Datadog S-1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Datadog S-1

#71

Post by gonational » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

tnolet wrote: post #51

Their product is great. But the people I met there last year during a maybe-but-not-quite acquihire adventure we're also great. I wish them all the best with this IPO. For those interested, I wrote a blog about what it's like for a solo founder to (almost) be picked up by company like Datadog. https://blog.checklyhq.com/my-acquihire-adventure-with-a-lar...

Presumably you would have received options - in hindsight does any percent of you wish it would have happened now that they’re going public?

Re: Datadog S-1

#72

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

welder wrote: post #46

Love their product, hate their shady billing. I'm in the middle of a bad experience with Datadog's billing/sales team. My monthly Custom Metrics usage wasn't being billed for because they said they didn't have a way to track it. Naturally my usage gradually increased because without the monthly bill increasing. When renewing a while back they went over my usage on phone and quoted prices, same usage profile as this m…

[deleted]

Re: Datadog S-1

#73

Post by all_usernames » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 2:19 AM UTC

welder wrote: post #46

Love their product, hate their shady billing. I'm in the middle of a bad experience with Datadog's billing/sales team. My monthly Custom Metrics usage wasn't being billed for because they said they didn't have a way to track it. Naturally my usage gradually increased because without the monthly bill increasing. When renewing a while back they went over my usage on phone and quoted prices, same usage profile as this m…

Even the basic billing concepts are too confusing. You pay for some Host count. You open the billing and usage console, and you see about 6 graphs for Hosts under two tabs. What's an APM Host, an Infra Host, and Agent Host? Which are double-counted, and which are not? Answers can be found, of course, but it could be a lot more clear.

Also, as others have noted, they turn on new features that could incur more cost, but they don't really provide RBAC, so anyone on your (maybe huge) team can start using those features.

Re: Datadog S-1

#74

Post by hugoromano » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 2:24 AM UTC

My service contract expired with them this Friday. Opted not to renew because of price change in synthetics product 100x initial release. The product is reliable, but billing is troubling.

Re: Datadog S-1

#75

Post by trazire » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 2:24 AM UTC

ggregoire wrote: post #13

Just for curiosity, what's the legal process to go from being a French startup to a public US company? I guess there is some paperwork.

It looks like it was founded in New York, but in general the process is just making a new American corporation and transferring the French corporation (or its assets) to the American one, and dissolving the French one. Also, getting work visas for your employees and hoping that the bureaucracies don't affect you/deny you/remove your work visas after being accepted.

Re: Datadog S-1

#76

Post by beager » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 2:43 AM UTC

welder wrote: post #46

Love their product, hate their shady billing. I'm in the middle of a bad experience with Datadog's billing/sales team. My monthly Custom Metrics usage wasn't being billed for because they said they didn't have a way to track it. Naturally my usage gradually increased because without the monthly bill increasing. When renewing a while back they went over my usage on phone and quoted prices, same usage profile as this m…

The fact that a billing issue like this gets escalated to C-level for some determination of account credit is, on its face, absurd. It suggests that billing practices at the company are so off the wall that they have a weeks-long backlog of billing disputes that can only be handled by a C-level, indicating a vacuum where policy and process might exist.

Either that, or they’re jerking you around. Both are pretty bad.

Re: Datadog S-1

#77

Post by indalo » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 2:59 AM UTC

ShakataGaNai wrote: post #59

welder wrote: post #46

Love their product, hate their shady billing. I'm in the middle of a bad experience with Datadog's billing/sales team. My monthly Custom Metrics usage wasn't being billed for because they said they didn't have a way to track it. Naturally my usage gradually increased because without the monthly bill increasing. When renewing a while back they went over my usage on phone and quoted prices, same usage profile as this m…

Same. At several companies I've been at we've used or investigated Datadog. One place accidentally spun up a bunch of EMR nodes on AWS for a single run (less than 1 hour), to which we got charged their going rate ($15/mo?) for every instance - even though they were only up for an hour. DD refused to reverse this, though eventually did help up make sure those nodes got excluded going forward ... gee thanks. $15/hr/nod…

Same boat here. We ended up going with an ELK stack instead. Muchm much, more control and worked fine for us.

Re: Datadog S-1

#78

Post by andrewfong » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 3:15 AM UTC

beager wrote: post #76

welder wrote: post #46

Love their product, hate their shady billing. I'm in the middle of a bad experience with Datadog's billing/sales team. My monthly Custom Metrics usage wasn't being billed for because they said they didn't have a way to track it. Naturally my usage gradually increased because without the monthly bill increasing. When renewing a while back they went over my usage on phone and quoted prices, same usage profile as this m…

The fact that a billing issue like this gets escalated to C-level for some determination of account credit is, on its face, absurd. It suggests that billing practices at the company are so off the wall that they have a weeks-long backlog of billing disputes that can only be handled by a C-level, indicating a vacuum where policy and process might exist. Either that, or they’re jerking you around. Both are pretty bad.

It probably means there are many instances of this particular scenario happening, so they need an exec to make some blanket decision for all of them.

Re: Datadog S-1

#79

Post by nlh » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 3:56 AM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #69

I interviewed with them and it was one of the worst experiences I've had interviewing. Really shabby company.

Can you elaborate on your experience rather than just dropping a hate-bomb? (I’m actually curious). What was so bad about the interview? Why did that make the company shabby?

Re: Datadog S-1

#80

Post by weka » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

mdanis wrote: post #64

welder wrote: post #46

Love their product, hate their shady billing. I'm in the middle of a bad experience with Datadog's billing/sales team. My monthly Custom Metrics usage wasn't being billed for because they said they didn't have a way to track it. Naturally my usage gradually increased because without the monthly bill increasing. When renewing a while back they went over my usage on phone and quoted prices, same usage profile as this m…

I run our customer success group at Datadog and that doesn’t sound right - let me follow up with the team and look into this for you!

You weren't there when multiple customers disputed their claims yet here you are.

Gee, remind me to always dissuade people from using Datadog.