is hard to beat.

Edge facilities are warehouses in regional locations with excellent backbone connectivity, basically your modern datacenter. Cellphone towers can probably host a few racks, that's not a profitable business and its not "internet scale". If the regional datacenter has a 15ms ping to each tower in the region, then you have pretty good coverage.

Re: Fastly S-1

#30

Post by tambre »

tyingq wrote: post #18
speeq wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Firebase Hosting (by Google) and the IP address resolves to Fastly, at least in the EU.

That's pretty odd. Why would Google use a 3rd party to front their own service?

They acquired Firebase. On Firebase Hosting for apex domains one needs to add Fastly's Anycast IPs. Switching CDNs would be a nightmare.

One related gripe I have with Firebase Hosting is that it refuses to renew certificates if you also add IPv6 addresses.

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