101–110 of 113 posts
So often we see these "success" stories and we don't hear exactly how the "regular joes" made out. And it can color our perception of the startup gamble, without real evidence.
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So what are they using, the notebooks?
But in the notebooks you run pyspark / scala spark / spark sql code?
It's really depressing, tbh but I've made my peace with it now.
This is likely mostly stock deal, backed by databricks equity that, like most other private companies, is illiquid and has taken a nose dive in value in the last couple of years.
I don’t know the exact split, but I’d imagine it is 300m cash, 1B in databricks stock at some last round private valuation that’s likely untested
Databricks last raises at 38B valuation at 1B ARR near peak valuation hype in August 2021.
Assuming they can get 10x and their ARR has doubled since then, they’re down maybe 50 percent in valuation.
Internally they say they are marking themselves down to about 34B.
Is the deal using databricks shares valued at 38B? 34B? 20B? Who knows. I hope it’s the latter.
And I hope that whenever Mosaic folks get to sell their databricks stocks that it is worth more than that
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But in the notebooks you run pyspark / scala spark / spark sql code?
Yes, but for most of these companies they don't actually run (much or any) spark stuff, they just use the notebooks. It's really depressing, tbh but I've made my peace with it now.
Rough math plugging in public #s and comments here:
- All stock deal at Aug 2021 val of 38B (1B ARR)
- Assume rev doubled to 2B (which may even be aggressive)
- SAAS multiples are down 6x since Aug 2021
- 38B x 2 / 6 = $12.7B
- 12.7B / 38B * 1.3B = 434M = effective price
- Assume 100M to pref stock
--> Comes out to 334M, with a chunk of that (1/3? 1/4?) potentially subject to earn out
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Their moat was to be able to spin up spark clusters for you. This was very useful when companies just starting in that space and don’t have the skills. But with K8s and clusters becoming more common for normal workload, it’s not hard to manage your own spark clusters anymore. There goes their moat. Their other offerings just aren’t that amazing. People now don’t just want to buy hand tools anymore, they want power to…
Their moat is their phenomenal sales team. Like, I'm at company 3 that pays for databricks. Amount of those companies that use Spark = 0. I've given up complaining now.
Actually seems Databricks got a great deal for Mosaic. Real qustion is why Mosaic took it v. hold out or do another round Rough math plugging in public #s and comments here: - All stock deal at Aug 2021 val of 38B (1B ARR) - Assume rev doubled to 2B (which may even be aggressive) - SAAS multiples are down 6x since Aug 2021 - 38B x 2 / 6 = $12.7B - 12.7B / 38B * 1.3B = 434M = effective price - Assume 100M to pref stoc…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but for most of these companies they don't actually run (much or any) spark stuff, they just use the notebooks. It's really depressing, tbh but I've made my peace with it now.
I can’t blame them really. Regular pandas-in-notebook can deal with quite a bit of data and is reasonably convenient. Even if the org and datasets are large, it’s rare to have huge single tables. Then you can go full spark when you have to .