Is GoodData Ready To Go Public?

According to a report by Market Research Future, the global data analytics market is estimated to grow 31% annually over the next four years to $159 billion by the year 2022. Billion Dollar Unicorn GoodData is a leading player in the market that is successfully leveraging the growth in Big Data to deliver cloud-based analytics products.

GoodData’s Offerings

San Francisco-based GoodData was founded in 2008 by serial entrepreneur Roman Stanek. The company was set up with a mission to change the way that businesses make decisions. It has a client base of more than 70,000 businesses and a million users. It offers them a scalable, secure, and high-performance Insights Platform-as-a-Service offering.

Unlike traditional data analytics solutions that relied on expensive and slow data warehouses, GoodData’s platform allows companies to manage, analyze, and visualize data from one environment. By democratizing data and allowing organizations and their managers to generate their own insights, GoodData has moved beyond BI toward collective learning. Its Insights Network can mine company’s experiences, best practices, and user interactions to deliver more insightful results for improved decision making.The tool is also simple to use and easy to integrate. GoodData believes that insights-driven businesses will account for a $1.2 Trillion per year market opportunity by the year 2020. GoodData is hoping to capture a big pie of this market.

More recently, the company released industry focused offerings for the insurance space to simplify the claims and underwriting business processes. Its two new analytical solutions, Underwriting Insights and Claims Insights, will help automate data integration and deliver analytics and insights within multiple insurance workflows.

GoodData’s Financials

GoodData charges customers a fee for the volume of data that is processed through its platform. It is privately held and does not disclose detailed financials. It has claimed that the company has delivered strong annual growth. I had met with the founder Roman Stanek in 2013 when he mentioned that the company had earned revenues of more than $15 million in 2012. More recent financials are not known. My guess is that the company has scaled to at least $200 million in revenue, judging by the reported customer numbers. GoodData was operating at $15 million revenues with nearly 65,000 users in 2012. More recently, it claims to have a million users, that would put its revenues to north of $200 million.

The company has been venture funded so far with $101.2 million in funding from investors including Intel Capital, Almaz Capital, Pharus Capital Management, Next World Capital, TOTVS, Tenaya Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Danhua Capital, Windcrest Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners Europe, Next World Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Marc Andreessen, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and Ben Horowitz. Its last round of funding was held in September 2014 when it raised $25.7 million led by Intel Capital at an undisclosed valuation. GoodData’s valuation may not be published, but for comparison, rival Tableau which had revenues of $877 million for fiscal 2017 and a net loss of $186 million is currently trading at a market capitalization of $6.4 billion.

Questions for GoodData’s Board

GoodData has been adding to its leadership positions recently. Earlier this year it announced the addition of Carol Lee as its new CFO. Prior to joining GoodData, Carol was Vice President of Finance for Konica Minolta Business Solutions. Last year, GoodData also added James Smith as its CMO and Garry Olah as its SVP of Business Development. Leadership addition could be a sign of an upcoming IPO.

Meanwhile, I would like to get more details about GoodData’s financials. Additionally, GoodData’s rivals have been expanding through acquisitions. Tableau, for instance, added ClearGraph, Hyper, and InfoActive to grow its arsenal. I would like to know what, if any, acquisitions does GoodData have on its radar?

The company is in a hot space, and I am excited to see more details as they open their kimono in the upcoming months.

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