Notes from the Tableau S-1 IPO Filing

Last week Tableau Software filed their S-1 with the SEC as part of the process to go public. Tableau, a business intelligence enterprise software company, is different from many of the IPO filings mentioned recently in that the company is already profitable, has been incredibly capital-light for their level of success, and is based in Seattle.

Here are some notes from the Tableau S-1 IPO filing:

• Common business intelligence use cases include increasing sales, streamlining operations, improving customer service, managing investments, assessing quality and safety, studying and treating diseases, completing academic research, addressing environmental problems and improving education (pg. 1)
• “Land and expand” business model that starts with a free trial and then grows from there (pg. 2)
• Over 10,000 customers (pg. 2)
• Revenues (pg. 2)
  2010 – $34.2mm
  2011 – $62.4mm
  2012 – $127.7mm
• Profits (pg. 2)
  2010 – $2.7mm
  2011 – $3.4mm
  2012 – $1.6mm
• 17% of revenues are outside the U.S. and Canada (pg. 6)
• Growth strategy (pg. 6)
  – Expand customer base
  – Further penetrate existing customer base
  – Grow internationally
  – Innovate and advance products
  – Expand distribution channels and partner ecosystem
  – Foster passionate user community
  – Cultivate exceptional culture
• 749 employees (pg. 16)
• Sales and engineering groups have the most hiring growth (pg. 16)
• 239 orders over $100,000 in 2012 (pg. 20)
• Using NetSuite for financial management and salesforce.com for CRM (pg. 24)
• Currently does not offer a SaaS product (pg. 25)
• Limited use of indirect sales channel partners (pg. 25)
• Class B common stock has 10 votes per share and is concentrated among officers and directors (pg. 38)
• 321 people in sales and marketing (pg. 55)
• Transactions over $100,000 take over three months to close with transactions below that amount taking less than three months (pg. 56)
• 25% of purchase price for maintenance and support contract (pg. 57)
• Insiders took $32mm off the table in 2010 by selling shares to existing VCs (pg. 122)
• Co-founders own 49% (pg. 125)
• VCs own 44% (pg. 125)

Tableau has had amazing growth, especially considering they’ve only raised $15mm total from venture capitalists ($15mm for growth and more than that for insiders to sell their shares). The big wild card is their ability to transition from installed software to cloud-based software. If they can do that, they’ll have even more upside potential.

What else? What are some other thoughts on the Tableau S-1 IPO filing?