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

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

#121

Post by mythrwy »

shemnon42 wrote: post #117
tialaramex wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

> Also it pre-selects for people who don't say, "But this story makes no sense whatsoever" after your pitch. Thanks for exposing your biases, but you are wrong. It's more of a quid-pro-quo exchange on some of these MLMs or trying to be supportive of someone else's venture in your community. Nearly all know it is overpriced and not necessarily what they need, but it is the rapid exchange of social capital that keeps t…

It should go back to casseroles and tools than.

Because what you are supporting is not your neighbors venture but the those who conned your neighbor venture.

I'm really surprised there isn't strongly worded statements from Mormon Leadership on this but instead there is a big Nu Skin sign on BYU cougar stadium (or was when I was last in Utah). That isn't good.

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

#122

Post by drb91 »

jmull wrote: post #22

I take this as one of the two central themes of this article: "...points to a persistent flaw in Silicon Valley financing: the willingness to give start-up founders unassailable control of their companies, to the point that investors have no recourse if things go blooey." That's not a flaw, it's a fundamental part of how it is meant to work. The investors generally don't want to invest in companies run by a committee…

> That's not a flaw, it's a fundamental part of how it is meant to work.

Just because it's intended doesn't mean it works.

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

#123

Post by stordoff »

pm90 wrote: post #34
dpark wrote: 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 sometimes hear Cambridge referred to as Silicon Fen, and always thought it was dumb (there should be enough strength in the Cambridge name on its own).

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

#124

Post by shemnon42 »

mythrwy wrote: post #121
shemnon42 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also it pre-selects for people who don't say, "But this story makes no sense whatsoever" after your pitch. Thanks for exposing your biases, but you are wrong. It's more of a quid-pro-quo exchange on some of these MLMs or trying to be supportive of someone else's venture in your community. Nearly all know it is overpriced and not necessarily what they need, but it is the rapid exchange of social capital that keeps t…

It should go back to casseroles and tools than. Because what you are supporting is not your neighbors venture but the those who conned your neighbor venture. I'm really surprised there isn't strongly worded statements from Mormon Leadership on this but instead there is a big Nu Skin sign on BYU cougar stadium (or was when I was last in Utah). That isn't good.

Buying items via MLM is no more immoral than buying a used car through a dealer. It's the abuses of that method that are well known, much like the sleezyness of the prototypical used car salesman. But there are actual good MLM salespeople as well as used car salesmen. The method itself is not immoral (It's not gambling) just some of the practitioners.

That being said every single printed congregational directory I've seen has a statement "For Church Use Only - Do not copy without permission from your local church leaders. Not to be Used for Any Commercial, Business, or Political Purpose" - So there is a strongly worded statement about using church resources for your business.

Or perhaps you were looking for this - https://www.mormonnewsroom.org/additional-resource/personal-...

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

#125

Post by mythrwy »

shemnon42 wrote: post #124
mythrwy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should go back to casseroles and tools than. Because what you are supporting is not your neighbors venture but the those who conned your neighbor venture. I'm really surprised there isn't strongly worded statements from Mormon Leadership on this but instead there is a big Nu Skin sign on BYU cougar stadium (or was when I was last in Utah). That isn't good.

Buying items via MLM is no more immoral than buying a used car through a dealer. It's the abuses of that method that are well known, much like the sleezyness of the prototypical used car salesman. But there are actual good MLM salespeople as well as used car salesmen. The method itself is not immoral (It's not gambling) just some of the practitioners. That being said every single printed congregational directory I've…

I think the method (MLM as opposed to a person who is just selling something) is immoral in the same vein that gambling is.

Because it's a consuming and addictive negative expectations game that (generally) takes a persons money and effort without growing the social pie so to speak.

It feeds on persons natural desire to better themselves, to make it in life but this effort is subverted into the pockets of hucksters and scammers rather than actually producing good for the world. In this sense it's like pornography as it subverts a natural tendency into nonproductive or counterproductive outlets.

People become wrapped up in these schemes, they ruin relationships, families and lives. I find this very immoral.

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

#126

Post by asah »

IMHO the comments here and seekingalpha are unnecessarily critical and frankly, kind of lame.

1. I tried Domo a year ago: it's actually quite nice and easy to setup, much easier than Tableau was. A couple of friends tried to deploy Domo at scale: it's no easier than other enterprise BI i.e. a pain. The devil's in the (enterprise) details, and it's fair to say that none of us here on HN really know.

2. web BI is severely crowded, so it's natural for a company like Domo to burn huge amounts of cash to earn marketshare, just like Lyft, GoDaddy, Monster.com and others did. It's risky, but enterprise BI is risky.

3. buying services from insiders is a common practice and isn't a red flag on its own, if the expenses are reasonably justified and the prices paid are reasonable (i.e. at a discount). There can be big savings in transaction costs (e.g. salesrep commissions) and potential tax savings (and yes, there's completely legal versions).

4. lavish expenses? really? Y'all need to see what startups pay in San Francisco for rent, let alone salaries. Good on Domo for spending on their Utah staff! See other comments in this thread about private jets: for business travel, it can be a nominal expense and staff LOVE IT. I owned a company in the corporate food space that catered to the top tech companies and VCs: $300K is not large.

5. anti-Utah? SV-bias? really? I wish I'd owned IPO stock in Dell, Qualcomm, Microsoft and Amazon.

disclosure: I don't own stock in Domo, don't plan to own stock in Domo and know anyone at Domo. Ditto for other companies in the BI space.

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

#127

Post by bartread »

stordoff wrote: post #123
pm90 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sometimes hear Cambridge referred to as Silicon Fen, and always thought it was dumb (there should be enough strength in the Cambridge name on its own).

I agree, and particularly so since Cambridge itself isn't even in The Fens.

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

#128

Post by aetherson »

dpark wrote: post #25
jmull wrote: post #22

I take this as one of the two central themes of this article: "...points to a persistent flaw in Silicon Valley financing: the willingness to give start-up founders unassailable control of their companies, to the point that investors have no recourse if things go blooey." That's not a flaw, it's a fundamental part of how it is meant to work. The investors generally don't want to invest in companies run by a committee…

> 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.

It wasn't even that much the case with Google, where remember the board/investors installed "adult supervision" for like a decade.

Facebook, on the other hand, was always Mark's. He has had ironclad control of the company from inception to the present day. And when Facebook became the success story of its generation of companies, investors took the lesson that you always had to have the founder(s) have complete control of the company. That led to the modern trend of founder worship, which probably lasted more-or-less until Travis Kalanick, Elizabeth Holmes, and Parker Conrad swung the pendulum in the other direction.

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

#129

Post by wpietri »

mkirklions wrote: post #44
dpark wrote: 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.

This is not typical at all for tech startups. If you take investment, the founder's share declines quickly:

https://www.lawtrades.com/blog/answers/usual-share-percentag...

Even a single founder can be under 50% by the end of the series A, as you not only have two rounds of investors, but you have to carve out a chunk of equity for employees (10-15%). And if you have multiple founders, which is typical, no one founder may own more than 50% past the seed round.

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

#130

Post by wpietri »

dpark wrote: 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?

In the sense of being consciously modeled on Silicon Valley, copying many of the practices, I think it's fair to call some other tech scenes offshoots. New York I'd call different in that it's very media- and finance-heavy and leans on existing business tradition more. But even in NYC I can think of some companies that strike me as much more SV in culture than the NY median. And Seattle I don't know well enough to say.

Broadly, though, there are a ton of places that are (or would very much like to be seen as) Silicon Valley offshoots. Wikipedia lists dozens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_technology_centers

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