Datadog Filing 2019-08-23

As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 23, 2019.

Registration No. 333-            

 

 

 

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20549

 

 

FORM S-1

REGISTRATION STATEMENT

UNDER

THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933

 

 

Datadog, Inc.

(Exact name of Registrant as specified in its charter)

 

 

 

Delaware		7372		27-2825503
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization)		(Primary Standard Industrial Classification Code Number)		(I.R.S. Employer Identification Number)

620 8th Avenue, 45th Floor

New York, New York 10018

(866) 329-4466

(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including

area code, of Registrant’s principal executive offices)

 

 

Olivier Pomel

Chief Executive Officer

Datadog, Inc.

620 8th Avenue, 45th Floor

New York, New York 10018

(866) 329-4466

(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including

area code, of agent for service)

 

 

 

		Copies to:
Jodie Bourdet Nicole Brookshire Alison Haggerty Cooley LLP 55 Hudson Yards New York, New York 10001 (212) 479-6000		David Obstler Laszlo Kopits Datadog, Inc. 620 8th Avenue, 45th Floor New York, New York 10018 (866) 329-4466		Richard D. Truesdell, Jr. Marcel R. Fausten Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP 450 Lexington Avenue New York, New York 10017 (212) 450-4000

 

 

Approximate date of commencement of proposed sale to the public: As soon as practicable after this registration statement is declared effective.

If any of the securities being registered on this Form are to be offered on a delayed or continuous basis pursuant to Rule 415 under the Securities Act of 1933, check the following box.  ☐

If this Form is filed to register additional securities for an offering pursuant to Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(c) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

If this Form is a post-effective amendment filed pursuant to Rule 462(d) under the Securities Act, check the following box and list the Securities Act registration statement number of the earlier effective registration statement for the same offering.  ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

 

Large accelerated filer		☐				Accelerated filer		☐
Non-accelerated filer		☒				Smaller reporting company		☐
						Emerging growth company		☒

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act.  ☐

 

 

CALCULATION OF REGISTRATION FEE

 

Title of each Class of Securities to be Registered		Proposed Maximum Aggregate Offering Price(1)(2)		Amount of Registration Fee
Class A common stock, par value $0.00001 per share		$100,000,000		$12,120

(1)	Estimated solely for the purpose of calculating the registration fee in accordance with Rule 457(o) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

(2)	Includes the aggregate offering price of additional shares that the underwriters have the option to purchase, if any.

 

 

The Registrant hereby amends this Registration Statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the Registrant will file a further amendment which specifically states that this Registration Statement will thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or until the Registration Statement will become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prospectus

 

 

 

Through and including                     , 2019 (the 25th day after the date of this prospectus), all dealers effecting transactions in these securities, whether or not participating in this offering, may be required to deliver a prospectus. This is in addition to a dealer’s obligation to deliver a prospectus when acting as an underwriter and with respect to an unsold allotment or subscription.

 

 

We have not authorized anyone to provide any information or to make any representations other than those contained in this prospectus or in any free writing prospectuses we have prepared. We and the underwriters take no responsibility for, and can provide no assurance as to the reliability of, any other information that others may give you. We are offering to sell, and seeking offers to buy, shares of our Class A common stock only in jurisdictions where offers and sales are permitted. The information contained in this prospectus is accurate only as of the date of this prospectus, regardless of the time of delivery of this prospectus or of any sale of our Class A common stock.

For investors outside the United States: neither we nor any of the underwriters have done anything that would permit this offering or possession or distribution of this prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. Persons outside of the United States who come into possession of this prospectus must inform themselves about, and observe any restrictions relating to, the offering of the shares of our Class A common stock and the distribution of this prospectus outside of the United States.

 

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RISK FACTORS

Investing in our Class A common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should consider and read carefully all of the risks and uncertainties described below, as well as other information included in this prospectus, including our consolidated financial statements and related notes appearing elsewhere in this prospectus, before making an investment decision. The risks described below are not the only ones we face. The occurrence of any of the following risks or additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe to be immaterial could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition or results of operations. In such case, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline, and you may lose some or all of your original investment.

Risks Related to Our Business and Industry

Our recent rapid growth may not be indicative of our future growth. Our rapid growth also makes it difficult to evaluate our future prospects and may increase the risk that we will not be successful.

Our revenue was $100.8 million, $198.1 million, $85.4 million and $153.3 million for the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2018 and the six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2019, respectively. You should not rely on the revenue growth of any prior quarterly or annual period as an indication of our future performance. Even if our revenue continues to increase, we expect that our revenue growth rate will decline in the future as a result of a variety of factors, including the maturation of our business. Overall growth of our revenue depends on a number of factors, including our ability to:

 

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price our products effectively so that we are able to attract new customers and expand sales to our existing customers;

 

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expand the functionality and use cases for the products we offer on our platform;

 

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maintain and expand the rates at which customers purchase and renew subscriptions to our platform;

 

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provide our customers with support that meets their needs;

 

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continue to introduce our products to new markets outside of the United States;

 

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successfully identify and acquire or invest in businesses, products or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our platform; and

 

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increase awareness of our brand on a global basis and successfully compete with other companies.

We may not successfully accomplish any of these objectives, and as a result, it is difficult for us to forecast our future results of operations. If the assumptions that we use to plan our business are incorrect or change in reaction to changes in our market, or if we are unable to maintain consistent revenue or revenue growth, our stock price could be volatile, and it may be difficult to achieve and maintain profitability. You should not rely on our revenue for any prior quarterly or annual periods as any indication of our future revenue or revenue growth.

In addition, we expect to continue to expend substantial financial and other resources on:

 

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our technology infrastructure, including systems architecture, scalability, availability, performance and security;

 

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our sales and marketing organization to engage our existing and prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our products;

 

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product development, including investments in our product development team and the development of new products and new functionality for our platform as well as investments in further optimizing our existing products and infrastructure;

 

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acquisitions or strategic investments;

 

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international expansion; and

 

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general administration, including increased legal and accounting expenses associated with being a public company.

These investments may not result in increased revenue growth in our business. If we are unable to maintain or increase our revenue at a rate sufficient to offset the expected increase in our costs, our business, financial position, and results of operations will be harmed, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability over the long term. Additionally, we may encounter unforeseen operating expenses, difficulties, complications, delays, and other unknown factors that may result in losses in future periods. If our revenue growth does not meet our expectations in future periods, our business, financial position and results of operations may be harmed, and we may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future.

We have a history of operating losses and may not achieve or sustain profitability in the future.

We have experienced net losses in each period since inception. We generated net (loss) income of $(2.6) million, $(10.8) million, $0.5 million and $(13.4) million for the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2018 and the six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2019, respectively. As of June 30, 2019, we had an accumulated deficit of $120.3 million. While we have experienced significant revenue growth in recent periods, we are not certain whether or when we will obtain a high enough volume of sales to sustain or increase our growth or achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We also expect our costs and expenses to increase in future periods, which could negatively affect our future results of operations if our revenue does not increase. In particular, we intend to continue to expend significant funds to further develop our platform, including by introducing new products and functionality, and to expand our inside and field sales teams and customer success team to drive new customer adoption, expand use cases and integrations, and support international expansion. We will also face increased compliance costs associated with growth, the expansion of our customer base, and being a public company. Our efforts to grow our business may be costlier than we expect, or the rate of our growth in revenue may be slower than we expect, and we may not be able to increase our revenue enough to offset our increased operating expenses. We may incur significant losses in the future for a number of reasons, including the other risks described herein, and unforeseen expenses, difficulties, complications or delays, and other unknown events. If we are unable to achieve and sustain profitability, the value of our business and Class A common stock may significantly decrease.

We have a limited operating history, which makes it difficult to forecast our future results of operations.

We were founded in June 2010. As a result of our limited operating history, our ability to accurately forecast our future results of operations is limited and subject to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to plan for and model future growth. Our historical revenue growth should not be considered indicative of our future performance. Further, in future periods, our revenue growth could slow or our revenue could decline for a number of reasons, including slowing demand for our products, increasing competition, changes to technology, a decrease in the growth of our overall market, or our failure, for any reason, to continue to take advantage of growth opportunities. We have also encountered, and will continue to encounter, risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, such as the risks and uncertainties described in this prospectus. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties and our future revenue growth are incorrect or change, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could differ materially from our expectations, and our business could suffer.

Our business depends on our existing customers purchasing additional subscriptions and products from us and renewing their subscriptions. Any decline in our dollar-based net retention rate would harm our future operating results.

Our future success depends in part on our ability to sell additional subscriptions and products to our existing customers, and our customers renewing their subscriptions when the contract term expires. The terms of our

 

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subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual, with some quarterly, semi-annual and multi-year. Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our products after the expiration of their subscription period. In order for us to maintain or improve our results of operations, it is important that our customers renew or expand their subscriptions with us. We cannot accurately predict our dollar-based net retention rate given the diversity of our customer base, in terms of size, industry and geography. Our dollar-based net retention rate may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including business strength or weakness of our customers, customer usage, customer satisfaction with our products and platform capabilities and customer support, our prices, the capabilities and prices of competing products, mergers and acquisitions affecting our customer base, consolidation of affiliates’ multiple paid business accounts into a single paid business account, the effects of global economic conditions, or reductions in our customers’ spending on IT solutions or their spending levels generally. These factors may also be exacerbated if, consistent with our growth strategy, our customer base continues to grow to encompass larger enterprises, which may also require more sophisticated and costly sales efforts. If our customers do not purchase additional subscriptions and products from us or our customers fail to renew their subscriptions, our revenue may decline and our business, financial condition and results of operations may be harmed.

If we are unable to attract new customers, our business, financial condition and results of operations will be adversely affected.

To increase our revenue, we must continue to attract new customers. Our success will depend to a substantial extent on the widespread adoption of our platform and products as an alternative to existing solutions. Many enterprises have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to integrate traditional on-premise architectures into their businesses and, therefore, may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate to cloud computing. Further, the adoption of SaaS business software may be slower in industries with heightened data security interests or business practices requiring highly-customizable application software. In addition, as our market matures, our products evolve, and competitors introduce lower cost or differentiated products that are perceived to compete with our platform and products, our ability to sell subscriptions for our products could be impaired. Similarly, our subscription sales could be adversely affected if customers or users within these organizations perceive that features incorporated into competitive products reduce the need for our products or if they prefer to purchase other products that are bundled with solutions offered by other companies that operate in adjacent markets and compete with our products. As a result of these and other factors, we may be unable to attract new customers, which may have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Failure to effectively develop and expand our sales and marketing capabilities could harm our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our products.

Our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our products and platform capabilities will depend to a significant extent on our ability to expand our sales and marketing organization. We plan to continue expanding our direct sales force, both domestically and internationally. We also plan to dedicate significant resources to sales and marketing programs. All of these efforts will require us to invest significant financial and other resources, including in channels in which we have limited or no experience to date. Our business and results of operations will be harmed if our sales and marketing efforts do not generate significant increases in revenue or increases in revenue that are smaller than anticipated. We may not achieve anticipated revenue growth from expanding our sales force if we are unable to hire, develop, integrate and retain talented and effective sales personnel, if our new and existing sales personnel, on the whole, are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time, or if our sales and marketing programs are not effective.

 

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If we or our third-party service providers experience a security breach or unauthorized parties otherwise obtain access to our customers’ data, our data or our platform, our solution may be perceived as not being secure, our reputation may be harmed, demand for our platform and products may be reduced, and we may incur significant liabilities.

Our platform and products involve the storage and transmission of data, including personally identifiable information, and security breaches or unauthorized access to our platform and products could result in the loss of our or our customers’ data, litigation, indemnity obligations, fines, penalties, disputes, investigations and other liabilities. We have previously and may in the future become the target of cyber-attacks by third parties seeking unauthorized access to our or our customers’ data or to disrupt our ability to provide our services. For example, in July 2016 an unidentified third party gained unauthorized access to, and exfiltrated data from, certain of our infrastructure resources, including a database that stored our customers’ credentials for our platform and for third-party integrations. Some of the customer credentials accessed and exfiltrated included confidential and personal information. As a precautionary measure, we reset customer passwords and instructed customers to revoke credentials that had been shared with us. While we have taken steps to protect the confidential and personal information that we have access to, our security measures or those of our third-party service providers that store or otherwise process certain of our and our customers’ data on our behalf could be breached or we could suffer a loss of our or our customers’ data. Our ability to monitor our third-party service providers’ data security is limited. Cyber-attacks, computer malware, viruses, social engineering (including spear phishing and ransomware attacks), and general hacking have become more prevalent in our industry, particularly against cloud services. In addition, we do not directly control content that our customers store in our products. If our customers use our products for the transmission or storage of personally identifiable information and our security measures are or are believed to have been breached as a result of third-party action, employee error, malfeasance or otherwise, our reputation could be damaged, our business may suffer, and we could incur significant liability. In addition, our remediation efforts may not be successful.

We also process, store and transmit our own data as part of our business and operations. This data may include personally identifiable, confidential or proprietary information. There can be no assurance that any security measures that we or our third-party service providers have implemented will be effective against current or future security threats. While we have developed systems and processes to protect the integrity, confidentiality and security of our and our customers’ data, our security measures or those of our third-party service providers could fail and result in unauthorized access to or disclosure, modification, misuse, loss or destruction of such data.

Because there are many different security breach techniques and such techniques continue to evolve, we may be unable to anticipate attempted security breaches, react in a timely manner or implement adequate preventative measures. Third parties may also conduct attacks designed to temporarily deny customers access to our cloud services. Any security breach or other security incident, or the perception that one has occurred, could result in a loss of customer confidence in the security of our platform and damage to our brand, reduce the demand for our products, disrupt normal business operations, require us to spend material resources to investigate or correct the breach and to prevent future security breaches and incidents, expose us to legal liabilities, including litigation, regulatory enforcement, and indemnity obligations, and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. These risks are likely to increase as we continue to grow and process, store, and transmit increasingly large amounts of data.

We use third-party technology and systems in a variety of contexts, including, without limitation, encryption and authentication technology, employee email, content delivery to customers, back-office support, credit card processing and other functions. Although we have developed systems and processes that are designed to protect customer data and prevent data loss and other security breaches, including systems and processes designed to reduce the impact of a security breach at a third-party service provider, such measures cannot provide absolute security.

 

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Additionally, we cannot be certain that our insurance coverage will be adequate for data security liabilities actually incurred, will cover any indemnification claims against us relating to any incident, will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms, or at all, or that any insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could adversely affect our reputation, business, financial condition and results of operations.

Interruptions or performance problems associated with our products and platform capabilities may adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our continued growth depends in part on the ability of our existing and potential customers to access our products and platform capabilities at any time and within an acceptable amount of time. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, disruptions, outages, and other performance problems due to a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, introductions of new functionality, human or software errors, capacity constraints due to an overwhelming number of users accessing our products and platform capabilities simultaneously, denial of service attacks, or other security-related incidents.

It may become increasingly difficult to maintain and improve our performance, especially during peak usage times and as our products and platform capabilities become more complex and our user traffic increases. If our products and platform capabilities are unavailable or if our users are unable to access our products and platform capabilities within a reasonable amount of time or at all, we may experience a loss of customers, lost or delayed market acceptance of our platform and products, delays in payment to us by customers, injury to our reputation and brand, legal claims against us, and the diversion of our resources. In addition, to the extent that we do not effectively address capacity constraints, upgrade our systems as needed and continually develop our technology and network architecture to accommodate actual and anticipated changes in technology, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be adversely affected.

If we fail to adapt and respond effectively to rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards, changing regulations, or to changing customer needs, requirements or preferences, our platform and products may become less competitive.

Our ability to attract new users and customers and increase revenue from existing customers depends in large part on our ability to enhance and improve our existing products, increase adoption and usage of our products, and introduce new products and capabilities. The market in which we compete is relatively new and subject to rapid technological change, evolving industry standards, and changing regulations, as well as changing customer needs, requirements and preferences. The success of our business will depend, in part, on our ability to adapt and respond effectively to these changes on a timely basis. If we were unable to enhance our products and platform capabilities that keep pace with rapid technological and regulatory change, or if new technologies emerge that are able to deliver competitive products at lower prices, more efficiently, more conveniently, or more securely than our products, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

The success of our platform depends, in part, on its ability to be deployed in a self-service installation process. We currently offer more than 350 out-of-the-box integrations to assist customers in deploying Datadog, and we need to continuously modify and enhance our products to adapt to changes and innovation in existing and new technologies to maintain and grow our integrations. We expect that the number of integrations we will need to support will continue to expand as developers adopt new software platforms, and we will have to develop new versions of our products to work with those new platforms. This development effort may require significant engineering, sales and marketing resources, all of which would adversely affect our business. Any failure of our products to operate effectively with future infrastructure platforms and technologies could reduce the demand for our products. If we are unable to respond to these changes in a cost-effective manner, our products may become less marketable and less competitive or obsolete, and our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

 

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The markets in which we participate are competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

Our unified platform combines functionality from numerous traditional product categories, and hence we compete in each of these categories with home-grown and open-source technologies, as well as a number of different vendors. With respect to on-premise infrastructure monitoring, we compete with diversified technology companies and systems management vendors including IBM, Microsoft Corporation, Micro Focus International plc, BMC Software, Inc. and Computer Associates International, Inc. With respect to APM, we compete with Cisco Systems, Inc., New Relic, Inc. and Dynatrace Software Inc. With respect to log management, we compete with Splunk Inc. and Elastic N.V. With respect to cloud monitoring, we compete with native solutions from cloud providers such as Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon Web Services, or AWS), Alphabet Inc. (Google Cloud Platform, or GCP) and Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft Azure). In addition, we may increasingly choose to allow these third-party hosting providers to offer our solutions directly through their customer marketplaces. An increasing number of sales through cloud provider marketplaces could reduce both the number of customers with whom we have direct commercial relationships as well as our profit margins on sales made through such marketplaces.

With the introduction of new technologies and market entrants, we expect that the competitive environment will remain intense going forward. Some of our actual and potential competitors have been acquired by other larger enterprises and have made or may make acquisitions or may enter into partnerships or other strategic relationships that may provide more comprehensive offerings than they individually had offered or achieve greater economies of scale than us. In addition, new entrants not currently considered to be competitors may enter the market through acquisitions, partnerships or strategic relationships. As we look to market and sell our products and platform capabilities to potential customers with existing internal solutions, we must convince their internal stakeholders that our products and platform capabilities are superior to their current solutions.

We compete on the basis of a number of factors, including:

 

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ability to provide unified, real-time observability of IT environments;

 

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ability to operate in dynamic and elastic environments;

 

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extensibility across the enterprise, including development, operations and business users;

 

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propensity to enable collaboration between development, operations and business users;

 

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ability to monitor any combination of public clouds, private clouds, on-premise and multi-cloud hybrids;

 

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ability to provide advanced analytics and machine learning;

 

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ease of deployment, implementation and use;

 

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breadth of offering and key technology integrations;

 

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performance, security, scalability and reliability;

 

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quality of service and customer satisfaction;

 

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total cost of ownership; and

 

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brand recognition and reputation.

Our competitors vary in size and in the breadth and scope of the products offered. Many of our competitors and potential competitors have greater name recognition, longer operating histories, more established customer relationships and installed customer bases, larger marketing budgets and greater resources than we do. Further, other potential competitors not currently offering competitive solutions may expand their product or service offerings to compete with our products and platform capabilities, or our current and potential competitors may

 

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establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties that may further enhance their resources and product offerings in our addressable market. Our competitors may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards, and customer requirements. An existing competitor or new entrant could introduce new technology that reduces demand for our products and platform capabilities. In addition to product and technology competition, we face pricing competition. Some of our competitors offer their solutions at a lower price, which has resulted in, and may continue to result in, pricing pressures.

For all of these reasons, we may not be able to compete successfully against our current or future competitors, and this competition could result in the failure of our platform to continue to achieve or maintain market acceptance, any of which would harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition.

We may not be able to successfully manage our growth, and if we are not able to grow efficiently, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed.

As usage of our platform capabilities grow, we will need to devote additional resources to improving and maintaining our infrastructure and integrating with third-party applications. In addition, we will need to appropriately scale our internal business systems and our services organization, including customer support and professional services, to serve our growing customer base. Any failure of or delay in these efforts could result in impaired system performance and reduced customer satisfaction, resulting in decreased sales to new customers, lower dollar-based net retention rates, the issuance of service credits or requested refunds, which would hurt our revenue growth and our reputation. Further, any failure in optimizing our spend on third-party cloud services as we scale could negatively impact our gross margins. Even if we are successful in our expansion efforts, they will be expensive and complex, and require the dedication of significant management time and attention. We could also face inefficiencies or service disruptions as a result of our efforts to scale our internal infrastructure. We cannot be sure that the expansion of and improvements to our internal infrastructure will be effectively implemented on a timely basis, if at all, and such failures could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We rely upon third-party providers of cloud-based infrastructure to host our products. Any disruption in the operations of these third-party providers, limitations on capacity or interference with our use could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We outsource substantially all of the infrastructure relating to our cloud solution to third-party hosting services. Customers of our cloud-based products need to be able to access our platform at any time, without interruption or degradation of performance, and we provide them with service-level commitments with respect to uptime. Our cloud-based products depend on protecting the virtual cloud infrastructure hosted by third-party hosting services by maintaining its configuration, architecture, features and interconnection specifications, as well as the information stored in these virtual data centers, which is transmitted by third-party internet service providers. Any limitation on the capacity of our third-party hosting services could impede our ability to onboard new customers or expand the usage of our existing customers, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. In addition, any incident affecting our third-party hosting services’ infrastructure that may be caused by cyber-attacks, natural disasters, fire, flood, severe storm, earthquake, power loss, telecommunications failures, terrorist or other attacks, and other similar events beyond our control could negatively affect our cloud-based products. A prolonged service disruption affecting our cloud-based solution for any of the foregoing reasons would negatively impact our ability to serve our customers and could damage our reputation with current and potential customers, expose us to liability, cause us to lose customers or otherwise harm our business. We may also incur significant costs for using alternative equipment or taking other actions in preparation for, or in reaction to, events that damage the third-party hosting services we use.

In the event that our service agreements with our third-party hosting services are terminated, or there is a lapse of service, elimination of services or features that we utilize, interruption of internet service provider

 

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connectivity or damage to such facilities, we could experience interruptions in access to our platform as well as significant delays and additional expense in arranging or creating new facilities and services and/or re-architecting our cloud solution for deployment on a different cloud infrastructure service provider, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We offer free trials and a free tier of our platform to drive developer awareness of our products, and encourage usage and adoption. If these marketing strategies fail to lead to customers purchasing paid subscriptions, our ability to grow our revenue will be adversely affected.

To encourage awareness, usage, familiarity and adoption of our platform and products, we offer free trials and a free tier of our platform. These strategies may not be successful in leading customers to purchase our products. Many users of our free tier may not lead to others within their organization purchasing and deploying our platform and products. To the extent that users do not become, or we are unable to successfully attract paying customers, we will not realize the intended benefits of these marketing strategies and our ability to grow our revenue will be adversely affected.

We expect fluctuations in our financial results, making it difficult to project future results, and if we fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors with respect to our results of operations, our stock price and the value of your investment could decline.

Our results of operations have fluctuated in the past and are expected to fluctuate in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. As a result, our past results may not be indicative of our future performance. In addition to the other risks described herein, factors that may affect our results of operations include the following:

 

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fluctuations in demand for or pricing of our platform and products;

 

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fluctuations in usage of our platform and products;

 

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our ability to attract new customers;

 

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our ability to retain our existing customers;

 

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customer expansion rates and the pricing and quantity of subscriptions renewed;

 

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the pricing of subscriptions from customers in our cloud-provider marketplaces;

 

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timing and amount of our investments to expand the capacity of our third-party cloud infrastructure providers;

 

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seasonality driven by industry conferences;

 

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the investment in new products and features relative to investments in our existing infrastructure and products;

 

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the timing of our customer purchases;

 

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fluctuations or delays in purchasing decisions in anticipation of new products or enhancements by us or our competitors;

 

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changes in customers’ budgets and in the timing of their budget cycles and purchasing decisions;

 

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our ability to control costs, including our operating expenses;

 

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the amount and timing of payment for operating expenses, particularly research and development and sales and marketing expenses, including commissions;

 

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the amount and timing of non-cash expenses, including stock-based compensation, goodwill impairments and other non-cash charges;

 

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the amount and timing of costs associated with recruiting, training and integrating new employees and retaining and motivating existing employees;

 

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the effects of acquisitions and their integration;

 

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general economic conditions, both domestically and internationally, as well as economic conditions specifically affecting industries in which our customers participate;

 

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the impact of new accounting pronouncements;

 

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changes in regulatory or legal environments that may cause us to incur, among other elements, expenses associated with compliance;

 

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changes in the competitive dynamics of our market, including consolidation among competitors or customers; and

 

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significant security breaches of, technical difficulties with, or interruptions to, the delivery and use of our products and platform capabilities.

Any of these and other factors, or the cumulative effect of some of these factors, may cause our results of operations to vary significantly. If our quarterly results of operations fall below the expectations of investors and securities analysts who follow our stock, the price of our Class A common stock could decline substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits.

Seasonality may cause fluctuations in our sales and results of operations.

Historically, we have experienced seasonality in new customer bookings, as we typically we enter into a higher percentage of subscription agreements with new customers and renewals with existing customers in the fourth quarter of the year. We believe that this results from the procurement, budgeting, and deployment cycles of many of our customers, particularly our enterprise customers. We expect that this seasonality will continue to affect our bookings and our results of operations in the future, and might become more pronounced as we continue to target larger enterprise customers.

Downturns or upturns in our sales may not be immediately reflected in our financial position and results of operations.

Because we recognize the majority of our revenue ratably over the term of the subscription agreement, any decreases in new subscriptions or renewals in any one period may not be immediately reflected as a decrease in revenue for that period, but could negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. This also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through the sale of additional subscriptions in any period, as revenue is recognized over the term of the subscription agreement. In addition, fluctuations in monthly subscriptions based on usage could affect our revenue on a period-over-period basis. If our quarterly results of operations fall below the expectations of investors and securities analysts who follow our stock, the price of our Class A common stock would decline substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class actions.

We target enterprise customers, and sales to these customers involve risks that may not be present or that are present to a lesser extent with sales to smaller entities.

We have a field sales team that targets enterprise customers. As of June 30, 2019, we had approximately 590 customers with an ARR of $100,000 or more, and 42 customers with an ARR of $1.0 million or more. See the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” for a description of ARR. Sales to large customers involve risks that may not be present or that are present to a lesser extent with sales to smaller entities, such as longer sales cycles, more complex customer requirements, substantial upfront sales costs, and less predictability in completing some of our sales. For example, enterprise customers may require considerable time to evaluate and test our solutions and those of our competitors prior to

 

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making a purchase decision and placing an order. A number of factors influence the length and variability of our sales cycle, including the need to educate potential customers about the uses and benefits of our solutions, the discretionary nature of purchasing and budget cycles, and the competitive nature of evaluation and purchasing approval processes. As a result, the length of our sales cycle, from identification of the opportunity to deal closure, may vary significantly from customer to customer, with sales to large enterprises typically taking longer to complete. Moreover, large enterprise customers often begin to deploy our products on a limited basis, but nevertheless demand configuration, integration services and pricing negotiations, which increase our upfront investment in the sales effort with no guarantee that these customers will deploy our products widely enough across their organization to justify our substantial upfront investment.

If we fail to retain and motivate members of our management team or other key employees, or fail to attract additional qualified personnel to support our operations, our business and future growth prospects would be harmed.

Our success and future growth depend largely upon the continued services of our executive officers, particularly Olivier Pomel, our co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Alexis Lê-Quôc, our co-founder, President and Chief Technology Officer, and David Obstler, our Chief Financial Officer, as well as our other key employees in the areas of research and development and sales and marketing functions. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team or other key employees resulting from the hiring or departure of these personnel. Our executive officers and other key employees are employed on an at-will basis, which means that these personnel could terminate their employment with us at any time. The loss of one or more of our executive officers, or the failure by our executive team to effectively work with our employees and lead our company, could harm our business. We also are dependent on the continued service of our existing software engineers because of the complexity of our products and platform capabilities.

In addition, to execute our growth plan, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. Competition for these personnel is intense, especially for engineers experienced in designing and developing SaaS applications and experienced sales professionals. If we are unable to attract such personnel in cities where we are located, we may need to hire in other locations which may add to the complexity and costs of our business operations. From time to time, we have experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we have. If we hire employees from competitors or other companies, their former employers may attempt to assert that these employees or we have breached their legal obligations, resulting in a diversion of our time and resources. In addition, prospective and existing employees often consider the value of the equity awards they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived value of our equity awards declines, experiences significant volatility, or increases such that prospective employees believe there is limited upside to the value of our equity awards, it may adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain key employees. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects would be harmed.

If we fail to maintain and enhance our brand, our ability to expand our customer base will be impaired and our business, financial condition and results of operations may suffer.

We believe that maintaining and enhancing the Datadog brand is important to support the marketing and sale of our existing and future products to new customers and expand sales of our platform and products to existing customers. We also believe that the importance of brand recognition will increase as competition in our market increases. Successfully maintaining and enhancing our brand will depend largely on the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, our ability to provide reliable products that continue to meet the needs of our customers at competitive prices, our ability to maintain our customers’ trust, our ability to continue to develop new functionality and use cases, and our ability to successfully differentiate our products and platform capabilities from competitive products. Our brand promotion activities may not generate customer awareness or yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incur in building

 

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our brand. If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our brand, our business, financial condition and results of operations may suffer.

If we cannot maintain our company culture as we grow, our success and our business and competitive position may be harmed.

We believe our culture has been a key contributor to our success to date and that the critical nature of the platform that we provide promotes a sense of greater purpose and fulfillment in our employees. Any failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our ability to retain and recruit personnel, which is critical to our growth, and to effectively focus on and pursue our corporate objectives. As we grow and develop the infrastructure of a public company, we may find it difficult to maintain these important aspects of our culture. If we fail to maintain our company culture, our business and competitive position may be harmed.

The market for our solutions may develop more slowly or differently than we expect.

It is difficult to predict customer adoption rates and demand for our products, the entry of competitive products or the future growth rate and size of the cloud-based software and SaaS business software markets. The expansion of these markets depends on a number of factors, including: the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with cloud-based and SaaS business software as an alternative to legacy systems, as well as the ability of cloud-based software and SaaS providers to address heightened data security and privacy concerns. If we have a security incident or other cloud-based software and SaaS providers experience security incidents, loss of customer data, disruptions in delivery or other similar problems, which is an increasing focus of the public and investors in recent years, the market for these applications as a whole, including our platform and products, may be negatively affected. If cloud-based and SaaS business software does not continue to achieve market acceptance, or there is a reduction in demand caused by a lack of customer acceptance, technological challenges, weakening economic conditions, data security or privacy concerns, governmental regulation, competing technologies and products, or decreases in information technology spending or otherwise, the market for our platform and products might not continue to develop or might develop more slowly than we expect, which would adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

The estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this prospectus may prove to be inaccurate, and even if the market in which we compete achieves the forecasted growth, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all.

The estimates of market opportunity and forecasts of market growth included in this prospectus may prove to be inaccurate. Market opportunity estimates and growth forecasts included in this prospectus, including those we have generated ourselves, are subject to significant uncertainty and are based on assumptions and estimates that may not prove to be accurate, including the risks described herein. Even if the market in which we compete achieves the forecasted growth, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all.

The variables that go into the calculation of our market opportunity are subject to change over time, and there is no guarantee that any particular number or percentage of addressable users or companies covered by our market opportunity estimates will purchase our products at all or generate any particular level of revenue for us. Any expansion in our market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with our platform and those of our competitors. Even if the market in which we compete meets the size estimates and growth forecasted in this prospectus, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all. Our growth is subject to many factors, including our success in implementing our business strategy, which is subject to many risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, the forecasts of market growth included in this prospectus should not be taken as indicative of our future growth.

 

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We typically provide service-level commitments under our subscription agreements. If we fail to meet these contractual commitments, we could be obligated to provide credits for future service or face subscription termination with refunds of prepaid amounts, which would lower our revenue and harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our subscription agreements typically contain service-level commitments. If we are unable to meet the stated service-level commitments, including failure to meet the uptime and response time requirements under our customer subscription agreements, we may be contractually obligated to provide these customers with service credits which could significantly affect our revenue in the periods in which the failure occurs and the credits are applied. We could also face subscription terminations and a reduction in renewals, which could significantly affect both our current and future revenue. Any service-level failures could also damage our reputation, which could also adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Indemnity provisions in various agreements to which we are party potentially expose us to substantial liability for infringement, misappropriation or other violation of intellectual property rights, data protection and other losses.

Our agreements with our customers and other third parties may include indemnification provisions under which we agree to indemnify or otherwise be liable to them for losses suffered or incurred as a result of claims of infringement, misappropriation or other violation of intellectual property rights, data protection, damages caused by us to property or persons, or other liabilities relating to or arising from our software, services, platform, our acts or omissions under such agreements or other contractual obligations. Some of these indemnity agreements provide for uncapped liability and some indemnity provisions survive termination or expiration of the applicable agreement. Large indemnity payments could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. Although we attempt to contractually limit our liability with respect to such indemnity obligations, we are not always successful and may still incur substantial liability related to them, and we may be required to cease use of certain functions of our platform or products as a result of any such claims. Any dispute with a customer or other third party with respect to such obligations could have adverse effects on our relationship with such customer or other third party and other existing or prospective customers, reduce demand for our products and services and adversely affect our business, financial conditions and results of operations. In addition, although we carry general liability insurance, our insurance may not be adequate to indemnify us for all liability that may be imposed or otherwise protect us from liabilities or damages with respect to claims alleging compromises of customer data, and any such coverage may not continue to be available to us on acceptable terms or at all.

If we fail to offer high-quality support, our reputation could suffer.

Our customers rely on our customer support personnel to resolve issues and realize the full benefits that our platform provides. High-quality support is also important for the renewal and expansion of our subscriptions with existing customers. The importance of our support function will increase as we expand our business and pursue new customers. If we do not help our customers quickly resolve issues and provide effective ongoing support, our ability to maintain and expand our subscriptions to existing and new customers could suffer, and our reputation with existing or potential customers could suffer.

Acquisitions, strategic investments, partnerships, or alliances could be difficult to identify, pose integration challenges, divert the attention of management, disrupt our business, dilute stockholder value, and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We have in the past and may in the future seek to acquire or invest in businesses, joint ventures, products and platform capabilities, or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our services and platform capabilities, enhance our technical capabilities, or otherwise offer growth opportunities. Further, our anticipated proceeds from this offering increase the likelihood that we will devote resources to exploring larger and more complex acquisitions and investments than we have previously attempted. Any such acquisition or investment

 

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may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various expenses in identifying, investigating and pursuing suitable opportunities, whether or not the transactions are completed, and may result in unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. In particular, we may encounter difficulties assimilating or integrating the businesses, technologies, products and platform capabilities, personnel or operations of any acquired companies, particularly if the key personnel of an acquired company choose not to work for us, their software is not easily adapted to work with our platform, or we have difficulty retaining the customers of any acquired business due to changes in ownership, management or otherwise. These transactions may also disrupt our business, divert our resources, and require significant management attention that would otherwise be available for development of our existing business. Any such transactions that we are able to complete may not result in any synergies or other benefits we had expected to achieve, which could result in impairment charges that could be substantial. In addition, we may not be able to find and identify desirable acquisition targets or business opportunities or be successful in entering into an agreement with any particular strategic partner. These transactions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities or the incurrence of debt, which could adversely affect our results of operations. In addition, if the resulting business from such a transaction fails to meet our expectations, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be adversely affected or we may be exposed to unknown risks or liabilities.

We are subject to stringent and changing privacy laws, regulations and standards, information security policies and contractual obligations related to data privacy and security. Our actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business.

We have legal and contractual obligations regarding the protection of confidentiality and appropriate use of personally identifiable information. We are subject to a variety of federal, state, local and international laws, directives and regulations relating to the collection, use, retention, security, disclosure, transfer and other processing of personally identifiable information. The regulatory framework for privacy and security issues worldwide is rapidly evolving and as a result implementation standards and enforcement practices are likely to remain uncertain for the foreseeable future. We publicly post documentation regarding our practices concerning the collection, processing, use and disclosure of data. Although we endeavor to comply with our published policies and documentation, we may at times fail to do so or be alleged to have failed to do so. The publication of our privacy policy and other documentation that provide promises and assurances about privacy and security can subject us to potential state and federal action if they are found to be deceptive, unfair, or misrepresentative of our actual practices. Any failure by us, our suppliers or other parties with whom we do business to comply with this documentation or with federal, state, local or international regulations could result in proceedings against us by governmental entities or others. In many jurisdictions, enforcement actions and consequences for noncompliance are rising. In the United States, these include enforcement actions in response to rules and regulations promulgated under the authority of federal agencies and state attorneys general and legislatures and consumer protection agencies. In addition, privacy advocates and industry groups have regularly proposed, and may propose in the future, self-regulatory standards with which we must legally comply or that contractually apply to us. If we fail to follow these security standards even if no customer information is compromised, we may incur significant fines or experience a significant increase in costs.

Internationally, virtually every jurisdiction in which we operate has established its own data security and privacy legal framework with which we or our customers must comply, including but not limited to the European Union, or EU. The EU’s data protection landscape is currently unstable, resulting in possible significant operational costs for internal compliance and risk to our business. The EU has adopted the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which went into effect in May 2018 and contains numerous requirements and changes from previously existing EU law, including more robust obligations on data processors and heavier documentation requirements for data protection compliance programs by companies. Among other requirements, the GDPR regulates transfers of personal data subject to the GDPR to third countries that have not been found to provide adequate protection to such personal data, including the United States. While we have taken steps to mitigate the impact on us with respect to transfers of data, such as implementing standard contractual clauses and self-certifying under the EU-US Privacy Shield, the efficacy and longevity of these transfer mechanisms remains

 

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uncertain. The GDPR also introduced numerous privacy-related changes for companies operating in the EU, including greater control for data subjects (including, for example, the “right to be forgotten”), increased data portability for EU consumers, data breach notification requirements and increased fines. In particular, under the GDPR, fines of up to 20 million euros or up to 4% of the annual global revenue of the noncompliant company, whichever is greater, could be imposed for violations of certain of the GDPR’s requirements. Such penalties are in addition to any civil litigation claims by customers and data subjects. The GDPR requirements apply not only to third-party transactions, but also to transfers of information between us and our subsidiaries, including employee information.

In addition to the GDPR, the European Commission has another draft regulation in the approval process that focuses on a person’s right to conduct a private life (in contrast to the GDPR, which focuses on protection of personal data). The proposed legislation, known as the Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications, or ePrivacy Regulation, would replace the current ePrivacy Directive. Originally planned to be adopted and implemented at the same time as the GDPR, the ePrivacy Regulation will likely be enacted sometime in 2019. While the new legislation contains protections for those using communications services (for example, protections against online tracking technologies), the timing of its proposed enactment following the GDPR means that additional time and effort may need to be spent addressing differences between the ePrivacy Regulation and the GDPR. New rules related to the ePrivacy Regulation are likely to include enhanced consent requirements in order to use communications content and communications metadata, which may negatively impact our platform and products and our relationships with our customers.

Complying with the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation, when it becomes effective, may cause us to incur substantial operational costs or require us to change our business practices. Despite our efforts to bring practices into compliance before the effective date of the GDPR and ePrivacy Regulation, we may not be successful in our efforts to achieve compliance either due to internal or external factors such as resource allocation limitations or a lack of vendor cooperation. Non-compliance could result in proceedings against us by governmental entities, customers, data subjects or others. We may also experience difficulty retaining or obtaining new European or multi-national customers due to the legal requirements, compliance cost, potential risk exposure, and uncertainty for these entities, and we may experience significantly increased liability with respect to these customers pursuant to the terms set forth in our engagements with them. While we utilize a data center in the European Economic Area to maintain certain customer data (which may include personal data) originating from the EU in the European Economic Area, we may find it necessary to establish additional systems and processes to maintain such data in the European Economic Area, which may involve substantial expense and distraction from other aspects of our business.

Domestic laws in this area are also complex and developing rapidly. Many state legislatures have adopted legislation that regulates how businesses operate online, including measures relating to privacy, data security and data breaches. Laws in all 50 states require businesses to provide notice to customers whose personally identifiable information has been disclosed as a result of a data breach. The laws are not consistent, and compliance in the event of a widespread data breach is costly. States are also constantly amending existing laws, requiring attention to frequently changing regulatory requirements. Further, California recently enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, which is expected to take effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA gives California residents expanded rights to access and delete their personal information, opt out of certain personal information sharing, and receive detailed information about how their personal information is used. The CCPA provides for civil penalties for violations, as well as a private right of action for data breaches that is expected to increase data breach litigation. The CCPA may increase our compliance costs and potential liability. Some observers have noted that the CCPA could mark the beginning of a trend toward more stringent privacy legislation in the United States, which could increase our potential liability and adversely affect our business.

Because the interpretation and application of many privacy and data protection laws along with contractually imposed industry standards are uncertain, it is possible that these laws may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent with our existing data management practices or the features of our

 

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products and platform capabilities. If so, in addition to the possibility of fines, lawsuits, regulatory investigations, imprisonment of company officials and public censure, other claims and penalties, significant costs for remediation and damage to our reputation, we could be required to fundamentally change our business activities and practices or modify our products and platform capabilities, any of which could have an adverse effect on our business. Any inability to adequately address privacy and security concerns, even if unfounded, or comply with applicable privacy and data security laws, regulations, and policies, could result in additional cost and liability to us, damage our reputation, inhibit sales and adversely affect our business. Furthermore, the costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by, the laws, regulations, and policies that are applicable to the businesses of our customers may limit the use and adoption of, and reduce the overall demand for, our products. Privacy and data security concerns, whether valid or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our products, particularly in certain industries and foreign countries. If we are not able to adjust to changing laws, regulations, and standards related to the internet, our business may be harmed.

We are subject to anti-corruption, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering, and similar laws, and non-compliance with such laws can subject us to criminal or civil liability and harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are subject to the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, U.S. domestic bribery laws, the UK Bribery Act, and other anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws in the countries in which we conduct activities. Anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws have been enforced aggressively in recent years and are interpreted broadly to generally prohibit companies, their employees and their third-party intermediaries from authorizing, offering, or providing, directly or indirectly, improper payments or benefits to recipients in the public or private sector. As we increase our international sales and business and sales to the public sector, we may engage with business partners and third-party intermediaries to market our products and to obtain necessary permits, licenses, and other regulatory approvals. In addition, we or our third-party intermediaries may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities. We can be held liable for the corrupt or other illegal activities of these third-party intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, partners and agents, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities.

While we have policies and procedures to address compliance with such laws, we cannot assure you that all of our employees and agents will not take actions in violation of our policies and applicable law, for which we may be ultimately held responsible. As we increase our international sales and business, our risks under these laws may increase.

Detecting, investigating, and resolving actual or alleged violations of anti-corruption laws can require a significant diversion of time, resources, and attention from senior management. In addition, noncompliance with anti-corruption, anti-bribery, or anti-money laundering laws could subject us to whistleblower complaints, investigations, sanctions, settlements, prosecution, enforcement actions, fines, damages, other civil or criminal penalties or injunctions, suspension or debarment from contracting with certain persons, reputational harm, adverse media coverage, and other collateral consequences. If any subpoenas or investigations are launched, or governmental or other sanctions are imposed, or if we do not prevail in any possible civil or criminal proceeding, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be harmed. In addition, responding to any action will likely result in a materially significant diversion of management’s attention and resources and significant defense costs and other professional fees.

Sales to government entities and highly regulated organizations are subject to a number of challenges and risks.

We may sell to U.S. federal, state, and local, as well as foreign, governmental agency customers, as well as to customers in highly regulated industries such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare. Sales to such entities are subject to a number of challenges and risks. Selling to such entities can be highly competitive,

 

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expensive, and time-consuming, often requiring significant upfront time and expense without any assurance that these efforts will generate a sale. Government contracting requirements may change and in doing so restrict our ability to sell into the government sector until we have attained the revised certification. Government demand and payment for our products are affected by public sector budgetary cycles and funding authorizations, with funding reductions or delays adversely affecting public sector demand for our products.

Further, governmental and highly regulated entities may demand contract terms that differ from our standard arrangements and are less favorable than terms agreed with private sector customers. Such entities may have statutory, contractual, or other legal rights to terminate contracts with us or our partners for convenience or for other reasons. Any such termination may adversely affect our ability to contract with other government customers as well as our reputation, business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are subject to governmental export and import controls that could impair our ability to compete in international markets or subject us to liability if we violate the controls.

Our platform and products are subject to U.S. export controls, including the Export Administration Regulations, and we incorporate encryption technology into certain of our products. These encryption products and the underlying technology may be exported outside of the United States only with the required export authorizations, including by license, a license exception, or other appropriate government authorizations, including the filing of an encryption classification request or self-classification report.

Furthermore, our activities are subject to U.S. economic sanctions laws and regulations administered by the Office of Foreign Assets Control that prohibit the shipment of most products and services to embargoed jurisdictions or sanctioned parties without the required export authorizations. Additionally, the Trump administration has been critical of existing trade agreements and may impose more stringent export controls. Obtaining the necessary export license or other authorization for a particular sale may be time-consuming and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities. Violations of U.S. sanctions or export control regulations can result in significant fines or penalties and possible incarceration for responsible employees and managers.

If our channel partners fail to obtain appropriate import, export, or re-export licenses or permits, we may also be adversely affected through reputational harm, as well as other negative consequences, including government investigations and penalties.

Also, various countries, in addition to the United States, regulate the import and export of certain encryption and other technology, including import and export licensing requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to distribute our products or could limit our end-customers’ ability to implement our products in those countries. Changes in our products or future changes in export and import regulations may create delays in the introduction of our platform in international markets, prevent our end-customers with international operations from deploying our platform globally or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our products to certain countries, governments, or persons altogether. From time to time, various governmental agencies have proposed additional regulation of encryption technology. Any change in export or import regulations, economic sanctions or related legislation, increased export and import controls, or change in the countries, governments, persons, or technologies targeted by such regulations, could result in decreased use of our platform by, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our products to, existing or potential end-customers with international operations. Any decreased use of our platform or limitation on our ability to export or sell our products would adversely affect our business, results of operations, and growth prospects.

Any failure to obtain, maintain, protect or enforce our intellectual property and proprietary rights could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.

Our success depends to a significant degree on our ability to obtain, maintain, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights, including our proprietary technology, know-how and our brand. We rely on a

 

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combination of trademarks, trade secret laws, patents, copyrights, service marks, contractual restrictions, and other intellectual property laws and confidentiality procedures to establish and protect our proprietary rights. However, the steps we take to obtain, maintain, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights may be inadequate. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property rights if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property rights. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, our competitors may gain access to our proprietary technology and develop and commercialize substantially identical products, services or technologies, our business, financial condition, results of operations or prospects may be harmed. In addition, defending our intellectual property rights might entail significant expense. Any patents, trademarks, or other intellectual property rights that we have or may obtain may be challenged or circumvented by others or invalidated or held unenforceable through administrative process, including re-examination, inter partes review, interference and derivation proceedings and equivalent proceedings in foreign jurisdictions (e.g., opposition proceedings) or litigation. Despite our pending U.S. patent applications, there can be no assurance that our patent applications will result in issued patents. Even if we continue to seek patent protection in the future, we may be unable to obtain or maintain patent protection for our technology. In addition, any patents issued from pending or future patent applications or licensed to us in the future may not provide us with competitive advantages, or may be successfully challenged by third parties. There may be issued patents of which we are not aware, held by third parties that, if found to be valid and enforceable, could be alleged to be infringed by our current or future technologies or products. There also may be pending patent applications of which we are not aware that may result in issued patents, which could be alleged to be infringed by our current or future technologies or products. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability, and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy our products and platform capabilities and use information that we regard as proprietary to create products that compete with ours. Patent, trademark, copyright, and trade secret protection may not be available to us in every country in which our products are available. For example, as we have expanded internationally, we have been unable to register and obtain the right to use the Datadog trademark in certain jurisdictions, including in the EU, and as we continue to expand, we may face similar issues in other jurisdictions. The value of our intellectual property could diminish if others assert rights in or ownership of our trademarks and other intellectual property rights, or trademarks that are similar to our trademarks. We may be unable to successfully resolve these types of conflicts to our satisfaction. In some cases, litigation or other actions may be necessary to protect or enforce our trademarks and other intellectual property rights. Furthermore, third parties may assert intellectual property claims against us, and we may be subject to liability, required to enter into costly license agreements, or required to rebrand our products and/or prevented from selling some of our products if third parties successfully oppose or challenge our trademarks or successfully claim that we infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate their trademarks or other intellectual property rights. In addition, the laws of some foreign countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be inadequate. As we expand our international activities, our exposure to unauthorized copying and use of our products and platform capabilities and proprietary information will likely increase. Moreover, policing unauthorized use of our technologies, trade secrets, and intellectual property may be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming, particularly in foreign countries where the laws may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the United States and where mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be weak. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may be unable to prevent third parties from infringing upon, misappropriating or otherwise violating our intellectual property rights.

We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with other third parties, including suppliers and other partners. However, we cannot guarantee that we have entered into such agreements with each party that has or may have had access to our proprietary information, know-how and trade secrets. Moreover, no assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to, distribution, use, misuse, misappropriation, reverse engineering or disclosure of our proprietary information, know-how and trade secrets. Further, these agreements may not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or

 

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superior to our products and platform capabilities. These agreements may be breached, and we may not have adequate remedies for any such breach.

In order to protect our intellectual property rights, we may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights. Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights and to protect our trade secrets. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time-consuming, and distracting to management, and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Further, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims, and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights, and if such defenses, counterclaims or countersuits are successful, we could lose valuable intellectual property rights. Our inability to protect our proprietary technology against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation or diversion of our management’s attention and resources, could delay further sales or the implementation of our products and platform capabilities, impair the functionality of our products and platform capabilities, delay introductions of new solutions, result in our substituting inferior or more costly technologies into our products, or injure our reputation.

We may become subject to intellectual property disputes, which are costly and may subject us to significant liability and increased costs of doing business.

We may become subject to intellectual property disputes. Our success depends, in part, on our ability to develop and commercialize our products and services without infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating the intellectual property rights of third parties. However, we may not be aware that our products or services are infringing, misappropriating or otherwise violating third-party intellectual property rights and such third parties may bring claims alleging such infringement, misappropriation or violation. Lawsuits are time-consuming and expensive to resolve and they divert management’s time and attention. The software industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and other intellectual and proprietary rights. Companies in the software industry are often required to defend against litigation claims based on allegations of infringement, misappropriation or other violations of intellectual property rights. Our technologies may not be able to withstand any third-party claims against their use. In addition, many companies have the capability to dedicate substantially greater resources to enforce their intellectual property rights and to defend claims that may be brought against them. We do not currently have a large patent portfolio, which could prevent us from deterring patent infringement claims through our own patent portfolio, and our competitors and others may now and in the future have significantly larger and more mature patent portfolios than we have. Any litigation may also involve patent holding companies or other adverse patent owners that have no relevant product revenue, and therefore, our patent applications may provide little or no deterrence as we would not be able to assert them against such entities or individuals. If a third party is able to obtain an injunction preventing us from accessing such third-party intellectual property rights, or if we cannot license or develop alternative technology for any infringing aspect of our business, we would be forced to limit or stop sales of our products and platform capabilities or cease business activities related to such intellectual property. Although we carry general liability insurance, our insurance may not cover potential claims of this type or may not be adequate to indemnify us for all liability that may be imposed. We cannot predict the outcome of lawsuits and cannot ensure that the results of any such actions will not have an adverse effect on our business, financial condition or results of operations. Any intellectual property litigation to which we might become a party, or for which we are required to provide indemnification, may require us to do one or more of the following:

 

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cease selling or using products or services that incorporate the intellectual property rights that we allegedly infringe, misappropriate or violate;

 

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make substantial payments for legal fees, settlement payments or other costs or damages;

 

•

obtain a license, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all, to sell or use the relevant technology; or

 

•

redesign the allegedly infringing products to avoid infringement, misappropriation or violation, which could be costly, time-consuming or impossible.

 

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Even if the claims do not result in litigation or are resolved in our favor, these claims, and the time and resources necessary to resolve them, could divert the resources of our management and harm our business and operating results. Moreover, there could be public announcements of the results of hearings, motions or other interim proceedings or developments and if securities analysts or investors perceive these results to be negative, it could have a substantial adverse effect on the price of our common stock. We expect that the occurrence of infringement claims is likely to grow as the market for our platform and products grows. Accordingly, our exposure to damages resulting from infringement claims could increase and this could further exhaust our financial and management resources.

Any future litigation against us could be costly and time-consuming to defend.

We may become subject to legal proceedings and claims that arise in the ordinary course of business, such as claims brought by our customers in connection with commercial disputes or employment claims made by our current or former employees. Litigation might result in substantial costs and may divert management’s attention and resources, which might seriously harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. Insurance might not cover such claims, might not provide sufficient payments to cover all the costs to resolve one or more such claims, and might not continue to be available on terms acceptable to us. A claim brought against us that is uninsured or underinsured could result in unanticipated costs, potentially harming our business, financial position and results of operations.

We use open source software in our products, which could negatively affect our ability to sell our services or subject us to litigation or other actions.

We use open source software in our products and we expect to continue to incorporate open source software in our services in the future. Few of the licenses applicable to open source software have been interpreted by courts, and there is a risk that these licenses could be construed in a manner that could impose unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to commercialize our products. Moreover, we cannot ensure that we have not incorporated additional open source software in our software in a manner that is inconsistent with the terms of the applicable license or our current policies and procedures. If we fail to comply with these licenses, we may be subject to certain requirements, including requirements that we offer our solutions that incorporate the open source software for no cost, that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the open source software and that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of applicable open source licenses. If an author or other third party that distributes such open source software were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, enjoined from the sale of our products that contained the open source software and required to comply with onerous conditions or restrictions on these products, which could disrupt the distribution and sale of these products. From time to time, there have been claims challenging the ownership rights in open source software against companies that incorporate it into their products and the licensors of such open source software provide no warranties or indemnities with respect to such claims. As a result, we and our customers could be subject to lawsuits by parties claiming ownership of what we believe to be open source software. Litigation could be costly for us to defend, have a negative effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations, or require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our products. In addition, although we employ open source software license screening measures, if we were to combine our proprietary software products with open source software in a certain manner we could, under certain open source licenses, be required to release the source code of our proprietary software products. Some open source projects have known vulnerabilities and architectural instabilities and are provided on an “as-is” basis which, if not properly addressed, could negatively affect the performance of our product. If we inappropriately use or incorporate open source software subject to certain types of open source licenses that challenge the proprietary nature of our products, we may be required to re-engineer such products, discontinue the sale of such products or take other remedial actions.

 

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Unfavorable conditions in our industry or the global economy, or reductions in information technology spending, could limit our ability to grow our business and negatively affect our results of operations.

Our results of operations may vary based on the impact of changes in our industry or the global economy on us or our customers and potential customers. Negative conditions in the general economy both in the United States and abroad, including conditions resulting from changes in gross domestic product growth, financial and credit market fluctuations, international trade relations, political turmoil, natural catastrophes, warfare and terrorist attacks on the United States, Europe, the Asia Pacific region, Japan or elsewhere, could cause a decrease in business investments, including spending on information technology, and negatively affect the growth of our business. Competitors, many of whom are larger and have greater financial resources than we do, may respond to challenging market conditions by lowering prices in an attempt to attract our customers. In addition, the increased pace of consolidation in certain industries may result in reduced overall spending on our products and solutions. We cannot predict the timing, strength, or duration of any economic slowdown, instability, or recovery, generally or within any particular industry.

Our current operations are international in scope, and we plan further geographic expansion, creating a variety of operational challenges.

A component of our growth strategy involves the further expansion of our operations and customer base internationally. Customers outside North America generated 24% of ARR as of December 31, 2018. Beyond North America, we now have sales presence internationally, including in Dublin, Paris, London, Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul and Sydney. We are continuing to adapt to and develop strategies to address international markets, but there is no guarantee that such efforts will have the desired effect. For example, we anticipate that we will need to establish relationships with new partners in order to expand into certain countries, and if we fail to identify, establish and maintain such relationships, we may be unable to execute on our expansion plans. As of June 30, 2019, approximately 31% of our full-time employees were located outside of the United States, 50% of whom were located in France. We expect that our international activities will continue to grow for the foreseeable future as we continue to pursue opportunities in existing and new international markets, which will require significant dedication of management attention and financial resources.

Our current and future international business and operations involve a variety of risks, including:

 

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slower than anticipated availability and adoption of cloud and hybrid IT infrastructures by international businesses;

 

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changes in a specific country’s or region’s political or economic conditions, including in the United Kingdom as a result of the United Kingdom exiting the European Union, or Brexit;

 

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the need to adapt and localize our products for specific countries;

 

•

greater difficulty collecting accounts receivable and longer payment cycles;

 

•

potential changes in trade relations, regulations, or laws;

 

•

unexpected changes in laws, regulatory requirements, or tax laws;

 

•

more stringent regulations relating to privacy and data security and the unauthorized use of, or access to, commercial and personal information, particularly in Europe;

 

•

differing and potentially more onerous labor regulations, especially in Europe, where labor laws are generally more advantageous to employees as compared to the United States, including deemed hourly wage and overtime regulations in these locations;

 

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challenges inherent in efficiently managing, and the increased costs associated with, an increased number of employees over large geographic distances, including the need to implement appropriate systems, policies, benefits, and compliance programs that are specific to each jurisdiction;

 

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potential changes in laws, regulations and costs affecting our U.K. operations and local employees due to Brexit;

 

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difficulties in managing a business in new markets with diverse cultures, languages, customs, legal systems, alternative dispute systems, and regulatory systems;

 

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increased travel, real estate, infrastructure, and legal compliance costs associated with international operations;

 

•

currency exchange rate fluctuations and the resulting effect on our revenue and expenses, and the cost and risk of entering into hedging transactions if we chose to do so in the future;

 

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limitations on our ability to reinvest earnings from operations in one country to fund the capital needs of our operations in other countries;

 

•

laws and business practices favoring local competitors or general market preferences for local vendors;

 

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limited or insufficient intellectual property protection or difficulties obtaining, maintaining, protecting or enforcing our intellectual property rights, including our trademarks and patents;

 

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political instability or terrorist activities;

 

•

exposure to liabilities under anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws, including the FCPA, U.S. bribery laws, the UK Bribery Act, and similar laws and regulations in other jurisdictions; and

 

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adverse tax burdens and foreign exchange controls that could make it difficult to repatriate earnings and cash.

If we invest substantial time and resources to further expand our international operations and are unable to do so successfully and in a timely manner, our business and results of operations will suffer.

Legal, political and economic uncertainty surrounding the planned exit of the United Kingdom from the EU may be a source of instability in international markets, create significant currency fluctuations, adversely affect our operations in the United Kingdom and pose additional risks to our business, financial condition and results of operations.

On March 29, 2017, the United Kingdom formally notified the European Council of its intention to leave the EU Pursuant to Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. The United Kingdom will cease to be an EU Member State either on the effective date of a withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years following such notification of its intention to leave the EU, or the Brexit Date, unless the European Council (together with the United Kingdom) unanimously decides to extend the two year period. It is unclear how long it will take to negotiate a withdrawal agreement, but it appears likely that Brexit will continue to involve a process of lengthy negotiations between the United Kingdom and EU member states to determine the future terms of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the EU To date, no formal withdrawal arrangements have been agreed, and there have been several extensions to the Brexit Date. On April 11, 2019, the Brexit Date was further extended to October 31, 2019. The purpose of this extension is to allow for the ratification of a withdrawal agreement by the U.K. House of Commons. If the withdrawal agreement is ratified, the United Kingdom will leave the EU earlier than October 31, 2019.

Lack of clarity about future U.K. laws and regulations as the United Kingdom determines which EU rules and regulations to replace or replicate in the event of a withdrawal, including financial laws and regulations, tax and free trade agreements, intellectual property rights, supply chain logistics, environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, immigration laws and employment laws, could decrease foreign direct investment in the United Kingdom, increase costs, depress economic activity, and restrict access to capital. In addition, depending on the terms of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU, the United Kingdom could lose the benefits of global trade agreements negotiated by the EU on behalf of its members. The long-term effects of Brexit will depend on any agreements (or lack thereof) between the United Kingdom and the EU and, in particular, any arrangements for the United Kingdom to retain access to EU markets either during a transitional period or more permanently.

 

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Such a withdrawal from the EU is unprecedented, and it is unclear how the United Kingdom’s access to the European single market for goods, capital, services and labor within the EU, or the European single market, and the wider commercial, legal and regulatory environment, will impact our U.K. operations, including our customers in the United Kingdom. We may also face new regulatory costs and challenges that could have an adverse effect on our operations. The announcement of Brexit has already created economic uncertainty, and its consequences could adversely impact our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates, which could negatively affect our results of operations.

Our sales contracts are denominated in U.S. dollars, and therefore, our revenue is not subject to foreign currency risk. However, a strengthening of the U.S. dollar could increase the real cost of our products and platform capabilities to our customers outside of the United States, which could adversely affect our results of operations. In addition, an increasing portion of our operating expenses are incurred outside the United States. These operating expenses are denominated in foreign currencies and are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. If we are not able to successfully hedge against the risks associated with currency fluctuations, our results of operations could be adversely affected.

Our international operations may subject us to potential adverse tax consequences.

We are expanding our international operations to better support our growth into international markets. Our corporate structure and associated transfer pricing policies contemplate future growth in international markets, and consider the functions, risks, and assets of the various entities involved in intercompany transactions. The amount of taxes we pay in different jurisdictions may depend on the application of the tax laws of the various jurisdictions, including the United States, to our international business activities, changes in tax rates, new or revised tax laws or interpretations of existing tax laws and policies, and our ability to operate our business in a manner consistent with our corporate structure and intercompany arrangements. The taxing authorities of the jurisdictions in which we operate may challenge our methodologies for pricing intercompany transactions pursuant to our intercompany arrangements or disagree with our determinations as to the income and expenses attributable to specific jurisdictions. If such a challenge or disagreement were to occur, and our position was not sustained, we could be required to pay additional taxes, interest, and penalties, which could result in one-time tax charges, higher effective tax rates, reduced cash flows and lower overall profitability of our operations. Our financial statements could fail to reflect adequate reserves to cover such a contingency.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or the Tax Act, makes broad and complex changes to the U.S. tax code including, among other things, changes to U.S. federal tax rates, imposes additional limitations on the deductibility of interest, has both positive and negative changes to the utilization of future net operating loss, or NOL, carryforwards, allows for the expensing of certain capital expenditures, and puts into effect the migration from a “worldwide” system of taxation to a territorial system. We completed our accounting with respect to the Tax Act in 2018, and did not make any measurement-period adjustments.

We could be required to collect additional sales taxes or be subject to other tax liabilities that may increase the costs our clients would have to pay for our products and adversely affect our results of operations.

An increasing number of states have considered or adopted laws that attempt to impose tax collection obligations on out-of-state companies. Additionally, the Supreme Court of the United States recently ruled in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. et al, or Wayfair, that online sellers can be required to collect sales and use tax despite not having a physical presence in the buyer’s state. In response to Wayfair, or otherwise, states or local governments may adopt, or begin to enforce, laws requiring us to calculate, collect, and remit taxes on sales in their jurisdictions. A successful assertion by one or more states requiring us to collect taxes where we presently do not do so, or to collect more taxes in a jurisdiction in which we currently do collect some taxes, could result in substantial tax liabilities, including taxes on past sales, as well as penalties and interest. The imposition by state

 

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governments or local governments of sales tax collection obligations on out-of-state sellers could also create additional administrative burdens for us, put us at a competitive disadvantage if they do not impose similar obligations on our competitors, and decrease our future sales, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.

Our ability to use our net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations.

As of December 31, 2018, we had NOL carryforwards for federal and state income tax purposes of approximately $28.0 million and $24.2 million, respectively, which may be available to offset taxable income in the future, and which expire in various years beginning in 2031 for federal purposes and 2029 for state purposes if not utilized. A lack of future taxable income would adversely affect our ability to utilize these NOLs before they expire. In general, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” (as defined under Section 382 of the Code and applicable Treasury Regulations) is subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its pre-change NOLs to offset future taxable income. We may experience a future ownership change (including, potentially, in connection with this offering) under Section 382 of the Code that could affect our ability to utilize the NOLs to offset our income. Furthermore, our ability to utilize NOLs of companies that we have acquired or may acquire in the future may be subject to limitations. There is also a risk that due to regulatory changes, such as suspensions on the use of NOLs or other unforeseen reasons, our existing NOLs could expire or otherwise be unavailable to reduce future income tax liabilities, including for state tax purposes. For these reasons, we may not be able to utilize a material portion of the NOLs reflected on our balance sheet, even if we attain profitability, which could potentially result in increased future tax liability to us and could adversely affect our operating results and financial condition.

Changes in our effective tax rate or tax liability may have an adverse effect on our results of operations.

Our effective tax rate could increase due to several factors, including:

 

•

changes in the relative amounts of income before taxes in the various jurisdictions in which we operate that have differing statutory tax rates;

 

•

changes in tax laws, tax treaties, and regulations or the interpretation of them, including the Tax Act;

 

•

changes to our assessment about our ability to realize our deferred tax assets that are based on estimates of our future results, the prudence and feasibility of possible tax planning strategies, and the economic and political environments in which we do business;

 

•

the outcome of current and future tax audits, examinations, or administrative appeals; and

 

•

limitations or adverse findings regarding our ability to do business in some jurisdictions.

Any of these developments could adversely affect our results of operations.

Our reported financial results may be adversely affected by changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States.

U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB, the SEC and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported results of operations and could affect the reporting of transactions already completed before the announcement of a change.

If our estimates or judgments relating to our critical accounting policies prove to be incorrect, our results of operations could be adversely affected.

The preparation of financial statements in conformity with GAAP requires management to make estimates and assumptions that affect the amounts reported in our consolidated financial statements and accompanying

 

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notes appearing elsewhere in this prospectus. We base our estimates on historical experience and on various other assumptions that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, as provided in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations- Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates.” The results of these estimates form the basis for making judgments about the carrying values of assets, liabilities and equity, and the amount of revenue and expenses that are not readily apparent from other sources. Significant estimates and judgments involve revenue recognition, deferred contract costs, and the valuation of our stock-based compensation awards, including the determination of fair value of our common stock, among others. Our results of operations may be adversely affected if our assumptions change or if actual circumstances differ from those in our assumptions, which could cause our results of operations to fall below the expectations of securities analysts and investors, resulting in a decline in the market price of our Class A common stock.

We may require additional capital to support the growth of our business, and this capital might not be available on acceptable terms, if at all.

We have funded our operations since inception primarily through equity financings and sales of our products. We cannot be certain when or if our operations will generate sufficient cash to fully fund our ongoing operations or the growth of our business. We intend to continue to make investments to support our business, which may require us to engage in equity or debt financings to secure additional funds. Additional financing may not be available on terms favorable to us, if at all. If adequate funds are not available on acceptable terms, we may be unable to invest in future growth opportunities, which could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. If we incur additional debt, the debt holders would have rights senior to holders of common stock to make claims on our assets, and the terms of any debt could restrict our operations, including our ability to pay dividends on our common stock. Furthermore, if we issue additional equity securities, stockholders will experience dilution, and the new equity securities could have rights senior to those of our common stock. Because our decision to issue securities in the future will depend on numerous considerations, including factors beyond our control, we cannot predict or estimate the amount, timing, or nature of any future issuances of debt or equity securities. As a result, our stockholders bear the risk of future issuances of debt or equity securities reducing the value of our common stock and diluting their interests.

Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock

Our stock price may be volatile, and the value of our Class A common stock may decline.

The market price of our Class A common stock may be highly volatile and may fluctuate or decline substantially as a result of a variety of factors, some of which are beyond our control, including:

 

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actual or anticipated fluctuations in our financial condition or results of operations;

 

•

variance in our financial performance from expectations of securities analysts;

 

•

changes in the pricing of subscriptions to our products;

 

•

changes in our projected operating and financial results;

 

•

changes in laws or regulations applicable to our platform and products;

 

•

announcements by us or our competitors of significant business developments, acquisitions, or new offerings;

 

•

significant data breaches, disruptions to or other incidents involving our software;

 

•

our involvement in litigation;

 

•

future sales of our Class A common stock by us or our stockholders, as well as the anticipation of lock-up releases;

 

•

changes in senior management or key personnel;

 

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•

the trading volume of our Class A common stock;

 

•

changes in the anticipated future size and growth rate of our market; and

 

•

general economic and market conditions.

Broad market and industry fluctuations, as well as general economic, political, regulatory, and market conditions, may also negatively impact the market price of our Class A common stock. In addition, technology stocks have historically experienced high levels of volatility. In the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their securities have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future, which could result in substantial expenses and divert our management’s attention.

The dual class structure of our common stock will have the effect of concentrating voting control with our executive officers, directors and their affiliates, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions.

Our Class B common stock has              votes per share and our Class A common stock, which is the stock we are offering in this offering, has one vote per share. Our existing stockholders, all of which hold shares of Class B common stock, will collectively beneficially own shares representing approximately     % of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock following the completion of this offering. Our directors and executive officers and their affiliates will collectively beneficially own, in the aggregate, shares representing approximately     % of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock immediately following the completion of this offering, based on the number of shares outstanding as of June 30, 2019. As a result, the holders of our Class B common stock will be able to exercise considerable influence over matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or our assets, even if their stock holdings represent less than 50% of the outstanding shares of our capital stock. This concentration of ownership will limit the ability of other stockholders to influence corporate matters and may cause us to make strategic decisions that could involve risks to you or that may not be aligned with your interests. This control may adversely affect the market price of our Class A common stock.

Further, future transfers by holders of our Class B common stock will generally result in those shares converting into shares of our Class A common stock, subject to limited exceptions, such as certain transfers effected for tax or estate planning purposes. The conversion of shares of our Class B common stock into shares of our Class A common stock will have the effect, over time, of increasing the relative voting power of those holders of Class B common stock who retain their shares in the long term. For example, as of June 30, 2019, Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc represented approximately 23% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, and if they retain a significant portion of their holdings of our Class B common stock for an extended period of time, they could control a significant portion of the voting power of our capital stock for the foreseeable future. As board members, Messrs. Pomel and Lê-Quôc each owe a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith and in a manner they each reasonably believe to be in the best interests of our stockholders. As stockholders, Messrs. Pomel and Lê-Quôc are entitled to vote their shares in their own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our stockholders generally.

We cannot predict the impact our dual class structure may have on the market price of our Class A common stock.

We cannot predict whether our dual class structure, combined with the concentrated control of our stockholders who held our capital stock prior to the completion of our IPO, including our executive officers, employees and directors and their affiliates, will result in a lower or more volatile market price of our Class A common stock or in adverse publicity or other adverse consequences. For example, certain index providers have announced restrictions on including companies with multiple class share structures in certain of their indexes. For

 

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example, in July 2017, FTSE Russell and Standard & Poor’s announced that they would cease to allow most newly public companies utilizing dual or multi-class capital structures to be included in their indices. Under the announced policies, our dual class capital structure would make us ineligible for inclusion in any of these indices. Given the sustained flow of investment funds into passive strategies that seek to track certain indexes, exclusion from stock indexes would likely preclude investment by many of these funds and could make our Class A common stock less attractive to other investors. As a result, the market price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected.

No public market for our Class A common stock currently exists, and an active public trading market may not develop or be sustained following this offering.

No public market for our Class A common stock currently exists. An active public trading market for our Class A common stock may not develop following the completion of this offering or, if developed, it may not be sustained. The lack of an active market may impair your ability to sell your shares at the time you wish to sell them or at a price that you consider reasonable. The lack of an active market may also reduce the fair value of your shares. An inactive market may also impair our ability to raise capital to continue to fund operations by selling shares and may impair our ability to acquire other companies or technologies by using our shares as consideration.

We will have broad discretion in the use of the net proceeds to us from this offering and may not use them effectively.

We will have broad discretion in the application of the net proceeds to us from this offering, including for any of the purposes described in the section titled “Use of Proceeds,” and you will not have the opportunity as part of your investment decision to assess whether the net proceeds are being used appropriately. Because of the number and variability of factors that will determine our use of the net proceeds from this offering, our ultimate use may vary substantially from our currently intended use. Investors will need to rely upon the judgment of our management with respect to the use of proceeds. Pending use, we may invest the net proceeds from this offering in short-term, investment-grade, interest-bearing securities, such as money market accounts, certificates of deposit, commercial paper, and guaranteed obligations of the U.S. government that may not generate a high yield for our stockholders. If we do not use the net proceeds that we receive in this offering effectively, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects could be harmed, and the market price of our Class A common stock could decline.

Future sales of our Class A common stock in the public market could cause the market price of our Class A common stock to decline.

Sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock in the public market following the completion of this offering, or the perception that these sales might occur, could depress the market price of our Class A common stock and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. Many of our existing equityholders have substantial unrecognized gains on the value of the equity they hold based upon the price of this offering, and therefore they may take steps to sell their shares or otherwise secure the unrecognized gains on those shares. We are unable to predict the timing of or the effect that such sales may have on the prevailing market price of our Class A common stock.

All of our directors and officers and the holders of substantially all of our capital stock and securities convertible into our capital stock are subject to lock-up agreements that restrict their ability to transfer shares of our capital stock for 180 days from the date of this prospectus, subject to certain exceptions; provided that such restricted period will end with respect to 20% of the shares subject to each lock-up agreement if at any time beginning 90 days after the date of this prospectus (1) we have filed at least one quarterly report on Form 10-Q or annual report on Form 10-K and (2) the last reported closing price of our Class A common stock is at least 33% greater than the initial public offering price of our Class A common stock for 10 out of any 15 consecutive

 

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trading days, including the last day, ending on or after the 90th day after the date of this prospectus; and provided further that, if 90 days after the date of this prospectus occurs within five trading days of a trading black-out period, the above referenced early expiration period will be the sixth trading day immediately preceding the commencement of the trading black-out period. In addition, with respect to shares not released as a result of such early release, if the 180th day after the date of this prospectus occurs within five trading days of a trading black-out period, the lock-up period will expire on the sixth trading day immediately preceding the commencement of the trading black-out period. Subject to certain limitations, approximately                  shares of Class A common stock will become eligible for sale upon expiration of the 180-day lock-up period. Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and either of Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC or J.P. Morgan Securities LLC may, in their sole discretion, permit our stockholders who are subject to these lock-up agreements to sell shares prior to the expiration of the lock-up agreements, subject to applicable notice requirements.

In addition, there were 11,539,501 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of options outstanding as of June 30, 2019. We intend to register all of the shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of outstanding options or other equity incentives we may grant in the future, for public resale under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Securities Act. The shares of Class A common stock will become eligible for sale in the public market to the extent such options are exercised, subject to the lock-up agreements described above and compliance with applicable securities laws.

Further, based on shares outstanding as of June 30, 2019, holders of approximately                  shares, or             % of our capital stock after the completion of this offering, will have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering the sale of their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or other stockholders.

Our issuance of additional capital stock in connection with financings, acquisitions, investments, our equity incentive plans or otherwise will dilute all other stockholders.

We expect to issue additional capital stock in the future that will result in dilution to all other stockholders. We expect to grant equity awards to employees, directors and consultants under our equity incentive plans. We may also raise capital through equity financings in the future. As part of our business strategy, we may acquire or make investments in companies, products or technologies and issue equity securities to pay for any such acquisition or investment. Any such issuances of additional capital stock may cause stockholders to experience significant dilution of their ownership interests and the per share value of our Class A common stock to decline.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish unfavorable or inaccurate research about our business, the market price and trading volume of our Class A common stock could decline.

The market price and trading volume of our Class A common stock following the completion of this offering will be heavily influenced by the way analysts interpret our financial information and other disclosures. We do not have control over these analysts. If few securities analysts commence coverage of us, or if industry analysts cease coverage of us, our stock price would be negatively affected. If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, downgrade our Class A common stock, or publish negative reports about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our Class A common stock could decrease, which might cause our stock price to decline and could decrease the trading volume of our Class A common stock.

You will experience immediate and substantial dilution in the net tangible book value of the shares of Class A common stock you purchase in this offering.

The initial public offering price of our Class A common stock will be substantially higher than the pro forma net tangible book value per share of our common stock immediately after this offering. If you purchase shares of our Class A common stock in this offering, you will suffer immediate dilution of $             per share, or $             per share if the underwriters exercise their over-allotment option in full, representing the difference between our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share after giving effect to the sale of Class A common stock in this offering and the assumed public offering price of $             per share, the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus. See the section titled “Dilution.”

 

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We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future and, as a result, your ability to achieve a return on your investment will depend on appreciation in the price of our Class A common stock.

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our capital stock, and we do not intend to pay any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Accordingly, you may need to rely on sales of our Class A common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on your investment.

We are an “emerging growth company,” and we cannot be certain if the reduced reporting and disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our Class A common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, and we may take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies,” including the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or Section 404, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. Pursuant to Section 107 of the JOBS Act, as an emerging growth company, we have elected to use the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. As a result, our consolidated financial statements may not be comparable to the financial statements of issuers who are required to comply with the effective dates for new or revised accounting standards that are applicable to public companies, which may make our Class A common stock less attractive to investors. In addition, if we cease to be an emerging growth company, we will no longer be able to use the extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards.

We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest of: (1) the last day of the fiscal year following the fifth anniversary of this offering; (2) the last day of the first fiscal year in which our annual gross revenue is $1.07 billion or more; (3) the date on which we have, during the previous rolling three-year period, issued more than $1 billion in non-convertible debt securities; and (4) the last day of the fiscal year in which the market value of our Class A common stock held by non-affiliates exceeded $700 million as of June 30 of such fiscal year.

We cannot predict if investors will find our Class A common stock less attractive if we choose to rely on these exemptions. For example, if we do not adopt a new or revised accounting standard, our future results of operations may not be as comparable to the results of operations of certain other companies in our industry that adopted such standards. If some investors find our Class A common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our Class A common stock, and our stock price may be more volatile.

We will incur increased costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management will be required to devote substantial time to compliance with our public company responsibilities and corporate governance practices.

As a public company, we will incur significant legal, accounting, and other expenses that we did not incur as a private company, which we expect to further increase after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the listing requirements of the Nasdaq Global Select Market, or Nasdaq, and other applicable securities rules and regulations impose various requirements on public companies. Our management and other personnel devote a substantial amount of time to compliance with these requirements. Moreover, these rules and regulations will increase our legal and financial compliance costs and will make some activities more time-consuming and costly. We cannot predict or estimate the amount of additional costs we will incur as a public company or the specific timing of such costs.

 

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As a result of being a public company, we are obligated to develop and maintain proper and effective internal controls over financial reporting, and any failure to maintain the adequacy of these internal controls may adversely affect investor confidence in our company and, as a result, the value of our Class A common stock.

We are required, pursuant to Section 404 to furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020. This assessment will need to include disclosure of any material weaknesses identified by our management in our internal control over financial reporting. In addition, our independent registered public accounting firm will be required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting in our first annual report required to be filed with the SEC following the date we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” We have recently commenced the costly and challenging process of compiling the system and processing documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404, but we may not be able to complete our evaluation, testing and any required remediation in a timely fashion once initiated. Our compliance with Section 404 will require that we incur substantial expenses and expend significant management efforts. We currently do not have an internal audit group, and we will need to hire additional accounting and financial staff with appropriate public company experience and technical accounting knowledge and compile the system and process documentation necessary to perform the evaluation needed to comply with Section 404.

During the evaluation and testing process of our internal controls, if we identify one or more material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, we will be unable to certify that our internal control over financial reporting is effective. We cannot assure you that there will not be material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting in the future. Any failure to maintain internal control over financial reporting could severely inhibit our ability to accurately report our financial condition or results of operations. If we are unable to conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm determines we have a material weakness or significant deficiency in our internal control over financial reporting, we could lose investor confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our Class A common stock could decline, and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the SEC or other regulatory authorities. Failure to remedy any material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, or to implement or maintain other effective control systems required of public companies, could also restrict our future access to the capital markets.

Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could make an acquisition of our company more difficult, limit attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management and limit the market price of our Class A common stock.

Provisions in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws, as they will be in effect upon the completion of this offering, may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws will include provisions that:

 

•

authorize our board of directors to issue, without further action by the stockholders, shares of undesignated preferred stock with terms, rights, and preferences determined by our board of directors that may be senior to our Class A common stock;

 

•

require that any action to be taken by our stockholders be effected at a duly called annual or special meeting and not by written consent;

 

•

specify that special meetings of our stockholders can be called only by our board of directors, the chairperson of our board of directors, or our chief executive officer;

 

•

establish an advance notice procedure for stockholder proposals to be brought before an annual meeting, including proposed nominations of persons for election to our board of directors;

 

•

establish that our board of directors is divided into three classes, with each class serving three-year staggered terms;

 

42

•

prohibit cumulative voting in the election of directors;

 

•

provide that our directors may be removed for cause only upon the vote of at least 66 2/3% of our outstanding shares of voting stock;

 

•

provide that vacancies on our board of directors may be filled only by a majority of directors then in office, even though less than a quorum; and

 

•

require the approval of our board of directors or the holders of at least 66 2/3% of our outstanding shares of voting stock to amend our bylaws and certain provisions of our certificate of incorporation.

These provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management. In addition, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which generally, subject to certain exceptions, prohibits a Delaware corporation from engaging in any of a broad range of business combinations with any “interested” stockholder for a period of three years following the date on which the stockholder became an “interested” stockholder. Any of the foregoing provisions could limit the price that investors might be willing to pay in the future for shares of our Class A common stock, and they could deter potential acquirers of our company, thereby reducing the likelihood that you would receive a premium for your shares of our Class A common stock in an acquisition.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will designate the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware and, to the extent enforceable, the federal district courts of the United States of America as the exclusive forums for substantially all disputes between us and our stockholders, which will restrict our stockholders’ ability to choose the judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, as will be in effect upon the completion of this offering, will provide that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the exclusive forum for the following types of actions or proceedings under Delaware statutory or common law: any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; any action asserting a breach of a fiduciary duty; any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, or our amended and restated bylaws; or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine. The provisions would not apply to suits brought to enforce a duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. In addition, our amended and restated certificate of incorporation will provide that the federal district courts of the United States of America will be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act, subject to and contingent upon a final adjudication in the State of Delaware of the enforceability of such exclusive forum provision.

These choice of forum provisions may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or other employees. If a court were to find either choice of forum provision contained in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions. For example, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware recently determined that the exclusive forum provision of federal district courts of the United States of America for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act is not enforceable. However, this decision may be reviewed and ultimately overturned by the Delaware Supreme Court. If this ultimate adjudication were to occur, we would enforce the federal district court exclusive forum provision in our amended and restated certificate of incorporation.

 

43

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This prospectus contains forward-looking statements about us and our industry that involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical facts contained in this prospectus, including statements regarding our future results of operations or financial condition, business strategy and plans and objectives of management for future operations, are forward-looking statements. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “contemplate,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “potential,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” “target,” “will” or “would” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning the following:

 

•

our expectations regarding our revenue, expenses and other operating results;

 

•

our ability to acquire new customers and successfully retain existing customers;

 

•

our ability to increase usage of our platform and upsell and cross sell additional products;

 

•

our ability to achieve or sustain our profitability;

 

•

future investments in our business, our anticipated capital expenditures and our estimates regarding our capital requirements;

 

•

the costs and success of our sales and marketing efforts, and our ability to promote our brand;

 

•

our reliance on key personnel and our ability to identify, recruit and retain skilled personnel;

 

•

our ability to effectively manage our growth, including any international expansion;

 

•

our ability to protect our intellectual property rights and any costs associated therewith;

 

•

our ability to compete effectively with existing competitors and new market entrants; and

 

•

the growth rates of the markets in which we compete.

You should not rely on forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We have based the forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition and operating results. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors described in the section titled “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this prospectus. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus. The results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

In addition, statements that “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based on information available to us as of the date of this prospectus. And while we believe that information provides a reasonable basis for these statements, that information may be limited or incomplete. Our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain, and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on these statements.

The forward-looking statements made in this prospectus relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this prospectus to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this prospectus or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law. We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements, and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures or investments.

 

44

MARKET, INDUSTRY AND OTHER DATA

This prospectus contains statistical data, estimates and forecasts that are based on independent industry publications or other publicly available information, as well as other information based on our internal sources. While we believe the industry and market data included in this prospectus are reliable and are based on reasonable assumptions, these data involve many assumptions and limitations, and you are cautioned not to give undue weight to these estimates. We have not independently verified the accuracy or completeness of the data contained in these industry publications and other publicly available information. None of the industry publications referred to in this prospectus were prepared on our or on our affiliates’ behalf or at our expense. The industry in which we operate is subject to a high degree of uncertainty and risk due to a variety of factors, including those described in the section titled “Risk Factors,” that could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in these publications and other publicly available information.

The sources of certain statistical data, estimates and forecasts contained in this prospectus are the following independent industry publications or reports:

 

•

Gartner: Market Insight: Cloud Shift—2018 to 2022, published August 24, 2018; Magic Quadrant for Application Performance Monitoring Suites, published March 14, 2018; Market Guide for IT Infrastructure Monitoring Tools, published July 9, 2018; Forecast: Enterprise Infrastructure Software, Worldwide, 2017-2023, 1Q19 Update, published March 26, 2019.

 

•

IDC: Worldwide Semi-Annual Public Cloud Services Spending Guide 2018H1, published December 2018.

The Gartner reports described herein represent research opinions or viewpoints published as part of a syndicated subscription service by Gartner, Inc., and are not representations of fact. Each Gartner report speaks as of its original publication date (and not as of the date of this prospectus) and the opinions expressed in the Gartner reports are subject to change without notice.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

 

45

USE OF PROCEEDS

We estimate that we will receive net proceeds from this offering of approximately $            million (or approximately $            million if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares of our Class A common stock from us in full) based on an assumed initial public offering price of $            per share of Class A common stock, the midpoint of the estimated price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.

A $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $            per share of Class A common stock would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us from this offering by approximately $            million, assuming the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. Similarly, each increase (decrease) of 1,000,000 shares in the number of shares of Class A common stock offered by us would increase (decrease) the net proceeds to us from this offering by approximately $            million, assuming the assumed initial public offering price of $            per share of Class A common stock remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.

The principal purposes of this offering are to increase our capitalization and financial flexibility, and create a public market for our Class A common stock, and facilitate our future access to the capital markets. As of the date of this prospectus, we cannot specify with certainty all of the particular uses for the net proceeds to us from this offering. However, we currently intend to use the net proceeds we receive from this offering for general corporate purposes, including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures. We may also use a portion of the net proceeds to acquire complementary businesses, products, services or technologies. However, we do not have agreements or commitments to enter into any acquisitions at this time.

We will have broad discretion over how to use the net proceeds to us from this offering. We intend to invest the net proceeds to us from the offering that are not used as described above in investment-grade, interest-bearing instruments.

 

46

DIVIDEND POLICY

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain all available funds and future earnings, if any, to fund the development and expansion of our business, and we do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. Any future determination regarding the declaration and payment of dividends, if any, will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on then-existing conditions, including our financial condition, operating results, contractual restrictions, capital requirements, business prospects and other factors our board of directors may deem relevant.

 

47

CAPITALIZATION

The following table sets forth our cash and capitalization as of June 30, 2019:

 

•

on an actual basis;

 

•

on a pro forma basis, giving effect to (1) the reclassification of our common stock into Class B common stock, (2) the automatic conversion of all of our outstanding shares of convertible preferred stock into 59,670,477 shares of Class B common stock, and (3) the filing and effectiveness of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, each of which will occur immediately prior to the completion of this offering; and

 

•

on a pro forma as adjusted basis, giving effect to (1) the pro forma adjustments set forth above and (2) our receipt of estimated net proceeds from the sale of shares of Class A common stock that we are offering at an assumed initial public offering price of $         per share, the midpoint of the price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, after deducting the estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.

 

48

You should read this table together with the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and our consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus.

 

As of June 30, 2019

Actual

Pro Forma

Pro Forma As Adjusted

(in thousands except share and per share amounts)

Cash

$

$

$

Convertible preferred stock, $0.00001 par value, 59,938,304 shares authorized, 59,670,477 shares issued and outstanding, actual, and no shares authorized, issued and outstanding, pro forma and pro forma as adjusted

$

$

$

Stockholders’ (deficit) equity:

Preferred stock, $0.00001 par value, no shares authorized, issued, and outstanding, actual, and                  shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma and pro forma as adjusted

Common stock, $0.00001 par value, 120,379,000 authorized, 28,941,078 shares issued and outstanding, actual, and no shares authorized, issued and outstanding, pro forma and pro forma as adjusted

Class A common stock, $0.00001 par value, no shares authorized, issued and outstanding, actual,                  shares authorized and no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma,                  shares authorized and                  shares issued and outstanding, pro forma as adjusted

Class B common stock, $0.00001 par value, no shares authorized, issued and outstanding, actual,                  shares authorized and              shares issued and outstanding, pro forma and pro forma as adjusted

Additional paid-in capital

Accumulated deficit

Total stockholders’ (deficit) equity

Total capitalization

$

$

$

A $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $         per share of Class A common stock, the midpoint of the estimated price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase (decrease) each of our pro forma as adjusted cash, additional paid-in capital, total stockholders’ (deficit) equity and total capitalization by approximately $         million, assuming the number of shares offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. Similarly, each increase (decrease) of 1,000,000 shares in the number of shares of Class A common stock offered by us would increase (decrease) each of our pro forma as adjusted cash, additional paid-in capital, total stockholders’ (deficit) equity and total capitalization by approximately $         million, assuming the assumed initial public offering price of $         per share of Class A common stock remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.

 

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The number of shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock that will be outstanding after this offering is based on no shares of Class A common stock and 88,611,555 shares of Class B common stock outstanding as of June 30, 2019, and excludes:

 

•

11,539,501 shares of Class B common stock issuable on the exercise of stock options outstanding as of June 30, 2019 under our 2012 Plan with a weighted-average exercise price of $4.58 per share;

 

•

shares of Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2019 Plan, as well as any future increases, including annual automatic evergreen increases in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2019 Plan; and

 

•

shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our ESPP, as well as any future increases, including annual automatic evergreen increases in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our ESPP.

 

50

DILUTION

If you invest in our Class A common stock in this offering, your interest will be diluted to the extent of the difference between the initial public offering price per share of Class A common stock and the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share immediately after this offering.

Our pro forma net tangible book value as of June 30, 2019 was $             million, or $             per share. Pro forma net tangible book value per share represents the amount of our total tangible assets less our total liabilities, divided by the number of our shares of common stock outstanding as of June 30, 2019, after giving effect to the automatic conversion of all outstanding shares of convertible preferred stock into an aggregate of 59,670,477 shares of Class B common stock immediately prior to the completion of this offering.

After giving effect to the sale by us of          shares of Class A common stock in this offering at an assumed initial public offering price of $             per share, the midpoint of the estimated price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses, our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value as of June 30, 2019 would have been $             million, or $             per share. This amount represents an immediate increase in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value of $             per share to our existing stockholders and an immediate dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value of $             per share to new investors purchasing Class A common stock in this offering. We determine dilution by subtracting the pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share after this offering from the amount of cash that a new investor paid for a share of Class A common stock. The following table illustrates this dilution on a per share basis:

 

Assumed initial public offering price per share						$
Historical net tangible book value per share as of June 30, 2019		$
Increase per share attributable to the pro forma adjustments described above
Pro forma net tangible book value per share as of June 30, 2019
Increase in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share attributable to new investors purchasing shares in this offering
Pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share after this offering
Dilution in pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share to new investors in this offering						$

The dilution information discussed above is illustrative only and may change based on the actual initial public offering price and other terms of this offering. A $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $             per share of Class A common stock, the midpoint of the estimated price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase (decrease) our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value per share after this offering by $             per share and increase (decrease) the dilution to new investors by $             per share, in each case assuming the number of shares of Class A common stock offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions. Similarly, each increase or decrease of 1,000,000 shares in the number of shares of Class A common stock offered by us would increase (decrease) our pro forma as adjusted net tangible book value by approximately $             per share and decrease (increase) the dilution to new investors by approximately $             per share, in each case assuming the assumed initial public offering price of $             per share of Class A common stock remains the same, and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.

If the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares of Class A common stock in full, the pro forma net tangible book value per share, as adjusted to give effect to this offering, would be $             per share, and the dilution in pro forma net tangible book value per share to investors in this offering would be $             per share.

 

51

The following table summarizes, as of June 30, 2019, on a pro forma as adjusted basis as described above, the number of shares of our common stock, the total consideration and the average price per share (1) paid to us by existing stockholders, and (2) to be paid by new investors acquiring our Class A common stock in this offering at an assumed initial public offering price of $         per share, the midpoint of the estimated price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, before deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses.

 

		Shares Purchased								Total Consideration								Average Price Per Share
		Number				Percent				Amount				Percent
Existing stockholders								%								%
New investors
Totals							100.0	%		$					100.0	%

Each $1.00 increase (decrease) in the assumed initial public offering price of $         per share, the midpoint of the estimated price range set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, would increase (decrease) the total consideration paid by new investors and total consideration paid by all stockholders by approximately $         million, assuming that the number of shares of Class A common stock offered by us, as set forth on the cover page of this prospectus, remains the same and after deducting estimated underwriting discounts and commissions.

The number of shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock that will be outstanding after this offering is based on no shares of Class A common stock and 88,611,555 shares of Class B common stock outstanding as of June 30, 2019, and excludes:

 

•

11,539,501 shares of Class B common stock issuable on the exercise of stock options outstanding as of June 30, 2019 under our 2012 Plan with a weighted-average exercise price of $4.58 per share;

 

•

shares of Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our 2019 Plan, as well as any future increases, including annual automatic evergreen increases, in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2019 Plan; and

 

•

shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our ESPP, as well as any future increases, including annual automatic evergreen increases, in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for future issuance under our ESPP.

To the extent that any outstanding options are exercised or new options are issued under our stock-based compensation plans, or we issue additional shares of common stock in the future, there will be further dilution to investors participating in this offering. If all outstanding options under our 2012 Plan as of June 30, 2019 were exercised or settled, then our existing stockholders, including the holders of these options, would own     % and our new investors would own     % of the total number of shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock outstanding on the completion of this offering.

 

52

SELECTED CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL DATA

The selected consolidated statement of operations data for the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2018 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2017 and 2018 have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. The selected consolidated statements of operations data for the six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2019 and the selected consolidated balance sheet data as of June 30, 2019 have been derived from our unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. The unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared on the same basis as the annual consolidated financial statements, and in the opinion of management, reflect all adjustments, which include only normal recurring adjustments, necessary to present fairly our financial position and results of operations. You should read the consolidated financial data set forth below in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes and the information in “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” contained elsewhere in this prospectus. Our historical and interim results are not necessarily indicative of the results to be expected for the full year or any other period in the future.

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Six Months Ended June 30,
		2017				2018				2018				2019
		(in thousands, except share and per share data)
Consolidated Statements of Operations Data:
Revenue		$	100,761			$	198,077			$	85,393			$	153,272
Cost of revenue(1)(2)			23,414				46,529				18,592				39,928
Gross profit			77,347				151,548				66,801				113,344
Operating expenses:
Research and development(1)			24,734				55,176				23,297				46,847
Sales and marketing(1)			44,213				88,849				34,617				66,225
General and administrative(1)			11,356				18,556				8,611				13,928
Total operating expenses(3)			80,303				162,581				66,525				127,000
Operating (loss) income			(2,956	)			(11,033	)			276				(13,656	)
Other income, net			843				793				301				556
(Loss) income before income taxes			(2,113	)			(10,240	)			577				(13,100	)
Provision for income taxes			(457	)			(522	)			(79	)			(340	)
Net (loss) income		$	(2,570	)		$	(10,762	)		$	498			$	(13,440	)
Net (loss) income per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(4)		$	(0.13	)		$	(0.46	)		$	—			$	(0.51	)
Weighted-average shares used to compute net (loss) income per share attributable to common stockholders, basic(4)			20,440				23,650				22,619				26,522
Weighted-average shares used to compute net (loss) income per share attributable to common stockholders, diluted(4)			20,440				23,650				27,176				26,522
Pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(4)						$								$
Weighted-average shares used to compute pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(4)

 

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(1)	Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows:

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Six Months Ended June 30,
		2017				2018				2018				2019
		(in thousands)
Cost of revenue		$	112			$	287			$	108			$	211
Research and development			1,160				1,641				544				1,775
Sales and marketing			977				1,910				719				1,736
General and administrative			819				1,406				372				1,617
Total stock-based compensation expense		$	3,068			$	5,244			$	1,743			$	5,339

 

(2)	Includes amortization of acquired intangibles expense as follows:

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Six Months Ended June 30,
		2017				2018				2018				2019
		(in thousands)
Cost of revenue		$	484			$	511			$	220			$	352

 

(3)

Includes a $2.3 million, $0.4 million and $2.3 million benefit within Research and development, Sales and marketing and General and Administrative expenses, respectively, related to the release of a non-income tax liability for the six months ended June 30, 2019. See Note 7 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for further discussion.

 

(4)

See Note 12 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for an explanation of the calculations of our basic and diluted earnings per share attributable to common stockholders, pro forma earnings per share attributable to common stockholders and the weighted-average number of shares used in the computation of the per share amounts.

 

		As of December 31,								As of June 30, 2019
		2017				2018
Consolidated Balance Sheet Data:
Cash and cash equivalents		$	60,024			$	53,639			$	52,286
Total assets			127,062				179,750				261,759
Working capital(1)			43,164				9,717				(10,764	)
Convertible preferred stock			140,805				140,805				140,752
Total stockholders’ deficit			(75,701	)			(76,041	)			(79,223	)

 

(1)	Working capital is defined as current assets less current liabilities.

 

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MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF

FINANCIAL CONDITION AND RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with the section titled “Selected Consolidated Financial Data” and the consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus. Some of the information contained in this discussion and analysis, including information with respect to our planned investments in our research and development, sales and marketing and general and administrative functions, includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. You should review the sections titled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” and “Risk Factors” for a discussion of forward-looking statements and important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results described in or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in the following discussion and analysis.

Overview

Datadog is the monitoring and analytics platform for developers, IT operations teams and business users in the cloud age.

Our SaaS platform integrates and automates infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring and log management to provide unified, real-time observability of our customers’ entire technology stack. Datadog is used by organizations of all sizes and across a wide range of industries to enable digital transformation and cloud migration, drive collaboration among development, operations and business teams, accelerate time to market for applications, reduce time to problem resolution, understand user behavior and track key business metrics.

Software applications are transforming how organizations engage with customers and operate their businesses. Companies across all industries are re-platforming their businesses to cloud infrastructures to enable this digital transformation. Historically, engineering teams have been siloed, making the development of next generation applications on dynamic cloud environments challenging. We started Datadog to break this model and facilitate collaboration among development and operations teams, enabling the adoption of DevOps practices. Since then we have continuously pushed to unify separate tools into an integrated monitoring and analytics platform, readily available to everyone who cares about applications and their impact on business.

Our proprietary platform combines the power of metrics, traces and logs to provide a unified view of infrastructure and application performance and the real-time events impacting this performance. Datadog is designed to be cloud agnostic and easy to deploy, with hundreds of out-of-the-box integrations, a built-in understanding of modern technology stacks and endless customizability. Customers can deploy our platform across their entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous and a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders.

Datadog was founded in 2010, and we launched Datadog Infrastructure Monitoring in 2012 to provide enterprises with visibility across developers, IT operations teams and business users. Since then, we have added new functionality, launched new products and expanded our operations:

 

•

2010: Founded in New York

 

•

2012: Launched Datadog Infrastructure Monitoring

 

•

2013: Surpassed 100 customers

 

•

2014: Began monitoring containers

 

•

2015: Expanded research and development to Paris

 

•

2015: Surpassed 1,000 customers

 

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•

2016: Began monitoring serverless environments

 

•

2016: Established enterprise sales team

 

•

2017: Launched Datadog APM

 

•

2017: Opened first international sales office in Dublin

 

•

2017: Surpassed 5,000 customers

 

•

2018: Launched Datadog Log Management and Analytics

 

•

2018: Opened first APAC sales office in Tokyo

 

•

2018: Held inaugural DASH user conference in New York

 

•

2019: Launched Datadog Synthetics

 

•

2019: Established APAC headquarters in Singapore

 

•

2019: Announced beta availability of Datadog Network Performance Monitoring and Real User Monitoring

We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. Our paid subscriptions are available in Pro and Enterprise tiers. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional containers to monitor, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection and app analytics. Professional services are generally not required for the implementation of our products and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.

We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our customers can expand their footprint with us on a self-service basis. Our customers often significantly increase their usage of the products they initially buy from us and expand their usage to other products we offer on our platform. We grow with our customers as they expand their workloads in the public and private cloud. Our ability to expand within our customer base is best demonstrated by our dollar-based net retention rate. As of June 30, 2018 and 2019, our dollar-based net retention rate was 146%, and as of December 31, 2017 and 2018, it was 141% and 151%, respectively.

We have a highly efficient go-to-market model, which consists of a self-service tier, a high velocity inside sales team, and an enterprise sales force. As of June 30, 2019, we had 8,846 customers, increasing from 7,676, 5,403 and 3,785 customers as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. In addition, 594, 453, 239 and 126 of our customers had ARR of $100,000 or more as of June 30, 2019 and December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively, accounting for approximately 72%, 68%, 60% and 48% of our ARR, respectively. Further, as of June 30, 2019, we had 42 customers with ARR of $1.0 million or more, up from 29, 12 and two customers as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. As of June 30, 2019, our 10 largest customers represented approximately 14% of our ARR and no single customer represented more than 5% of our ARR.

Our business has experienced rapid growth and is capital efficient. Since inception, we have raised $92.0 million of capital, net of share repurchases, and we had $63.6 million of cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash as of June 30, 2019. We generated revenue of $100.8 million and $198.1 million in 2017 and 2018, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 97%. Our revenue was $85.4 million in the six months ended June 30, 2018 compared to $153.3 million in the six months ended June 30, 2019, representing period-over-period growth of 79%. Substantially all of our revenue is subscription software sales. Our net (loss) income was $(2.6) million, $(10.8) million, $0.5 million and $(13.4) million for the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2018 and the six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2019, respectively. We generated operating cash flow of

 

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$13.8 million, $10.8 million, $10.6 million and $3.0 million in 2017 and 2018 and the six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2019, respectively. Our free cash flow was $6.0 million, $(5.0) million, $1.5 million and $(6.4) million in 2017 and 2018 and the six months ended June 30, 2018 and 2019, respectively. See the section titled “—Non-GAAP Free Cash Flow” for additional information.

The following table sets forth our quarterly revenue run rate, which represents our quarterly GAAP revenue multiplied by four, for the periods presented (in millions):

 

Factors Affecting Our Performance

Acquiring New Customers

We believe there is substantial opportunity to continue to grow our customer base. We intend to drive new customer acquisition by continuing to invest significantly in sales and marketing to engage our prospective customers, increase brand awareness and drive adoption of our platform and products. We also plan to continue to invest in building brand awareness within the development and operations communities. As of June 30, 2019, we had approximately 8,800 customers spanning organizations of a broad range of sizes and industries, compared to approximately 7,700, 5,400, and 3,800 customers as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016, respectively. Our ability to attract new customers will depend on a number of factors, including the effectiveness and pricing of our products, offerings of our competitors, and the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

We define the number of customers as the number of accounts with a unique account identifier for which we have an active subscription in the period indicated. Users of our free trials or tier are not included in our customer count. A single organization with multiple divisions, segments or subsidiaries is generally counted as a single

 

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customer. However, in some cases where they have separate billing terms, we may count separate divisions, segments or subsidiaries as multiple customers.

Expanding Within Our Existing Customer Base

Our large base of customers represents a significant opportunity for further sales expansion. As of June 30, 2019, approximately 35% of the Fortune 100 were Datadog customers, while only about 20% were customers with ARR of $100,000 or more. We believe this demonstrates that our product has been adopted by many of the largest enterprises in the United States, and that there is substantial opportunity to expand within these large enterprises. We believe that our land-and-expand business model allows us to efficiently increase revenue from our existing customer base. Our customers often expand the deployment of our platform across large teams and more broadly within the enterprise as they migrate more workloads to the cloud, find new use cases for our platform, and generally realize the benefits of our platform. We intend to continue to invest in enhancing awareness of our brand and developing more products, features and functionality, which we believe are important factors to achieve widespread adoption of our platform. Our ability to increase sales to existing customers will depend on a number of factors, including our customers’ satisfaction with our solution, competition, pricing and overall changes in our customers’ spending levels.

Once our platform is deployed we have experienced significant expansion historically, with customers engaging with our customer success team as well as increasing usage and spend in a self-serve manner. The chart below illustrates this expansion by presenting the ARR from each customer cohort over the years presented. We define ARR as the annual run-rate revenue of subscription agreements from all customers at a point in time. We calculate ARR by taking the monthly run-rate revenue, or MRR, and multiplying it by 12. MRR for each month is calculated by aggregating, for all customers during that month, monthly revenue from committed contractual amounts, additional usage and monthly subscriptions. See “Components of Results of Operations—Revenue” for additional information. ARR and MRR should be viewed independently of revenue, and do not represent our GAAP revenue on a monthly or annualized basis, as they are operating metrics that can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR and MRR are not intended to be replacements or forecasts of revenue. Each cohort represents customers that made their initial purchase from us in a given year. For example, the 2014 cohort includes all customers as of the end of 2014. This cohort increased their ARR from $4.8 million as of December 31, 2014 to $19.2 million as of December 31, 2018, representing a multiple of 4.0x. Additionally, the ARR from our top 25 customers as of December 31, 2018 increased by a median multiple of 33.9x, as measured from the ARR generated in each such customer’s first month as a customer.

 

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Customer Cohort Analysis ($MM ARR)

 

A further indication of the propensity of our customer relationships to expand over time is our dollar-based net retention rate, which compares our ARR from the same set of customers in one period, relative to the year-ago period. As of June 30, 2018 and 2019, our dollar-based net retention rate was 146%, and as of December 31, 2017 and 2018, it was 141% and 151%, respectively. We calculate dollar-based net retention rate as of a period end by starting with the ARR from the cohort of all customers as of 12 months prior to such period-end, or the Prior Period ARR. We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end, or the Current Period ARR. Current Period ARR includes any expansion and is net of contraction or attrition over the last 12 months, but excludes ARR from new customers in the current period. We then divide the total Current Period ARR by the total Prior Period ARR to arrive at the point-in-time dollar-based net retention rate. We then calculate the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time dollar-based net retention rates, to arrive at the dollar-based net retention rate. Furthermore, our dollar-based gross retention rate, based on a cohort of all of our customers, has been in the low-to-mid 90% range as of the end of each of our last eight quarters. We believe this demonstrates the stickiness of the product category we operate in, and of our platform in particular. We calculate our dollar-based gross retention rate by first calculating the point-in-time gross retention as the previous year ARR minus ARR attrition over the last 12 months, divided by the previous year ARR. The ARR attrition for each month is calculated by identifying any customer that has changed their account type to a “free tier,” requested a downgrade through customer support or sent a formal termination notice to us during that month, and aggregating the dollars of ARR generated by each such customer in the prior month. We then calculate the dollar-based gross retention rate as the weighted average of the trailing 12-month point-in-time gross retention rates.

Sustaining Innovation and Technology Leadership

Our success is dependent on our ability to sustain innovation and technology leadership in order to maintain our competitive advantage. We believe that we have built a highly differentiated platform that will position us to further extend the adoption of our platform and products. Datadog is frequently deployed across a customer’s entire infrastructure, making it ubiquitous. Datadog is a daily part of the lives of developers, operations engineers and business leaders. We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a very short time to value. Our efficient go-to-market model enables us to prioritize significant investment in innovation. We have proven initial success of our platform approach, through expansion beyond our initial infrastructure monitoring solution, to include APM in 2017, logs in 2018, and both user experience and network performance monitoring in 2019. As of June 30, 2019, approximately 40% of our

 

59

customers were using more than one product, up from approximately 10% a year earlier. Additionally, in the six-month period ended June 30, 2019, approximately 60% of our new customers landed with more than one product, up from approximately 15% a year earlier. We believe these metrics indicate strong momentum in the uptake of our newer platform products.

We intend to continue to invest in building additional products, features and functionality that expand our capabilities and facilitate the extension of our platform to new use cases. We also intend to continue to evaluate strategic acquisitions and investments in businesses and technologies to drive product and market expansion. Our future success is dependent on our ability to successfully develop, market and sell existing and new products to both new and existing customers.

Expanding Internationally

We believe there is a significant opportunity to expand usage of our platform outside of the United States. As of December 31, 2018, approximately 24% of our ARR was generated by customers outside of North America. In addition, we have made and plan to continue to make significant investments to expand geographically, particularly in EMEA and APAC. Although these investments may adversely affect our operating results in the near term, we believe that they will contribute to our long-term growth. Beyond North America, we now have sales presence internationally, including in Dublin, London, Paris, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo.

Components of Results of Operations

Revenue

We generate revenue from the sale of subscriptions to customers using our cloud-based platform. The terms of our subscription agreements are primarily monthly or annual, with the majority of our revenue coming from annual subscriptions. Our customers can enter into a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is apportioned ratably on a monthly basis over the term of the subscription period, a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, or a monthly subscription based on usage. To the extent that our customers’ usage exceeds the committed contracted amounts under their subscriptions, either on a monthly basis in the case of a ratable subscription or once the entire commitment is used in the case of a delivered-as-used subscription, they are charged for their incremental usage.

Usage is measured primarily by the number of hosts or by the volume of data indexed. A host is generally defined as a server, either in the cloud or on-premise. Our infrastructure monitoring and APM products are priced per host, while the logs product is priced primarily per log events indexed and secondarily by events ingested. Customers also have the option to purchase additional products, such as additional container or serverless monitoring, custom metrics packages, anomaly detection, synthetic monitoring and app analytics.

In the case of subscriptions for committed contractual amounts of usage, revenue is recognized ratably over the term of the subscription agreement, generally beginning on the date that our platform is made available to a customer. As a result, much of our revenue is generated from subscriptions entered into during previous periods. Consequently, any decreases in new subscriptions or renewals in any one period may not be immediately reflected as a decrease in revenue for that period, but could negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. This also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through the sale of additional subscriptions in any period, as revenue is recognized over the term of the subscription agreement. In the case of a subscription for a committed contractual amount of usage that is delivered as used, a monthly subscription based on usage, or usage in excess of a ratable subscription, we recognize revenue as the product is used, which may lead to fluctuations in our revenue and results of operations. In addition, historically, we have experienced seasonality in new customer bookings, as we typically enter into a higher percentage of subscription agreements with new customers in the fourth quarter of the year.

 

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Due to ease of implementation of our products, professional services generally are not required and revenue from such services has been immaterial to date.

Cost of Revenue

Cost of revenue primarily consists of expenses related to providing our products to customers, including payments to our third-party cloud infrastructure providers for hosting our software, personnel-related expenses for operations and global support, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, payment processing fees, information technology, depreciation and amortization related to the amortization of acquired intangibles and internal-use software and other overhead costs such as allocated facilities.

We intend to continue to invest additional resources in our platform infrastructure and our customer support and success organizations to expand the capability of our platform and ensure that our customers are realizing the full benefit of our platform and products. The level, timing and relative investment in our infrastructure could affect our cost of revenue in the future.

Gross Profit and Gross Margin

Gross profit represents revenue less cost of revenue. Gross margin is gross profit expressed as a percentage of revenue. Our gross margin may fluctuate from period to period as our revenue fluctuates, and as a result of the timing and amount of investments to expand our products and geographical coverage.

Operating Expenses

Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel costs are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, bonuses, stock-based compensation expense and sales commissions. Operating expenses also include overhead costs for facilities and shared IT related expenses, including depreciation expense.

Research and Development

Research and development expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our engineering, service and design teams. Additionally, research and development expense includes contractor fees, depreciation and amortization and allocated overhead costs. Research and development costs are expensed as incurred. We expect that our research and development expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows, particularly as we incur additional costs related to continued investments in our platform.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expense consists primarily of personnel costs for our sales and marketing organization, costs of general marketing and promotional activities, including the free tier and free introductory trials of our products, travel-related expenses and allocated overhead costs. Sales commissions earned by our sales force are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the expected period of benefit, which we have determined to be four years. We expect that our sales and marketing expense will increase in absolute dollars and continue to be our largest operating expense for the foreseeable future as we expand our sales and marketing efforts. However, we expect that our sales and marketing expense will decrease as a percentage of our revenue over the long term.

General and Administrative

General and administrative expense consists primarily of personnel costs and contractor fees for finance, legal, human resources, information technology and other administrative functions. In addition, general and administrative expense includes non-personnel costs, such as legal, accounting and other professional fees, hardware and software costs, certain tax, license and insurance-related expenses and allocated overhead costs.

 

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Following the completion of this offering, we expect to incur additional expenses as a result of operating as a public company, including costs to comply with the rules and regulations applicable to companies listed on a national securities exchange, costs related to compliance and reporting obligations, and increased expenses for insurance, investor relations and professional services. We expect that our general and administrative expense will increase in absolute dollars as our business grows. However, we expect that our general and administrative expense will decrease as a percentage of our revenue as our revenue grows over the longer term.

Other Income, Net

Other income, net consists of income earned on our money market funds included in cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash.

Provision for Income Taxes

Provision for income taxes consists of U.S. federal and state income taxes and income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. We maintain a full valuation allowance on our federal and state deferred tax assets as we have concluded that it is not more likely than not that the deferred tax assets will be realized.

Results of Operations

The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data for the periods indicated:

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Six Months Ended June 30,
		2017				2018				2018				2019
		(in thousands)
Revenue		$	100,761			$	198,077			$	85,393			$	153,272
Cost of revenue(1)(2)			23,414				46,529				18,592				39,928
Gross profit			77,347				151,548				66,801				113,344
Operating expenses:
Research and development(1)			24,734				55,176				23,297				46,847
Sales and marketing(1)			44,213				88,849				34,617				66,225
General and administrative(1)			11,356				18,556				8,611				13,928
Total operating expenses(3)			80,303				162,581				66,525				127,000
Operating (loss) income			(2,956	)			(11,033	)			276				(13,656	)
Other income, net			843				793				301				556
(Loss) income before income taxes			(2,113	)			(10,240	)			577				(13,100	)
Provision for income taxes			(457	)			(522	)			(79	)			(340	)
Net (loss) income		$	(2,570	)		$	(10,762	)		$	498			$	(13,440	)

 

(1)	Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows:

 

 

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(2)	Includes amortization of acquired intangibles expense as follows:

 

 

(3)

Includes a $2.3 million, $0.4 million and $2.3 million benefit within Research and development, Sales and marketing and General and Administrative expenses, respectively, related to the release of a non-income tax liability for the six months ended June 30, 2019. See Note 7 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for further discussion.

The following table sets forth our consolidated statements of operations data expressed as a percentage of revenue for the periods indicated:

 

		Year Ended December 31,								Six Months Ended June 30,
		2017				2018				2018				2019
		(as a percentage of total revenue)
Revenue			100	%			100	%			100	%			100	%
Cost of revenue			23				23				22				26
Gross profit			77				77				78				74
Operating expense:
Research and development			25				28				27				31
Sales and marketing			44				45				41				43
General and administrative			11				9				10				9
Total operating expenses			80				82				78				83
Operating (loss) income			(3	)			(5	)			0				(9	)
Other income, net			1				1				1				1
(Loss) income before income taxes			(2	)			(4	)			1				(8	)
Provision for income taxes			(1	)			(1	)			0				(1	)
Net (loss) income			(3	)%			(5	)%			1	%			(9	)%

Comparison of Six Months Ended June 30, 2018 and 2019

Revenue

 

		Six Months Ended June 30,								Change				% Change
		2018				2019
		(dollars in thousands)
Revenue		$	85,393			$	153,272			$	67,879				79	%

Revenue increased by $67.9 million, or 79%, for the six months ended June 30, 2019 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2018. Approximately 60% of the increase in revenue was attributable to the growth from existing customers, and the remaining increase in revenue was attributable to new customers.

Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin

 

		Six Months Ended June 30,								Change				% Change
		2018				2019
		(dollars in thousands)
Cost of revenue		$	18,592			$	39,928			$	21,336				115	%
Gross margin			78	%			74	%

 

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