EDIT: I posted this before reading through all of the posts on Stocknovice’s portfolio thread that was apparently discussing Cloudflare’s sales over there. These align really well with what @jonwayne235 posted towards the end, here: Stocknovice's April 2023 Portfolio Review - #31 by jonwayne235. Now I feel like I need to go look through some other company’s reviews / Blind / reddit threads…
ORIGINAL POST: Out of curiosity, I hopped onto Cloudflare’s Glassdoor reviews to see if there was anything interesting about the sales org since it’s been a point of focus after the earnings.
This one from February calls the sales org “JV”, talks about giving away 60% of the best features for free, and discusses how a lot of the companies they were selling to are struggling in this economy (crypto, VC-funded, Saas).
Here’s another interesting snippet from April 13th, calling out the lack of territories and accounts.
This one is from the day of earnings (not sure if posted before or after the release), but it discusses how the “freemium” pricing makes it difficult to sell to enterprise customers.
This one after the earnings call mentions “Big changes happening in the org”, but doesn’t expand beyond that.
And finally, the most recent one discusses lack of sales org vision and organization and lack of reps hitting quota, meaning the “big changes” probably have a ways to go.
As someone who held a sizeable NET position into earnings and then trimmed it by ~1/3 after the earnings call, I’m not sure how these make me feel. On the one hand, it speaks to their product quality that they could achieve the revenue growth they have while having what sounds like a really poor sales operation + pricing strategy, but on the other hand, it sounds like a lot of work is needed to actually get things turned around and develop a mature GTM strategy.
Based on the fact that it’s still priced as a rapid grower with minimal profitability and quite a bit of work ahead, I’ll probably maintain a position but continue to trim until I feel more comfortable about their pricing and sales strategy.