DataDog (DDOG)

DataDog is a new IPO coming up. I think it is right there with Crowdstrike and Zoom for the best IPO’s this year.

What they do, from Alex Clayton:

Datadog is an exceptional company in a market that is only beginning to take shape — they offer a monitoring and analytics platform for developers, IT, and business teams for what they call the “cloud age”. The company calls out digital transformation, the move to the cloud, the rapid proliferation of applications and modern tech, and the need for collaboration as core industry trends in their favor.

Some impressive numbers:

Net expansion rate of 146%

Revenue growth of 82% last quarter, up from 77% the quarter before.

I could go into a long post with numbers and reasons for why I like them, but I wouldn’t do near as good of a job as Alex Clayton does.

https://medium.com/@alexfclayton/datadog-ipo-s-1-breakdown-5…

Enjoy,
Jim

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Jim,

Can you tell me who Alex Clayton is and why I should care about his recommendations. I don’t mean this in a snarky manner, but I have never heard of him. Does he have some impressive record that we should be aware of? Just tying to understand how much credibility to give his report.

Thanks,
Gordon

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Can you tell me who Alex Clayton is and why I should care about his recommendations. I don’t mean this in a snarky manner, but I have never heard of him. Does he have some impressive record that we should be aware of? Just tying to understand how much credibility to give his report.

Hi Gordon! I’m not Jim, but my Google search told me that Alex now works for Spark Capital and previously worked for Goldman Sachs. I don’t know what his investing record is, but I think the value of the article that Jim linked is in the article itself. He (Alex that is) seemed to cover the points that I would want answered before making an investment. So it that regard his actual record doesn’t matter to me that much. The proof is in the pudding, not the packaging.

Anyway, take a look at that article and let us know what you think.

Take care.

Jeb

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Jeb, Jim,

Thanks for the reply. I sent off my question after only reading the first couple of graphs - which seemed a bit over enthusiastic, versus, objective. However, after taking a longer read it does seem to be thorough and worth the time. Thanks for posting.

Gordon

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I haven’t viewed Alex Clayton’s articles as recommendations…they come off more as research, which is why I like them.

He has written a few SaaS market/trend articles, but also has done a lot of deep-dives around IPOs of newer companies we see around here, such as CRWD, ZM, PD, PLAN, ESTC, and the upcoming Cloudflare IPO, etc…

See his list of Medium articles here:
https://medium.com/@alexfclayton

Dreamer

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Jimb05,

Agreed that the numbers in Datadog’s S1 are quite impressive, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1561550/000119312519….

Upgard, a cybersecurity company had an interesting side-by-side comparison of Datadog with New Relic, a company I owned, didn’t really understand, and felt wasn’t performing as well as several of my other holdings. Upgard rates both as follows:

  1. Capability Set:
  2. Ease of Use
  3. Community Support
  4. Release Rate
  5. Pricing and Support

Under Capability Set, Upgard notes the following: “Datadog is strong on infrastructure monitoring and metrics/logs while New Relic shines brighter for monitoring applications. In general, though, New Relic is considered a better “jack-of-alltrades" APM solution.” [bolding mine]

New Relic is rated 4.9/5, Datadog 4.5/5. “Both platforms are competent SaaS-based monitoring platforms known for their vast array of integrations and customization options. In general, New Relic considered more of a DevOps tool and heavy on the application side of affairs: your quintessential APM product. In contrast, Datadog’s ideal user base—admins, operators, and the like—will appreciate the platform’s strengths as a highly-extensible IT monitoring service. Unsurprisingly, the two work well together and implementing the pair as complementary platforms is certainly a viable option as well,” https://www.upguard.com/articles/datadog-vs-newrelic

As a non-techie I hope some of our “tech experts” will give us their opinion on this pending IPO.

By the way, Upgard is a cybersecurity company with head offices in Mountain View, California, and Sydney, Australia. This is what they say about themselves: “UpGuard is a cybersecurity company that helps businesses manage security risks across their information technology supply chains. UpGuard’s integrated risk platform combines third party security ratings, security assessment questionnaires, and threat intelligence capabilities to give businesses a full and comprehensive view of their risk surface”

I. M.

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