As filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 30, 2021.
Registration No. 333-
UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
FORM S-1
REGISTRATION STATEMENT
UNDER
THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933
AMPLITUDE, INC.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)
Delaware | 7372 | 45-3937349 | ||
(State or other jurisdiction of incorporation or organization) |
(Primary Standard Industrial Classification Code Number) |
(I.R.S. Employer Identification Number) |
201 Third Street, Suite 200
San Francisco, California 94103
(650) 988-5131
(Address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of registrants principal executive offices)
Spenser Skates
Chief Executive Officer
Amplitude, Inc.
201 Third Street, Suite 200
San Francisco, California 94103
(650) 988-5131
(Name, address, including zip code, and telephone number, including area code, of agent for service)
Copies to:
Tad J. Freese Kathleen M. Wells Gregory P. Rodgers Richard Kim Latham & Watkins LLP 140 Scott Drive Menlo Park, California 94025 (650) 328-4600 |
Elizabeth Fisher General Counsel Amplitude, Inc. 201 Third Street, Suite 200 San Francisco, California 94103 (650) 988-5131 |
Bradley C. Weber Erica D. Kassman Goodwin Procter LLP 601 Marshall Street Redwood City, California 94063 (650) 752-3100 |
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, please 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
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Title of Each Class of Securities to be Registered |
Amount to be Registered |
Proposed Maximum Offering Price Per Share |
Proposed Maximum Aggregate Offering Price(1) |
Amount of Registration Fee | ||||
Class A common stock, par value $0.00001 per share |
Not Applicable | $30,000,000 | $3,273 | |||||
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(1) | Estimated solely for the purpose of calculating the registration fee in accordance with Rule 457(a) under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended. Given that there is no proposed maximum offering price per share of Class A common stock, the Registrant calculates the proposed maximum aggregate offering price, by analogy to Rule 457(f)(2), based on the book value of the common stock the Registrant registers, which is calculated from the Registrants unaudited balance sheet as of June 30, 2021. Given that the Registrants shares of Class A common stock are not traded on an exchange or over-the-counter, the Registrant did not use the market prices of its Class A common stock in accordance with Rule 457(c). |
The Registrant hereby amends this registration statement on such date or dates as may be necessary to delay its effective date until the Registrant shall file a further amendment which specifically states that this registration statement shall thereafter become effective in accordance with Section 8(a) of the Securities Act of 1933, or until the registration statement shall become effective on such date as the Securities and Exchange Commission, acting pursuant to said Section 8(a), may determine.
The information in this preliminary prospectus is not complete and may be changed. These securities may not be sold until the registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission is effective. This preliminary prospectus is not an offer to sell these securities and it is not soliciting an offer to buy these securities in any state where the offer or sale is not permitted.
Subject to Completion. Dated , 2021
Shares
Class A Common Stock
This prospectus relates to the registration of the resale of up to shares of our Class A common stock by our stockholders identified in this prospectus (the Registered Stockholders). Unlike an initial public offering, the resale by the Registered Stockholders is not being underwritten by any investment bank. The Registered Stockholders may, or may not, elect to sell their shares of Class A common stock covered by this prospectus, as and to the extent they may determine. Such sales, if any, will be made through brokerage transactions on the Nasdaq Global Select Market at prevailing market prices. See Plan of Distribution. If the Registered Stockholders choose to sell their shares of Class A common stock, we will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of Class A common stock by the Registered Stockholders.
We have two classes of authorized common stock: Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The rights of the holders of Class A common stock and Class B common stock are identical, except with respect to voting and conversion rights. Each share of Class A common stock is entitled to one vote per share. Each share of Class B common stock is entitled to five votes per share and is convertible at any time, at the option of the holder, into one share of Class A common stock. As of June 30, 2021, after giving effect to the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion (as defined below), the Reclassification (as defined below), and the RSU Settlement (as defined below), outstanding shares of Class B common stock represented approximately 99.5% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, with our directors, executive officers, holders of more than 5% of our capital stock, and their affiliates representing approximately 67.0%. Prior to any sales of shares of Class A common stock, the Registered Stockholders who hold Class B common stock must convert their shares of Class B common stock into shares of Class A common stock.
No established public trading market for our Class A common stock currently exists. However, our shares of common stock have a history of trading in private transactions. Based on information available to us, the low and high sales price per share of common stock for such private transactions during the year ended December 31, 2020 was $8.12 and $20.00, respectively, and during the period from January 1, 2021 through , 2021 was $ and $ , respectively. Recent purchase prices of our common stock in private transactions may have little or no relation to the opening public price of shares of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market or the subsequent trading price of shares of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. See Sale Price History of our Capital Stock. Further, the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market without underwriters is a novel method for commencing public trading in shares of our Class A common stock and, consequently, the trading volume and price of shares of our Class A common stock may be more volatile than if shares of our Class A common stock were initially listed in connection with an underwritten initial public offering.
On the day that shares of our Class A common stock are initially listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (Nasdaq) will begin accepting, but not executing, pre-opening buy and sell orders and will begin to continuously generate the indicative Current Reference Price (as defined below) on the basis of such accepted orders. During a 10-minute Display Only period, market participants may enter quotes and orders in Class A common stock in Nasdaqs systems and such information is disseminated, along with other indicative imbalance information, to Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC (Morgan Stanley) and other market participants (including the other financial advisors) by Nasdaq on its NOII and BookViewer tools. Following the Display Only period, a Pre-Launch period begins, during which Morgan Stanley, in its capacity as our designated financial advisor to perform the functions under Nasdaq Rule 4120(c)(8), must notify Nasdaq that our shares are ready to trade. Once Morgan Stanley has notified Nasdaq that shares of our Class A common stock are ready to trade, Nasdaq will calculate the Current Reference Price for shares of our Class A common stock, in accordance with Nasdaq rules. If Morgan Stanley then approves proceeding at the Current Reference Price, Nasdaq will conduct a price validation test in accordance with Nasdaq Rule 4120(c)(8). As part of conducting such price validation test, Nasdaq may consult with Morgan Stanley, if the price bands need to be modified, to select the new price bands for purposes of applying such test iteratively until the validation tests yield a price within such bands. Upon completion of such price validation checks, the applicable orders that have been entered will then be executed at such price and regular trading of shares of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market will commence. Under the Nasdaq rules, the Current Reference Price means: (i) the single price at which the maximum number of orders to buy or sell shares of our Class A common stock can be matched; (ii) if more than one price exists under clause (i), then the price that minimizes the number of shares of our Class A common stock for which orders cannot be matched; (iii) if more than one price exists under clause (ii), then the entered price (i.e. the specified price entered in an order by a customer to buy or sell) at which shares of our Class A common stock will remain unmatched (i.e. will not be bought or sold); and (iv) if more than one price exists under clause (iii), a price determined by Nasdaq after consultation with Morgan Stanley in its capacity as financial advisor. Morgan Stanley will exercise any consultation rights only to the extent that it may do so consistent with the anti-manipulation provisions of the federal securities laws, including Regulation M (to the extent applicable), or applicable relief granted thereunder. The Registered Stockholders will not be involved in Nasdaqs price-setting mechanism, including any decision to delay or proceed with trading, nor will they control or influence Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Inc. (BofA Securities), Citigroup Global Markets Inc. (Citigroup), KeyBanc Capital Markets Inc. (KeyBanc Capital Markets), Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated (Baird), UBS Securities LLC (UBS Investment Bank), and William Blair & Company, L.L.C. (William Blair), in carrying out their roles as financial advisors. Morgan Stanley will determine when shares of our Class A common stock are ready to trade and approve proceeding at the Current Reference Price primarily based on consideration of volume, timing, and price. In particular, Morgan Stanley will determine, based primarily on pre-opening buy and sell orders, when a reasonable amount of volume will cross on the opening trade such that sufficient price discovery has been made to open trading at the Current Reference Price. For more information, see Plan of Distribution.
We have applied to list our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol AMPL. We expect our Class A common stock to begin trading on or about , 2021.
We are an emerging growth company as defined under the federal securities laws and have elected to comply with certain reduced public company reporting requirements for this prospectus and future filings. See Prospectus SummaryImplications of Being an Emerging Growth Company.
Investing in shares of our Class A common stock involves risks. See Risk Factors beginning on page 19 to read about factors you should consider before buying shares of our Class A common stock.
Neither the Securities and Exchange Commission nor any other regulatory body or state securities commission has approved or disapproved of these securities or passed upon the adequacy or accuracy of this prospectus. Any representation to the contrary is a criminal offense.
Prospectus dated , 2021.
Amplitudes purpose is to help companies build better products through data.
Amplitude
Great products are built with Amplitude. Understand customer behavior in a new way instacart Instacart informs product strategy to help make online shopping effortless. Measure and optimize the value of your business intuit. Intuit analyzes upticks and drop-offs in product usage and customer retention in minutes. Predict which actions lead to business outcomes Walmart Walmart predicts when product growth spikes will happen and how key events play into long-term retention to plan retention strategy and timing. Adapt each experience to maximize impact BEES BEES, an e-commerce and SaaS company created by Anhesuer-Busch Inbev, prompts customers with recommended orders based on purchase history and market insight.
$129M TTM REVENUE Trailing twelve-month revenue as of June 30, 2021. (8%) NET CASH USED IN OPERATING ACTIVITIES MARGIN During the six months ended June 30, 2021. 1,280 PAYING CUSTOMERS 311 CUSTOMERS >$100K ARR 22 CUSTOMERS >$1M ARR As of June 30, 2021. 57% FY21 H1 YOY REVENUE GROWTH During the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. ($24M) TTM NET LOSS Trailing twelve-month net loss as of June 30, 2021. 119% DOLLAR-BASED NET RETENTION ACROSS PAYING CUSTOMERS As of June 30, 2021.
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F-1 |
You should rely only on the information contained in this prospectus or contained in any free writing prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC). Neither we nor any of the Registered Stockholders have authorized anyone to provide any information or to make any representations other than those contained in this prospectus or in any free writing prospectus we have prepared or that have been prepared on our behalf or to which we have referred you. Neither we nor any of the Registered Stockholders take responsibility for, and can provide no assurance as to the reliability of, any other information that others may give you. The Registered Stockholders are offering to sell, and seeking offers to buy, shares of their Class A common stock but only under circumstances and in jurisdictions where it is lawful to do so. The information contained in this prospectus is current only as of its date, regardless of the time of delivery of this prospectus or of any sale of our Class A common stock. Our business, financial condition, and results of operations may have changed since such date.
For investors outside the United States: Neither we nor any of the Registered Stockholders have done anything that would permit the use or possession or distribution of this prospectus or any related free writing prospectus in any jurisdiction where action for that purpose is required, other than in the United States. Persons outside 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 by the Registered Stockholders and the distribution of this prospectus outside the United States.
This prospectus is part of a registration statement on Form S-1 that we filed with the SEC using a shelf registration or continuous offering process. Under this process, the Registered Stockholders may, from time to time, sell the Class A common stock covered by this prospectus in the manner described in the section titled Plan of Distribution. Additionally, we may provide a prospectus supplement to add information to, or update or change information contained in, this prospectus, including the section titled Plan of Distribution. You may obtain this information without charge by following the instructions under the section titled Where You Can Find Additional Information appearing elsewhere in this prospectus. You should read this prospectus and any prospectus supplement before deciding to invest in our Class A common stock.
Except as otherwise indicated, all information in this prospectus assumes:
| the amendment of our equity awards under our Amended and Restated 2014 Stock Option and Grant Plan (as amended, the 2014 Plan) on August 23, 2021 for all awards to settle into Class A common stock instead of Class B common stock, in connection with the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. See Description of Capital Stock Equity Award Amendment; |
| the amendment of our restated certificate of incorporation on August 30, 2021 to redesignate our outstanding common stock as Class B common stock and create a new class of Class A common stock (the Reclassification); |
| the conversion of our outstanding Series A redeemable convertible preferred stock, Series B redeemable convertible preferred stock, Series C redeemable convertible preferred stock, Series D redeemable convertible preferred stock, Series E redeemable convertible preferred stock, and Series F redeemable convertible preferred stock (including 827,609 shares of Series F redeemable convertible preferred stock issued after June 30, 2021) into an aggregate of 67,963,609 shares of our Class B common stock, which will occur in connection with the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part (the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion); |
| the issuance of 2,571,430 shares of our Class A common stock subject to restricted stock units (RSUs), for which the time-based vesting condition was satisfied as of June 30, 2021, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pursuant to our 2014 Plan (the RSU Settlement); |
| the exclusion of (i) 28,806,581 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of stock options outstanding as of June 30, 2021, with a weighted-average exercise price of $3.33 per share, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; (ii) 192,134 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of stock options granted after June 30, 2021, with a weighted-average exercise price of $21.75 per share, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; (iii) 479,481 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon settlement of RSUs outstanding as of June 30, 2021, for which the time-based vesting condition had not been satisfied as of such date, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; (iv) 420,672 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon settlement of RSUs granted after June 30, 2021, for which the time-based vesting condition had not been satisfied as of such date, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; (v) 46,875 shares of restricted Class A common stock granted after June 30, 2021, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; (vi) 7,000 shares of Class B common stock issuable upon exercise of a warrant outstanding as of June 30, 2021; (vii) 18,643,596 shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2021 Incentive Award Plan (the 2021 Plan), which will become effective on the day prior to the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, as well as any future increases in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under the 2021 Plan; and (viii) 2,663,371 shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2021 Employee Stock |
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Purchase Plan (the ESPP), which will become effective on the day prior to the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, as well as any future increases in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under the ESPP; and |
| the filing and effectiveness of our restated certificate of incorporation and the adoption of our amended and restated bylaws, each of which will occur in connection with the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. |
After giving effect to the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion, the Reclassification, and the RSU Settlement, as of June 30, 2021, we had a total of 2,571,430 shares of Class A common stock and 99,873,225 shares of Class B common stock outstanding.
Certain amounts, percentages, and other figures presented in this prospectus have been subject to rounding adjustments. Accordingly, figures shown as totals, dollars, or percentage amounts of changes may not represent the arithmetic summation or calculation of the figures that precede them.
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This summary highlights select information contained elsewhere in this prospectus and does not contain all the information you should consider before making an investment decision. You should read the entire prospectus carefully, including the sections entitled Risk Factors, Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements, Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and our consolidated financial statements and the accompanying notes included elsewhere in this prospectus before making an investment decision. Unless otherwise indicated or the context otherwise requires, all references in this prospectus to we, us, our, the Company, Amplitude and similar terms refer to Amplitude, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries.
Overview
We are pioneering a new category of software called Digital Optimization. Our Digital Optimization System serves as the command center for businesses to connect digital products to business outcomes. Digital optimization is emerging as a strategic investment for every company to survive in the digital-first world.
Digital products are embedded in every part of our daily lives. In 2020, U.S. adults spent nearly 8 hours on average per day on digital activities. Digital has become the primary way business is done, and the ability for companies to offer compelling digital products and services has become a matter of survival.
Digital products have become the center of how companies interact with customers. Digital-native companies like Twitter, DoorDash, PayPal, and Dropbox invest heavily in product innovation to fuel a product-led adoption model. It is not only the companies born in the past two decades that are betting it all on digital. Walmart, Disney, and IBM are reinventing their businesses around digital. Digital is the battleground and the businesses that fail to rise to the challenge and adapt to this new reality will face an existential crisis.
The way that companies build digital products is going through a fundamental change from being intuition-based to data-driven. Product teams have historically decided what to build based on qualitative gut feel and without a firm understanding of what will drive business results. Today, the best teams are those that build their strategy around product data, which connects the attributes of individual end users with their actual behavior. Product data has become the next untapped growth lever to transform how businesses build products, gain key insights into which features have the greatest business impact, and connect with customers.
The amount of time that consumers spend interacting with digital products has led to an explosion of both the quantity and diversity of data. Because products themselves are generators of data, for the first time, in-product behavior can now be analyzed. With product data, teams can gain insight from the specific actions end users take within digital products and answer important questions, such as where in the purchase journey do users experience friction, what are the top user paths between signup and trial conversion, and which features increase new customer retention.
Traditionally, businesses have spent billions of dollars on a patchwork of systems, including web and marketing analytics, business intelligence tools, and sentiment tools, to help understand how their digital product investments drive business outcomes. These tools were not built on product data and do not understand in-product behavior, nor were they built for the scale and complexity of digital products to provide actionable and real-time product-driven insights. Businesses today do not know if their strategic product decisions are the right ones, and they do not have the insights to help ensure they work.
The next evolution of digital transformation is the category-defining shift to Digital Optimization. The promise of digital optimization is connecting the dots between products and the business. It provides the breadth
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and depth of insights into customer behavior to understand what behaviors are linked to business impact. Digital optimization answers strategic questions such as what products to build, what digital bets to make, and which bets are working. It predicts which customers are likely to purchase or churn based on their behavior and automatically adapts products to each customer based on this intelligence to optimize the outcome.
While digital transformation is focused on building new digital products, digital optimization is focused on using product data to make strategic decisions and run a business, accelerate innovation, and increase the value of digital transformation efforts.
Product, data, engineering, and marketing teams are often forced to make business decisions in a vacuum and without understanding the linkage between product decisions and business outcomes. Digital optimization leverages the power of data-driven products to create this linkage automatically. In addition, having a common lens into customer and product data helps every team transform their function, from launching brand-defining marketing campaigns to reimagining customer support. Bringing shared data and common visibility to every team will be a business-critical requirement in the digital optimization era.
How Amplitude Powers Digital Optimization
We built the first Digital Optimization System that brings together a new depth of customer understanding with the speed of action to optimize experiences. We power some of the most-beloved and iconic consumer and B2B digital products. We enable businesses, regardless of size, industry, or where they are in their digital maturity, to unleash digital innovation and growth. Our system unifies product, marketing, data, and executive teams, giving them the common visibility to drive business outcomes with agility and confidence.
Our Digital Optimization System consists of the following integrated solutions:
| Amplitude Analytics. We are the #1 ranked product analytics solution, according to G2, a top independent software review site. We provide teams with fast, self-service insights into customer behavior. |
| Amplitude Recommend. A no-code personalization solution that helps teams increase customer engagement by intelligently adapting digital products and campaigns to every user based on behavior. |
| Amplitude Experiment. An integrated end-to-end experimentation solution that enables teams to determine and deliver the most impactful product experiences for their customers through A/B tests and controlled feature releases. |
At the core of our Digital Optimization System is the Amplitude Behavioral Graph, a proprietary behavioral database purpose-built for complex, interactive behavioral queries, with novel approaches to normalizing, classifying, and partitioning behavioral data. The Behavioral Graph scales to look at every individual customer action taken in a digital product and identifies combinations of actions that lead to a desired outcome. The Behavioral Graph processed approximately 900 billion monthly behavioral data points during the quarter ended June 30, 2021, to help answer questions like why do users convert or drop off, which interactions predict likelihood to buy, and what are the most common paths users take.
We are Mission Critical to Our Customers
Today, we serve more than 1,200 paying customers globally, from the most ambitious startups to the largest global enterprises. We are the trusted source of customer and product insight for the worlds leading data-driven, product-led digital companies and bring the same technology to the remaining companies that lack this expertise. We serve customers across every industry, including finance, media, retail, industrials, hospitality, healthcare, media, and telecom, as well as companies in various stages of digital maturity. Digital optimization has become mission critical
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to companies of all sizes and in all industries to keep up with the pace of innovation required to survive in the digital-first world. Consequently, we believe the market for digital optimization represents a significant and underpenetrated market opportunity today, which we estimate to be approximately $37 billion in 2021.
Our Digital Optimization System is mission critical to our customers success. Within our largest customers, thousands of users leverage our system to drive better outcomes in their respective functional areas. The broad applicability and ease of use of our system results in significant commitments by our customers as part of their core technology stack. As of December 31, 2019 and 2020 and June 30, 2021, we had 208, 262, and 311 customers, respectively, that each represented greater than $100,000 in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) and 11, 15, and 22 customers, respectively, that each represented greater than $1 million in ARR, demonstrating how critical we are to our customers success. Customers that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR accounted for approximately 71%, 72%, and 73% of our total ARR as of December 31, 2019 and 2020 and June 30, 2021, respectively.
Our Efficient Business Model
We generate revenue through selling subscriptions to our platform. We reach customers through an efficient direct sales motion, solution partners, and product-led growth initiatives, including subscription plans to meet the needs of a diverse range of companies. Our pricing model is based on both the platform functionality required by our customers as well as committed event volume. Customers typically look to use our platform for an initial business use case they have identified, such as analytics on a digital product. As customers experience the value of our platform in helping to drive business outcomes in that initial use case, they frequently expand that initial use case, expand into new use cases, and expand into additional products. Our ability to expand successfully within our customer base is demonstrated by our strong dollar-based net retention rates. As of December 31, 2019 and 2020, our dollar-based net retention rate across paying customers was 116% and 119%, respectively.
For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, our revenue was $68.4 million and $102.5 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 50%. Our revenue was $46.0 million and $72.4 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 57%. For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020 and six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, our net loss was $33.5 million, $24.6 million, $16.6 million, and $16.5 million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020 and six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, our net cash used in operating activities was $16.0 million, $10.4 million, $9.9 million, and $5.5 million, respectively, and our free cash flow was $(16.7) million, $(12.6) million, $(10.7) million, and $(6.9) million, respectively.
Industry Trends in Our Favor
Digital is the New Battlefield for Business Survival
Today, digital products are embedded in every part of our daily lives. The ability for companies to offer compelling digital products and services has become a matter of survival. There are several mega-trends forcing companies to move to digital first:
| Mobile and Cloud are Sparking Disruption. The continued rise of mobile and cloud make it easier than ever for new entrants to disrupt existing markets through digital. IDC estimates that by 2023 over 500 million new digital apps and services will be deployed using cloud-native approaches, which is the same number of digital apps and services developed over the last 40 years. This expected growth demonstrates both the scale and rapid pace of innovation and disruption. |
| The Digital Economy is the Path to Growth. Digital is no longer just an enabler of business, it is the business. As digital continues to become a growing portion of the economy, every business will need to transform their business and drive digital growth to not be left behind. |
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| Businesses are Shifting Focus from Acquisition to Retention. Digital unlocks the ability of businesses to engage with customers more easily over time, shifting investment away from one-time purchases to building customer lifetime value. As the costs to expand an existing customer relationship are significantly lower than acquiring a new one, this change in strategy has led to more efficient sales and marketing spend and more durable growth prospects. |
On the new battlefield of digital innovation, there will be clear winners and losers. Digital products have become the center of how companies redesign their businesses and create new ways of delivering value for customers.
The Revenue Center is Shifting from Sales and Marketing to Product
Once considered a cost center for the business, the digital product is now becoming the primary lever in a business to drive growth. The growing importance of product-led growth to a companys survival has fundamentally shifted how companies go to market and invest in innovation.
The revenue center of a business is shifting away from acquisition-focused marketing and sales to retention and expansion through sustained customer engagement within digital products. User engagement, user behavior, customer retention rate, and customer lifetime value have become the new standard metrics to measure the productivity and efficiency of any business.
The Approach to Building Digital Products is Being Reinvented From Mad Men to Moneyball
The way that companies build digital products is going through a fundamental shift from being intuition-based to data-driven. Even today, like a scene out of AMCs Mad Men, it is not uncommon for a group of executives to gather in a room and brainstorm about what digital products to build based on nothing more than their intuition or beliefs of what customers want or need. In the same way that the Moneyball movement (popularized by the 2003 eponymous book by Michael Lewis) reinvented Major League Baseball, today there is a fundamental shift to using data derived from the digital product itself to make decisions. Data-driven products are characterized by the following key pillars:
Data-Driven Products are Centered in Behavioral Data
Because the digital products themselves are generators of data, this means that in-product behavior can be observed and analyzed for the first time. Data-driven digital companies understand the value of behavioral data to feed back into their digital products and drive innovation. Digital laggards, on the other hand, have continued to rely on the wrong forms of data, such as page views, app store downloads, customer service tickets, post-transaction surveys, and user demographic data to make critical product decisions.
Data-Driven Products Adapt to the Customer
In a world of abundant choice, the expectations of consumers for businesses to deliver highly-personalized digital product experiences continues to be on the rise. The best-in-class digital companies leverage product data to build robust recommendation engines based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) algorithms to deliver highly differentiated experiences at scale.
Data-Driven Products Leverage Data Democratization and Common Visibility
Data and insights are only valuable if they can be leveraged by cross-functional stakeholders jointly responsible for making decisions. Data-driven organizations that make data both accessible and actionable enable their teams to expedite the decision making process, thereby iterating on and improving their digital products with greater agility. The faster organizations are able to iterate, the stronger their systematic advantages are against competitors that lack such expertise.
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The Next Frontier of Digital Transformation Brings the Imperative of Digital Optimization
While digital transformation is focused on building web-enabled customer experiences, the next evolution of digital transformation is the category-defining shift to digital optimization. Digital optimization moves beyond building new digital products and is focused on using product data to make strategic decisions to run the business, accelerate product innovation, and increase the value of digital transformation efforts. Digital optimization leverages the power of data-driven products to create this linkage automatically and answer the fundamental question: how does digital product drive ones business?
Digital optimization will be a strategic business imperative as digital transformation continues at an accelerated pace. Digital optimization will be needed to make sense of the exponential increase in digital product and user behavioral data to help ensure businesses are making the right product bets and to maximize their impact.
Businesses Need a Fundamentally New Approach to Drive Digital Optimization
Businesses have spent billions of dollars on a patchwork of systems to help understand how their digital product investments drive business outcomes. However, these systems were not built for insight on product data in real time and at scale, leveraging the wrong data and undertaking a misguided approach.
Why is product data different?
1. | Complexity. Digital products are complex, which means that product data operates at a qualitatively different scale than transactional or digital marketing data. Understanding how each action taken in a digital product relates to each other and why or if they are relevant to driving a specific outcome is extremely difficult to piece together when there are thousands of potential actions a user can take. |
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2. | Non-Linear. Unlike traditional marketing funnels where the goal is strictly increasing the conversion rate to the next step, users do not take a linear journey through a digital product. Based on our customer data, we estimate that, on average, there are approximately 2,500 distinct events that can be measured within each digital product. Each user therefore navigates through an application across multiple devices in a random walk that is unique from every other user. This effect makes it much harder to understand what is happening in the aggregate and generate insights at scale. |
3. | Scale. Combining the number of digital product users a company may have and the amount of engagement per user can result in billions of potential events per product. This scale presents near-insurmountable challenges for any business looking to optimize their digital products to drive outcomes on both a micro and macro level. |
The sum of all this complexity means existing categories of software fail to understand product data and were not designed to adequately address the needs of todays digital optimization era:
| Web and Marketing Analytics. These solutions focus on using web and demographic data to analyze target users and advertising spend. They were not built for in-product and in-app behavior; rather, they were built on a pre-computation data framework, which is less flexible, scalable, and capable of driving deep, real-time analysis. |
| Business Intelligence. These solutions are horizontally focused and built for reporting on object-level data and transactional data, not behavioral data. Oftentimes built on large data lakes of structured and unstructured data, data teams must scrub, clean, instrument, and canonicalize the data, and then use complex Structured Query Language (SQL) queries to answer even the most basic questions. This process is cumbersome and slow because SQL queries are not designed for user-joins, which connect disparate end-user actions together and are the key to understanding end-user behavior in-product. |
| Sentiment / Survey-based Solutions. These solutions are focused on uncovering and understanding customer sentiment to improve customer experiences often non-digital and include qualitative measurements such as surveys. They are not designed to generate product insight and analyze behavioral data, limiting the applicability outside of customer service, researchers, and marketing teams. |
A comprehensive system that empowers digital optimization and enables cross-functional teams to understand how their digital products drive business outcomes must encompass the following key requirements:
| Behavioral-based, cross-platform. Capture and make sense of what users do their actual behaviors and the non-linear paths they take across multiple devices, products, and marketing channels during the entire customer lifecycle from acquisition to activation to engagement to retention. Handle complex distributed user-joins and separate data by users, which makes the data accessible and allows teams to natively ask questions about the user journey in a dynamic way. |
| Complete, trustworthy data. Unify disparate data sources through data integrations and pipelines, create a single view of the end user with identity resolution technology, and improve data quality with data governance tools. Normalize data programmatically with high fidelity to serve as the critical data layer that makes comprehensive product analytics and personalization possible. |
| Real-time, intelligent insight. Provide analytics that meets the needs of data-driven teams empowering them to ask questions and return answers in seconds on data that is streamed directly from the product in real time. |
| Collaborative & self-service. Eliminate barriers to insights and unify organizations around common data by using intuitive, no-code user interfaces with collaboration tools embedded throughout. Built for easy adoption and use for cross-functional teams no matter their analytical skill level. |
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| Closed-loop insight to action. Connect data and insights with automatically triggered actions that optimize an outcome, such as revenue or engagement. Enable personalization, which includes segmentation, predictions, and experimentation, that is integrated with analytics to assess the performance of experiences in real time. |
| Enterprise scalability. Scale with the complexity of behavioral data and requirements around user privacy and enterprise access, and be elastic, secure, and ready-made to eliminate operational overhead of managing data infrastructure. |
| Integrated and open. Connect to and power the technology ecosystem used across various digital teams, including data warehouses, customer data platforms, and customer engagement, collaboration, and workflow tools. |
The Amplitude Digital Optimization System
We built the first Digital Optimization System that brings together a new depth of customer understanding with the speed of action to optimize experiences in the moment. It is the only unified system that answers the question: How do your digital products drive your business? We power the most-beloved digital products and teams with actionable data and insights regardless of size, industry, or digital maturity so they can unleash digital innovation and growth. Amplitude makes critical data accessible and actionable to every team allowing product, marketing, engineering, analytics, customer success, and executive teams to align around common visibility and to drive business outcomes with greater speed, agility, and confidence.
With Amplitude, teams have access to a fully integrated, self-service system for data, analytics, and personalization with intelligence and collaboration built in to help teams innovate faster and smarter.
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Our Digital Optimization System consists of the following integrated components:
| Amplitude Analytics. We are the #1 ranked product analytics solution. We enable any team with fast, self-service insights into customer behavior helping them to answer and explore questions, see what features and end-user actions lead to outcomes across the entire customer journey, measure and forecast key metrics, and collaborate as a team on decisions. |
| Amplitude Recommend. A no-code personalization solution that helps teams increase customer engagement by intelligently adapting digital products and marketing channels to every user with behavioral and predictive segmentation to build and sync audiences to marketing tools and a self-serve recommendation engine to instantly enable in-product personalization. |
| Amplitude Experiment. An integrated end-to-end solution that allows teams to better control feature releases, configure product experiences for different end users, and run the end-to-end feature experimentation process from generating a hypothesis to targeting users, rolling out A/B tests, and measuring results. |
| Amplitude Behavioral Graph. A purpose-built proprietary database for deep, real-time interactive behavioral analysis and behavior-driven personalization instantly joining, analyzing, and correlating any customer actions to outcomes like engagement, growth, and loyalty. |
| Data Management. A real-time data layer for planning, integrating, and managing data sources to create a complete, trustworthy foundation with identity resolution, enterprise-level security, and privacy solutions embedded throughout. |
We power digital optimization for our customers through the following key system capabilities:
| Behavioral Data at the Core. We designed data and machine-learning infrastructure purpose-built to understand cross-device and cross-product end-user data enabling businesses to see, analyze, and act on behavioral data. The Amplitude Behavioral Graph processed approximately 900 billion monthly behavioral data points during the quarter ended June 30, 2021, to help answer questions like why end users convert or drop off, which interactions predict likelihood to buy, and what are the most common paths end users take. |
| Built-In Data Management. Our system includes a comprehensive, built-in data integration and governance suite to plan, integrate, and manage large, distributed data sources in real time. It automatically resolves user identities, normalizes and transforms data into one stream, and governs data quality, consistency, and access across organizations of any size, which is critical for analytics and personalization initiatives. |
| Real-time Analytics and Insight. We provide the market-leading product analytics solution that enables teams to access out-of-the-box reporting to instantly answer both simple and complex questions about product and customer behaviors. Teams can easily analyze any end-user path across multiple devices, products, and channels from an aggregate to individual end-user level to understand the context behind every end-user action and identify opportunities to improve the digital product experience. |
| Easy Adoption and Collaboration. Our system provides an easy-to-use interface that allows for viral adoption and democratization of insights within an organization, regardless of technical abilities. Within minutes a new customer on our system can start generating insights relevant to their respective functional areas and engaging with collaborative dashboards, reports, and tools that allow a broad spectrum of people in an organization to participate in data-driven decision making. |
| Powering Data-Driven Action. Our system allows teams to directly turn end-user insight into action with personalized, Netflix-like product experiences in a few clicks and without requiring technical |
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expertise. We use sophisticated identity resolution and targeting to reach the right end user, machine-learning recommendations to decide the right content, and real-time integrations with systems our customers already use for delivery at the right time. To date, our system has powered more than 3 trillion targeted experiences. |
| Enterprise-grade Platform. Our platform is architected to handle a scale qualitatively different from what is capable by existing customer engagement and experience tools. We offer top-tier security and reliability as our platform is SOC2 Type-2 and ISO 27001 certified, offers single sign-on support and user permissioning, is a recognized AWS Partner for Digital Customer Experience, and has delivered a 100% data ingestion uptime service-level agreement (SLA) with 99.97% data durability for the last 12 months as of August 2021. |
Key Benefits to Our Customers
Our system provides the following key benefits to our customers:
| Enable the Right Product Bets and Accelerate Innovation. Every click, every interaction, and every event we collect is input from end users that help to inform what actions teams can take to optimize digital products in real time. These insights allow teams to make the right product bets, assess and measure the impact of those decisions, feed learnings back into the system, and rapidly iterate to resolve potential problems before they impact customer acquisition, retention, and lifetime value. |
| Unify Teams with Common Visibility. We bring a common set of user behavior and in-product engagement data to every team, from product, to marketing, to data science, and beyond. Out-of-the-box dashboards and analytics reports provide common visibility leveraging the same data, while teams can easily click into each report to get as much granularity as required to inform actions and recommendations. |
| Maximize Value of Product Investments. The ability of our system to attribute revenue to specific product investments transforms what has traditionally been viewed as a cost center into a revenue center. This ability unleashes a much more powerful way to operate when companies can make investments with confidence and drive product-led growth. |
Our Market Opportunity
The ability for businesses to understand how their digital products predictably drive business outcomes has never been more important. Digital optimization has become mission critical to companies of all sizes and in all industries to keep up with the pace of innovation required to survive in the digital-first world. Consequently, we believe the market for digital optimization represents a significant and underpenetrated market opportunity today, which we estimate to be approximately $37 billion in 2021.
What Sets Us Apart
Our competitive strengths include the following:
| #1 Market Leader in Product Analytics. We have consistently been ranked as the #1 product analytics solution, as well as a top 50 software product of 2021 across all categories. As of December 31, 2019 and 2020 and June 30, 2021, we had more than 700, 1,000, and 1,200 paying customers, respectively, with 208, 262, and 311 customers, respectively, that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR and 11, 15, and 22 customers, respectively, that each represented greater than $1 million in ARR, demonstrating how highly strategic and mission critical we are to our customers. |
| Behavioral Graph. The Amplitude Behavioral Graph is our proprietary behavioral database that delivers actionable results from complex distributed user-joins quickly so that teams can explore |
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questions about behavioral data in an iterative fashion. We invented a fundamentally new way of joining and making sense of complex end-user and product data to enable the speed and depth of insight our customers demand. Our Behavioral Graph operates at a scale qualitatively different from alternative data analytics systems, processing approximately 900 billion monthly behavioral data points during the quarter ended June 30, 2021, powering the depth and breadth of insights that make digital optimization possible. |
| Single System to Drive Digital Optimization End-to-End. Our Digital Optimization System is a one-stop-shop where teams can bridge from data to insights, and drive action all from the same intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Our solutions align to the lifecycle of how teams develop data-driven products and customer engagement from identifying opportunities and hypotheses, to testing and delivering optimized product experiences and campaigns, to measuring the impact and iterating. |
| Bringing the Best of Product-Led Growth to the Masses. We serve some of the most beloved, digital-native consumer and B2B products from companies like Shopify, Instacart, and Peloton. These companies are among the 1% of companies who lead with a product-led growth mindset, and who trust us to help them build data-driven products for competitive advantage. We bring the same infrastructure, tools, and techniques that power these digital leaders to the 99% of businesses today that are not digital natives. |
| Powerful, Self-Reinforcing Loop. Our system benefits from a strong self-reinforcing loop that results in continual learning, optimization, and more usage as it delivers increasing value to our customers. Our customers typically begin to use our system for an initial use case and expand that use case as they realize the value it delivers. These actionable insights are often shared across additional teams within the organization, which leads to expansion of both that initial use case as well as into new use cases, such as new digital products and the cross-functional teams responsible for them. This leads to more data being instrumented on our platform to power these use cases and enhances the value of all the data already on it. More data deepen insights and predictive abilities and fuel our recommendation engine to better optimize the digital product experience for end users and drive more digital product usage, thereby continuing the self-reinforcing loop. |
| Rapid Time to Value. We have designed our offerings to be intuitive and easy to use, and to appeal across a broad number of personas within an organization to drive rapid time to value for our customers. Our customers can begin with one use case and scale rapidly according to their needs. Team members across sales, marketing, product management, customer success, and more can all run queries through a point-and-click dashboard interface to answer questions about the product and receive insights in minutes. |
Our Growth Strategies
We intend to pursue the following growth strategies:
| Acquire New Customers Across Every Industry. We plan to invest to capture the significant market opportunity we believe is only in its early innings. We have experienced rapid growth in our customer base since our inception and now have over 1,200 paying customers and 26 of the Fortune 100, which demonstrates both our successful traction to date as well as our significant opportunity to continue to penetrate the largest global organizations. We believe we have an efficient and productive go-to-market motion that will allow us to continue to acquire new customers and grow our customer base. |
| Expand Across Our Existing Customer Base. We believe that there are significant opportunities to continue to expand our relationships with our existing customers. We employ a land and expand business model designed to land with an initial use case and expand through onboarding additional functional teams, products, and use cases. |
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○ | Promote Upsell: Once a customer is on our platform there are many ways we can promote upsell opportunities. Customers can expand an initial use case by adding additional events or functionality to generate deeper analytics. They can also expand into additional functional teams who are looking to address a related use case or bring new digital products on our platform, both of which require additional data to be instrumented. |
○ | Drive Cross-sell: Our platform delivers end-to-end optimization that allows our customers to expand beyond analytics and layer on additional products, such as Recommend and Experiment, and we offer to optimize the digital product experiences of their customers. |
Within our largest customers, we have demonstrated our ability to grow our reach to include thousands of users across their organization who leverage our system to drive business outcomes. Our dollar-based net retention rate as of December 31, 2020 and June 30, 2021 was 119% for paying customers.
| Extend Product Leadership with Continued Investment in Our Platform. We see significant opportunities to leverage the same data stream powering our core analytics suite to layer on additional products that address adjacent high-value use cases desired by our customers. As a product-led company, the valuable feedback loop we have established with our own customers helps us identify product and platform enhancements best aligned to drive our future growth. |
| Expand our Global and Partnership Reach. We believe there is significant potential to continue to grow our business in international markets because of the universal nature of the problem we help to solve. For the year ended December 31, 2020 and six months ended June 30, 2021, 36% of our revenue was generated outside of the United States. Additionally, we plan to continue to invest in our partner network to strengthen our ecosystem and extend our reach. |
Summary Risk Factors
Our business is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, as more fully described under Risk Factors in this prospectus. We have various categories of risks, including risks related to our business and industry; risks related to our intellectual property; risks related to regulatory compliance and legal matters; risks related to tax and accounting matters; risks related to ownership of our Class A common stock; and general risk factors, which are discussed more fully in the section titled Risk Factors. These risks could materially and adversely impact our business, financial condition, and results of operations, which could cause the trading price of our Class A
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common stock to decline and could result in a loss of all or part of your investment. Additional risks, beyond those summarized below or discussed elsewhere in this prospectus, may apply to our business, activities, or operations as currently conducted or as we may conduct them in the future or in the markets in which we operate or may in the future operate. Some of these risks include:
| We have a limited operating history and have been growing rapidly over the last several years, which makes it difficult to forecast our future results of operations and increases the risk of your investment. |
| We have a history of losses. As our costs increase, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to achieve and sustain profitability. |
| Our business depends on our current customers renewing their subscriptions and purchasing additional subscriptions from us as well as attracting new customers. Any decline in our customer retention or expansion of our commercial relationships with existing customers or an inability to attract new customers would materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. |
| We expect fluctuations in our financial results, making it difficult to project future results. If we fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors with respect to our results of operations, our stock price could decline. |
| We expect to continue to focus on sales to larger organizations and may become more dependent on those relationships, which may increase the variability of our sales cycles and our results of operations. |
| We recognize revenue over the term of our customer contracts. Consequently, downturns or upturns in new sales may not be immediately reflected in our results of operations and may be difficult to discern. |
| Unfavorable conditions in our industry or the global economy, or reductions in information technology spending, could limit our ability to grow our business and materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. |
| If the market for SaaS applications develops more slowly than we expect or declines, our business would be adversely affected. |
| Our intellectual property rights may not protect our business or provide us with a competitive advantage, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. |
| We are subject to government regulation, including import, export, economic sanctions, and anti-corruption laws and regulations, that may expose us to liability and increase our costs. |
| Complying with evolving privacy and other data-related laws as well as contractual and other requirements may be expensive and force us to make adverse changes to our business, and the failure or perceived failure to comply with such laws, contracts, and other requirements could result in adverse reputational and brand damage and significant fines and liability or otherwise materially adversely affect our business and growth prospects. |
| Our listing differs significantly from an underwritten initial public offering. |
| Our stock price may be volatile, and could decline significantly and rapidly. |
| The trading price of our Class A common stock, upon listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, may have little or no relationship to the historical sales prices of our capital stock in private transactions, and such private transactions have been limited. |
| An active, liquid, and orderly market for our Class A common stock may not develop or be sustained. You may be unable to sell your shares of Class A common stock at or above the price at which you purchased them. |
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| Our principal stockholders will have the ability to influence the outcome of director elections and other matters requiring stockholder approval. |
| The dual class structure of our common stock will have the effect of concentrating voting control with our existing stockholders, executive officers, directors, and their affiliates, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions and to influence corporate governance matters, such as electing directors, and to approve material mergers, acquisitions, or other business combination transactions that may not be aligned with your interests. |
| None of our stockholders are party to any contractual lock-up agreement or other contractual restrictions on transfer. Following our listing, sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets, or the perception that sales might occur, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline. |
Implications of Being an Emerging Growth Company
As a company with less than $1.07 billion in revenue during our last fiscal year, we qualify as an emerging growth company as defined in the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 (the JOBS Act). An emerging growth company may take advantage of specified reduced reporting and other requirements that are otherwise applicable generally to public companies. These provisions include that:
| we are only required to include two years of audited consolidated financial statements in this prospectus in addition to any required interim financial statements, and correspondingly only required to provide reduced disclosure in Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations; |
| we are not required to engage an auditor to report on our internal controls over financial reporting pursuant to Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, as amended (the Sarbanes-Oxley Act); |
| we are not required to submit certain executive compensation matters to stockholder advisory votes, such as say-on-pay, say-on-frequency, and say-on-golden parachutes; and |
| we are not required to disclose certain executive compensation related items such as the correlation between executive compensation and performance and comparisons of the chief executive officers compensation to our median employee compensation. |
We may take advantage of these provisions until the last day of the fiscal year during which the fifth anniversary of this listing occurs or such earlier time that we are no longer an emerging growth company. We will remain an emerging growth company until the earliest of: (i) the last day of the first fiscal year in which our annual gross revenue is $1.07 billion or more; (ii) the last day of the fiscal year during which the fifth anniversary of this listing occurs; (iii) the date on which we have issued more than $1.0 billion in nonconvertible debt during the previous three years; or (iv) the date on which we are deemed to be a large accelerated filer under the rules of the SEC.
Under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies also can delay adopting new or revised accounting standards until such time as those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. We currently intend to take advantage of this exemption.
For risks related to our status as an emerging growth company, see Risk FactorsRisks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common StockWe 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.
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Channels for Disclosure of Information
Investors, the media, and others should note that, following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, we intend to announce material information to the public through filings with the SEC, the investor relations page on our website (www.investors.amplitude.com), blog posts on our website, press releases, public conference calls, webcasts, our Twitter feed (@Amplitude_HQ), our Facebook page, and our LinkedIn page.
The information disclosed by the foregoing channels could be deemed to be material information. As such, we encourage investors, the media, and others to follow the channels listed above and to review the information disclosed through such channels.
Any updates to the list of disclosure channels through which we will announce information will be posted on the investor relations page on our website.
Corporate Information
We were incorporated in the State of Delaware in November 2011 as Sonalight, Inc. and founded our Amplitude business in 2012. In December 2014, we changed our name to Amplitude, Inc. Our principal executive offices are located at 201 Third Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, California 94103. Our telephone number is (650) 988-5131 and our website address is www.amplitude.com. The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is deemed not to be incorporated in this prospectus or to be part of this prospectus. You should not consider information contained on, or hyperlinked through, our website to be part of this prospectus in deciding whether to purchase shares of our Class A common stock.
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SUMMARY CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL AND OPERATING INFORMATION
The following tables summarize our consolidated financial data. The summary consolidated statements of operations and cash flows information for the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020 (except the pro forma net loss per share and pro forma share information) have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this prospectus. The summary consolidated statements of operations and cash flows information for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021 (except the pro forma net loss per share and pro forma share information) and the summary consolidated balance sheet information as of June 30, 2021 have been derived from our unaudited consolidated financial statements appearing elsewhere in this prospectus (except the pro forma balance sheet information). The unaudited interim consolidated financial statements were prepared on a basis consistent with our audited consolidated financial statements and include, in managements opinion, all adjustments, consisting only of normal recurring adjustments, that we consider necessary for a fair statement of the financial information set forth in those statements. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for any period in the future and our interim results are not necessarily indicative of our expected results for the year ending December 31, 2021. You should read the following summary consolidated financial data together with the section titled Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations and our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus.
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
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2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
(in thousands, except share and per share data) | ||||||||||||||||
Consolidated Statements of Operations Information: |
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Revenue |
$ | 68,442 | $ | 102,464 | $ | 46,022 | $ | 72,364 | ||||||||
Cost of revenue(1) |
22,105 | 30,483 | 13,516 | 22,390 | ||||||||||||
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Gross profit |
46,337 | 71,981 | 32,506 | 49,974 | ||||||||||||
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Operating expenses: |
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Research and development(1) |
19,036 | 26,098 | 14,141 | 15,529 | ||||||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) |
47,079 | 51,819 | 25,369 | 36,810 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative(1) |
14,553 | 18,067 | 9,498 | 13,531 | ||||||||||||
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Total operating expenses |
80,668 | 95,984 | 49,008 | 65,870 | ||||||||||||
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Other income, net |
1,460 | 269 | 227 | 20 | ||||||||||||
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Loss before provision for income taxes |
(32,871 | ) | (23,734 | ) | (16,275 | ) | (15,876 | ) | ||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
663 | 833 | (348 | ) | 646 | |||||||||||
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Net loss |
$ | (33,534 | ) | $ | (24,567 | ) | $ | (16,623 | ) | $ | (16,522 | ) | ||||
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Net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(2) |
$ | (1.38 | ) | $ | (0.98 | ) | $ | (0.68 | ) | $ | (0.57 | ) | ||||
Weighted-average shares used in computing net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted(2) |
24,322,351 | 25,059,958 | 24,550,162 | 28,808,081 | ||||||||||||
Pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted (unaudited)(3) |
$ | (0.32 | ) | $ | (0.21 | ) | ||||||||||
Pro forma weighted-average shares used in computing pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted (unaudited)(3) |
87,417,960 | 93,999,864 |
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(1) | Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows: |
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
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2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 358 | $ | 590 | $ | 243 | $ | 483 | ||||||||
Research and development |
1,419 | 5,582 | 3,986 | 2,063 | ||||||||||||
Sales and marketing |
4,429 | 6,512 | 3,705 | 1,689 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative |
1,128 | 3,869 | 2,552 | 1,361 | ||||||||||||
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Total stock-based compensation |
$ | 7,334 | $ | 16,553 | $ | 10,486 | $ | 5,596 |
(2) | See Notes 1 and 10 of the notes to our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for an explanation of the calculations of our net loss per share, basic and diluted, for the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, and see Notes 1 and 10 of the notes to our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for an explanation of the calculations of our net loss per share, basic and diluted, for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021. |
(3) | Unaudited pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted, for the year ended December 31, 2020 and for the six months ended June 30, 2021 is calculated giving effect to the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion and RSU Settlement for which the time-based vesting condition was satisfied as of December 31, 2020 and June 30, 2021, respectively. Each such conversion or settlement is assumed to have occurred at the beginning of the period, or their issuance dates (including time-based vesting dates) if later. The unaudited pro forma net loss per share also gives effect to stock-based compensation expense of $3.7 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 and the six months ended June 30, 2021, respectively, related to RSUs for which the time-based vesting condition was satisfied as of the end of each reporting period, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The following table summarizes our unaudited pro forma net loss per share for the year ended December 31, 2020 and the six months ended June 30, 2021: |
Year Ended December 31, 2020 |
Six Months Ended June 30, 2021 |
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(Unaudited) | ||||||||
(in thousands, except per share data) | ||||||||
Numerator |
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Net loss |
$ | (24,567 | ) | $ | (16,522 | ) | ||
Stock-based compensation related to vesting of RSUs |
(3,651 | ) | (3,679 | ) | ||||
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Pro forma net loss, basic and diluted |
$ | (28,218 | ) | $ | (20,201 | ) | ||
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Denominator |
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Weighted-average shares used in computing net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
25,060 | 28,808 | ||||||
Pro forma adjustment to reflect assumed conversion and RSU vesting |
62,358 | 65,192 | ||||||
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Pro forma weighted-average shares used in computing pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
87,418 | 94,000 | ||||||
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Pro forma net loss per share attributable to common stockholders, basic and diluted |
$ | (0.32 | ) | $ | (0.21 | ) | ||
|
|
|
|
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Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
|||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows Information: |
||||||||||||||||
Net cash used in operating activities |
$ | (16,036) | $ | (10,392) | $ | (9,942) | $ | (5,523) | ||||||||
Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities |
(648) | (5,908) | (4,429) | 339 | ||||||||||||
Net cash provided by financing activities |
874 | 54,245 | 50,885 | 179,313 |
As of June 30, 2021 | ||||||||
Actual | Pro Forma(1) | |||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||
Consolidated Balance Sheet Information: |
||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
$ | 291,062 | $ | 317,562 | ||||
Working capital(2) |
256,777 | 283,277 | ||||||
Total assets |
376,532 | 403,032 | ||||||
Total liabilities |
81,108 | 81,108 | ||||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock |
361,113 | | ||||||
Additional paid-in capital |
55,657 | 446,949 | ||||||
Accumulated deficit |
(121,346 | ) | (125,025 | ) | ||||
Total stockholders equity (deficit) |
(65,689 | ) | 321,924 |
(1) | The pro forma consolidated balance sheet data above gives effect to (i) the Reclassification, (ii) the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion, (iii) the receipt of aggregate net proceeds of approximately $26.5 million as a result of the issuance and sale of 827,609 shares of Series F redeemable convertible preferred stock after June 30, 2021, (iv) the RSU Settlement, (v) stock-based compensation expense of $3.7 million related to RSUs for which the time-based vesting condition was satisfied as of June 30, 2021, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, reflected as an increase to additional paid-in capital and accumulated deficit, and (vi) the filing and effectiveness of our restated certificate of incorporation and the adoption of our amended and restated bylaws, each of which will occur in connection with the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. |
(2) | We define working capital as current assets less current liabilities. See our consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus for further details regarding our current assets and current liabilities as of June 30, 2021. |
Key Business Metrics
We review a number of operating and financial metrics, including the following key metrics, to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, formulate business plans, and make strategic decisions. We are not aware of any uniform standards for calculating these key metrics, which may hinder comparability with other companies who may calculate similarly-titled metrics in a different way.
As of December 31, | As of June 30, | |||||||||||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | YoY Growth | 2020 | 2021 | YoY Growth | |||||||||||||||||||
Paying Customers |
739 | 1,039 | 41 | % | 845 | 1,280 | 51 | % | ||||||||||||||||
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate |
116 | % | 119 | % | N/A | 118 | % | 119 | % | N/A |
For additional information about our key business metrics, see Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of OperationsKey Business Metrics.
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Non-GAAP Financial Measures
The following table presents certain non-GAAP financial measures, along with the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measure, for each period presented below. In addition to our results determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, we believe these non-GAAP financial measures are useful in evaluating our operating performance.
Year Ended December 31, | Six Months Ended June 30, | |||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Gross Profit |
$ | 46,337 | $ | 71,981 | $ | 32,506 | $ | 49,974 | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Gross Profit |
$ | 46,695 | $ | 72,798 | $ | 32,749 | $ | 51,108 | ||||||||
Gross Margin |
68 | % | 70 | % | 71 | % | 69 | % | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Gross Margin |
68 | % | 71 | % | 71 | % | 71 | % | ||||||||
Loss from Operations |
$ | (34,331 | ) | $ | (24,003 | ) | $ | (16,502 | ) | $ | (15,896 | ) | ||||
Non-GAAP Loss from Operations |
$ | (26,955 | ) | $ | (6,610 | ) | $ | (5,704 | ) | $ | (7,392 | ) | ||||
Loss from Operations Margin |
(50 | )% | (23 | )% | (36 | )% | (22 | )% | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Loss from Operations Margin |
(39 | )% | (6 | )% | (12 | )% | (10 | )% | ||||||||
Net Cash Used in Operating Activities |
$ | (16,036 | ) | $ | (10,392 | ) | $ | (9,942 | ) | $ | (5,523 | ) | ||||
Free Cash Flow |
$ | (16,684 | ) | $ | (12,600 | ) | $ | (10,671 | ) | $ | (6,909 | ) | ||||
Net Cash Used in Operating Activities Margin |
(23 | )% | (10 | )% | (22 | )% | (8 | )% | ||||||||
Free Cash Flow Margin |
(24 | )% | (12 | )% | (23 | )% | (10 | )% |
For additional information about these non-GAAP financial measures and reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable financial measures stated in accordance with U.S. GAAP, see Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of OperationsNon-GAAP Financial Measures.
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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 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
We have a limited operating history and have been growing rapidly over the last several years, which makes it difficult to forecast our future results of operations and increases the risk of your investment.
Our revenue was $68.4 million and $102.5 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, respectively, and $46.0 million and $72.4 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, respectively. However, you should not rely on our historical revenue growth as an indication of our future performance.
As a result of our limited operating history and our rapid growth over the last several years, our ability to accurately forecast our future results of operations is limited and subject to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to effectively plan for and model future growth.
Our revenue growth rate may decline over time. In future periods, our revenue growth could slow or our revenue could decline for a number of reasons, including slowing demand for our Digital Optimization System, increased competition, changes to technology, a decrease in the growth of our overall market, or our failure, for any reason, to manage our growth effectively or 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 financial condition and results of operations could differ materially from our expectations, and our business could be materially adversely affected.
We have a history of losses. As our costs increase, we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to achieve and sustain profitability.
We have experienced net losses in each period since inception. We generated net losses of $33.5 million and $24.6 million for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, respectively, and $16.6 million and $16.5 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, respectively. As of December 31, 2020 and June 30, 2021, we had an accumulated deficit of $104.8 million and $121.3 million, respectively. We expect our costs and expenses to increase in future periods. In particular, we intend to continue to invest significant resources in:
| development of our Digital Optimization System, including investments in our research and development team, the development or acquisition of new products, features, and functionality, and improvements to the scalability, availability, and security of our platform; |
| our technology infrastructure, including expansion of our activities in third-party data centers that we may lease, enhancements to our network operations and infrastructure, and hiring of additional employees; |
| sales and marketing; |
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| additional international expansion, in an effort to increase our customer base and sales; and |
| general administration, including legal, accounting, and other expenses. |
In addition, part of our business strategy is to focus on our long-term growth. As a result, our profitability may be lower in the near-term than it would be if our strategy were to maximize short-term profitability. Significant expenditures on sales and marketing efforts, expanding our platform, products, features, and functionality, and expanding our research and development, each of which we intend to continue to invest in, may not ultimately grow our business or cause long-term profitability. If we are ultimately unable to achieve profitability at the level anticipated by industry or financial analysts and our stockholders, our stock price may decline.
Our efforts to grow our business may be costlier than we expect, or our revenue growth rate may be slower than we expect, and we may not be able to increase our revenue enough to offset the increase in operating expenses resulting from these investments. If we are unable to continue to grow our revenue, the value of our business and Class A common stock may significantly decrease.
Our business depends on our current customers renewing their subscriptions and purchasing additional subscriptions from us as well as attracting new customers. Any decline in our customer retention or expansion of our commercial relationships with existing customers or an inability to attract new customers would materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
In order for us to maintain or improve our revenue growth and our results of operations, it is important that our customers renew their subscriptions when existing contract terms expire and that we expand our commercial relationships with our existing customers and attract new customers. We also seek to convert customers on our free-tier, self-service option to paid subscription contracts. Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions, and our customers may not renew subscriptions with similar contract periods. Some of our customers have elected not to renew their agreements with us, and it is difficult to accurately predict long-term customer retention. In addition, our ability to attract new customers will depend on market acceptance of our Digital Optimization System and the successful implementation of our marketing strategy.
Our customer retention and expansion and the rate at which we attract new customers may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including our customers satisfaction with our Digital Optimization System; our support capabilities; our prices and pricing plans; the prices of competing products; reductions in our customers spending levels; new product releases; mergers and acquisitions affecting our customer base; or the effects of global economic conditions. We may be unable to timely address any retention issues with specific customers, which could materially adversely affect our results of operations. If our customers do not purchase additional subscriptions or renew their subscriptions, or if they renew on less favorable terms, or if we are unable to attract new customers, our revenue may decline or grow less quickly, which would materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We expect fluctuations in our financial results, making it difficult to project future results. If we fail to meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors with respect to our results of operations, our stock price 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, other factors that may cause our results of operations to fluctuate include:
| fluctuations in demand for our Digital Optimization System, including as a result of our introduction of new products, features, and functionality; |
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| fluctuations in pricing of our Digital Optimization System, including as a result of our introduction of new products, features, and functionality; |
| fluctuations in usage of our Digital Optimization System; |
| our ability to attract new customers; |
| our ability to retain existing customers; |
| customer expansion rates; |
| investments in new products, features, and functionality; |
| the timing of our customers purchases; |
| the speed with which customers are able to migrate data onto our platform after purchasing capacity; |
| awareness of our brand on a global basis; |
| fluctuations or delays in purchasing decisions in anticipation of new products, features, or functionality developed or acquired by us or our competitors; |
| changes in customers budgets and in the timing of their budget cycles and purchasing decisions; |
| our ability to control costs, including our operating expenses; |
| the amount and timing of costs associated with our cloud computing infrastructure, particularly the cloud services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS); |
| the amount and timing of payment for operating expenses, particularly research and development and sales and marketing expenses; |
| the amount and timing of non-cash expenses, including stock-based compensation, goodwill impairments, and other non-cash charges; |
| the amount and timing of costs associated with recruiting, training, and integrating new employees and retaining and motivating existing employees; |
| the effects of mergers, acquisitions, and their integration; |
| the ability to identify and complete merger and/or acquisition opportunities; |
| general economic conditions, both domestically and internationally, as well as economic conditions specifically affecting industries in which our customers participate, and related difficulties in collections; |
| health epidemics or pandemics, such as the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19); |
| the impact of new accounting pronouncements; |
| changes in regulatory or legal environments that may cause us to incur, among other things, expenses associated with compliance, particularly with respect to compliance with evolving privacy and data protection laws and regulations; |
| the overall tax rate for our business, which may be affected by the mix of income we earn in the United States and in jurisdictions with comparatively lower tax rates, the effects of stock-based compensation, and the effects of changes in our business; |
| the impact of changes in tax laws or judicial or regulatory interpretations of tax laws, which are recorded in the period such laws are enacted or interpretations are issued and may significantly affect the effective tax rate of that period; |
| fluctuations in currency exchange rates and changes in the proportion of our revenue and expenses denominated in foreign currencies; |
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| changes in the competitive dynamics of our market, including consolidation among competitors or customers; and |
| significant security breaches of, technical difficulties with, or interruptions to, the delivery and use of our platform. |
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 actions.
We expect to continue to focus on sales to larger organizations and may become more dependent on those relationships, which may increase the variability of our sales cycles and our results of operations.
As we continue to focus on and may become more dependent on sales to larger organizations, we expect our sales cycles to lengthen and become less predictable. We plan our expenses based on certain assumptions about the length and variability of our sales cycle. These assumptions are based upon historical trends for sales cycles and conversion rates associated with our existing customers. Any shift in sales cycle may adversely affect our financial results. Factors that may influence the length and variability of our sales cycle include:
| the need to educate prospective customers about the uses and benefits of our Digital Optimization System; |
| the discretionary nature of purchasing and budget cycles and decisions; |
| the competitive nature of evaluation and purchasing processes; |
| evolving functionality demands; |
| announcements or planned introductions of new products, features, or functionality by us or our competitors; and |
| lengthy purchasing approval processes. |
Our increasing dependence on sales to larger organizations may increase the variability of our financial results. If we are unable to close one or more expected significant transactions with these customers in a particular period, or if an expected transaction is delayed until a subsequent period, our results of operations for that period, and for any future periods in which revenue from such transaction would otherwise have been recognized, may be adversely affected.
We recognize revenue over the term of our customer contracts. Consequently, downturns or upturns in new sales may not be immediately reflected in our results of operations and may be difficult to discern.
We generally recognize subscription revenue from customers ratably over the contracted period. As a result, a portion of the revenue we report in each quarter is derived from the recognition of deferred revenue relating to subscriptions entered into during previous quarters. Consequently, a decline in new or renewed subscriptions may have a small impact on our revenue results for that quarter. However, such a decline will negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our Digital Optimization System and potential changes in our pricing policies or rate of expansion or retention, may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. We may also be unable to reduce our cost structure in line with a significant deterioration in sales. In addition, a significant majority of our costs are expensed as incurred, while revenue is recognized over the contracted period of the agreement with our customer. As a result, increased growth in the number of our customers could continue to result in our recognition of more costs than revenue in the earlier periods of the terms of our agreements. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through additional sales in any period, as revenue from new customers must be recognized over the applicable subscription term.
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Unfavorable conditions in our industry or the global economy, or reductions in software spending, could limit our ability to grow our business and materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and 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 or potential customers. Our ability to grow revenue and the profitability of our business depend on demand for software applications generally. Historically, during economic downturns there have been reductions in spending on software applications and services generally as well as pressure for extended billing terms and other financial concessions. If economic conditions deteriorate, our customers and prospective customers may go out of business or elect to decrease their budgets, which would limit our ability to grow our business and materially adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations. In addition, our 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 and may be less dependent on key industry events to generate sales for their products.
If the market for SaaS applications develops more slowly than we expect or declines, our business would be adversely affected.
Our success will depend to a substantial extent on the widespread adoption of SaaS applications in general, and of SaaS applications that look to solve aspects of digital optimization. Many organizations have invested substantial personnel and financial resources to integrate traditional on-premise business software applications into their businesses, and therefore may be reluctant or unwilling to migrate to SaaS applications. It is difficult to predict customer adoption rates and demand for our Digital Optimization System, the future growth rate and size of the SaaS applications market, or the entry of competitive applications. The expansion of the SaaS applications market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with SaaS, as well as the ability of SaaS providers to address data security and privacy concerns. Additionally, government agencies have adopted, or may adopt, laws and regulations, and companies have adopted and may adopt policies regarding the collection and use of personal information obtained from consumers and other individuals, or may seek to access information on our platform, either of which may reduce the overall demand for our Digital Optimization System. If we or other SaaS providers experience data security incidents, loss of customer data, disruptions in delivery, or other problems, the market for SaaS applications, including our Digital Optimization System, may be negatively affected. If SaaS applications do not continue to achieve market acceptance, or there is a reduction in demand for SaaS applications 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 spending on SaaS applications, it would result in decreased revenue and our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be materially adversely affected.
The market in which we operate is highly competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.
The market for applications that looks to address digital optimization is fragmented, rapidly evolving, and highly competitive, with relatively low barriers to entry. As this market continues to mature and new technologies and competitors enter the market, we expect competition to intensify. We face competition from:
| large companies that have greater name recognition, much longer operating histories, more established customer relationships, larger marketing budgets, and significantly greater resources than we do; |
| in-house software systems; |
| large integrated systems vendors; |
| smaller companies offering alternative SaaS applications; and |
| new or emerging entrants seeking to develop competing technologies. |
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Our competitors may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards, or customer requirements. With the introduction of new technologies, the evolution of our Digital Optimization System, and new market entrants, we expect competition to intensify in the future. Pricing pressures and increased competition generally could result in reduced sales, reduced margins, losses, or the failure of our Digital Optimization System to achieve or maintain more widespread market acceptance, any of which could harm our business.
Our competitors vary in size and in the breadth and scope of the products and services they offer. Further, other established SaaS providers not currently focused on digital optimization may expand their services to compete with us. Many of our current and potential competitors have established marketing relationships, access to larger customer bases, pre-existing customer relationships, and major distribution agreements with consultants, system integrators, and resellers. Certain of our competitors have partnered with, or have acquired, and may in the future partner with or acquire, other competitors to offer services, leveraging their collective competitive positions, which makes, or would make, it more difficult to compete with them. For all of these reasons, we may not be able to compete successfully against our current and future competitors, which would harm our business. For more information about the competitive landscape in which we operate, see BusinessCompetition.
If we fail to innovate in response to changing customer needs and technology developments and other market requirements, our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be materially adversely affected.
Our ability to attract new customers and retain and increase revenue from existing customers depends in large part on our ability to enhance and improve our Digital Optimization System and to introduce new products, features, and functionality. In order to grow our business, we must develop products, features, and functionality that reflect the changing needs of customers, and we believe that the pace of innovation will continue to accelerate. The success of any enhancement to our Digital Optimization System depends on several factors, including timely completion, adequate quality testing, and market acceptance. Any new product, feature, or functionality that we develop may not be introduced in a timely or cost-effective manner, may contain defects, or may not achieve the market acceptance necessary to generate sufficient revenue. If we are unable to successfully develop new products, features or functionality, enhance our Digital Optimization System to meet customer requirements, or otherwise gain market acceptance, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.
Because our Digital Optimization System is available over the internet, we need to continuously modify and enhance it to keep pace with changes in internet-related hardware, software, analytics, and database technologies and standards. In addition, we need to continue to invest in technologies, services and partnerships that increase the types of data processed on our platform and the ease with which customers can send data into our platform. We must also continue to enhance our data sharing and data exchange capabilities so customers can share their data with internal business units, customers, and other third parties. In addition, our platform requires third-party public cloud infrastructure to operate. We must continue to innovate to optimize our offerings for these and other public clouds that our customers require, particularly as we expand internationally. Further, the markets in which we compete are subject to evolving industry standards and regulations, resulting in increasing data governance and compliance requirements for us and our customers. To the extent we expand into the public sector and other highly regulated industries, our Digital Optimization System may need to address additional requirements specific to those industries.
If we are unable to enhance our Digital Optimization System to keep pace with these rapidly evolving customer requirements, or if new technologies emerge that are able to deliver competitive products at lower prices, more efficiently, more conveniently, or more securely than our platform, our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be materially adversely affected.
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If we fail to effectively manage our growth and changes to our business over time, our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be materially adversely affected.
We have experienced and expect to continue to experience rapid growth, which has placed, and may continue to place, significant demands on our management, operational and financial resources. For example, our headcount has grown from 280 employees as of December 31, 2019 to 490 employees as of June 30, 2021. We intend to continue to invest to expand our business, which may cause our margins to decline, and any investments we make will occur in advance of experiencing the benefits from such investments, making it difficult to determine in a timely manner if we are efficiently allocating our resources. As usage of our Digital Optimization System grows, we will need to devote additional resources to improving our platforms features and functionality, developing or acquiring new products, and maintaining infrastructure performance. Even if we are able to upgrade our systems and expand our personnel, any such expansion will be expensive and complex, requiring managements time and attention. We could also face inefficiencies or operational failures as a result of our efforts to scale our infrastructure. Moreover, there are inherent risks associated with upgrading, improving, and expanding our information technology systems. We cannot be sure that the expansion and improvements to our infrastructure and systems will be fully or effectively implemented on a timely basis, if at all. In addition, we will need to appropriately scale our internal business systems and our services organization, including customer support, to serve our growing customer base, particularly as our customer demographics change over time. Managing these changes will require significant expenditures and allocation of valuable management resources. If we fail to successfully manage our anticipated growth and change, the quality of our products may suffer, which could negatively affect our brand and reputation and harm our ability to retain and attract customers. As we continue to grow, we may need to implement more complex organizational management structures or adapt our corporate culture and work environments to changing circumstances, which could have an adverse impact on our corporate culture. Any failure to preserve our culture could harm our business, including our ability to retain and recruit personnel, innovate and operate effectively, and execute on our business strategy.
The COVID-19 pandemic or similar outbreaks could have an adverse impact on our business and operations, and the markets and communities in which we, our partners and customers operate, and the impact of the pandemic is difficult to assess or predict.
The continued impact and ultimate duration of the COVID-19 pandemic (including any new strains or mutations) on the global economy and our business are difficult to assess or predict. Actual and potential impacts include:
| Our customer prospects and our existing customers may experience slowdowns in their businesses, which in turn may result in reduced demand for our Digital Optimization System, lengthening of sales cycles, loss of customers, and difficulties in collections. |
| Our employees are working from home significantly more frequently than they have historically, which may result in decreased employee productivity and morale with increased unwanted employee attrition. |
| We continue to incur fixed costs, particularly for real estate, and are deriving reduced or no benefit from those costs. |
| We may continue to experience disruptions to our growth planning, such as for facilities and international expansion. |
| We anticipate incurring costs in returning to work from our facilities around the world, including changes to the workplace, such as space planning, food service, and amenities. |
| We may be subject to legal liability for safe workplace claims. |
| Our critical vendors could go out of business. |
| Our in-person marketing events, including customer user conferences, have been canceled, and we may continue to experience prolonged delays in our ability to reschedule or conduct in-person marketing events and other sales and marketing activities. |
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| We may be required to continue to conduct or from time to time return to conducting our business on a fully virtual basis, as opposed to the mix of virtual and in-person interactions with customers and partners that our marketing, sales, professional services, and support organizations were accustomed to prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. |
As global economic conditions improve with the rollout of vaccines, business activity may not recover as quickly as anticipated. Conditions may vary between countries and regions and will be subject to the effectiveness of government policies, vaccine administration rates, and other factors that may not be foreseeable. It is not possible at this time to predict the duration and extent of the impact that COVID-19 could have on worldwide economic activity and our business in particular. In addition, as stay-at-home orders and other quarantine and isolation measures are lifted, the amount of time that consumers spend interacting with digital products may normalize or decline, which could slow customer demand for our Digital Optimization System. Moreover, to the extent the COVID-19 pandemic materially adversely affects our business, financial condition, and results of operations, it may also have the effect of heightening many of the other risks described in this Risk Factors section, including, but not limited to, those related to our ability to expand within our existing customer base, acquire new customers, develop and expand our sales and marketing capabilities, and expand internationally.
If our security measures are breached or there is otherwise unauthorized disclosure of or access to customer data, our data, or our platform, our platform may be perceived as insecure, we may lose customers or fail to attract new customers, our reputation and brand may be harmed, and we may incur significant liabilities.
Use of our platform involves the storage, transmission, and processing of our customers proprietary data, including personal or identifying information of their customers or employees. Unauthorized disclosure of or access to or security breaches of our platform could result in the loss of data, loss of business, severe reputational damage adversely affecting customer or investor confidence, damage to our brand, diversion of managements attention, regulatory investigations and orders, litigation, indemnity obligations, damages for contract breach, penalties for violation of applicable laws or regulations, and significant costs for remediation that may include liability for stolen assets or information and repair of system damage that may have been caused, incentives offered to customers or other business partners in an effort to maintain business relationships after a breach, and other liabilities. We have incurred and expect to continue to incur significant expenses to prevent security breaches, including deploying additional personnel and protection technologies, training employees, and engaging third-party experts and consultants. Even though we do not control the security measures of third parties who may have access to our customer data, our data or our platform, we may be responsible for any breach of such measures or suffer reputational harm even where we do not have recourse to the third party that caused the breach. In addition, any failure by our vendors to comply with applicable law or regulations could result in proceedings against us by governmental entities or others.
Cyberattacks, denial-of-service attacks, ransomware attacks, business email compromises, computer malware, viruses, and social engineering (including phishing) are prevalent in our industry and our customers industries. In addition, we may experience attacks, unavailable systems, unauthorized access to systems or data or disclosure due to employee theft or misuse, denial-of-service attacks, sophisticated nation-state and nation-state supported actors, and advanced persistent threat intrusions. Electronic security attacks designed to gain access to personal, sensitive, or confidential data are constantly evolving, and such attacks continue to grow in sophistication. The techniques used to sabotage or to obtain unauthorized access to our platform, systems, networks, or physical facilities in which data is stored or through which data is transmitted change frequently, and we may be unable to implement adequate preventative measures or stop security breaches while they are occurring. We have previously been, and may in the future become, the target of cyberattacks by third parties seeking unauthorized access to our or our customers data or to disrupt our operations or ability to provide our services.
We have contractual and legal obligations to notify relevant stakeholders of security breaches. Most jurisdictions have enacted laws requiring companies to notify individuals, regulatory authorities, and others of
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security incidents or data breaches involving certain types of data. In addition, our agreements with certain customers may require us to notify them in the event of a security incident or data breach. Such mandatory disclosures are costly, could lead to negative publicity, may cause our customers to lose confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, and require us to expend significant capital and other resources to respond to or alleviate problems caused by the actual or perceived security incident or data breach and otherwise comply with the multitude of foreign, federal, state, and local laws and regulations relating to the unauthorized access to, or use or disclosure of, personal information. Additionally, as a result of a breach or other security incident, we could be subject to demands, claims, and litigation by private parties and investigations, related actions, and penalties by regulatory authorities.
A security breach may cause us to breach customer contracts. Our agreements with certain customers may require us to use industry-standard or reasonable measures to safeguard personal information or confidential information. A security breach could lead to claims by our customers, their end-users, or other relevant stakeholders that we have failed to comply with such legal or contractual obligations. As a result, we could be subject to legal action or our customers could end their relationships with us. There can be no assurance that any limitations of liability in our contracts would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from liabilities or damages.
Because data security is a critical competitive factor in our industry, we make numerous statements in our customer contracts, privacy policies, terms of service, and marketing materials, providing assurances about the security of our platform including detailed descriptions of security measures we employ. Should any of these statements be untrue or become untrue, even in circumstances beyond our reasonable control, we may face claims of misrepresentation or deceptiveness by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, state, federal and foreign regulators, and private litigants.
If we fail to detect or remediate a security breach in a timely manner, or a breach otherwise affects a large amount of data of one or more customers, or if we suffer a cyberattack that impacts our ability to operate our platform, we may suffer damage to our reputation and our brand, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially adversely affected. Further, although we maintain insurance coverage, our insurance coverage may not be adequate for data security breaches, indemnification obligations, or other liabilities. In addition, we cannot be sure that our existing insurance coverage and coverage for errors and omissions will continue to be available on acceptable terms or that our insurers will not deny coverage as to any future claim. Our risks are likely to increase as we continue to expand our platform, grow our customer base, and process, store, and transmit increasingly large amounts of proprietary and sensitive data.
We could suffer disruptions, outages, defects, and other performance and quality problems with our platform or with the public cloud and internet infrastructure on which it relies, which may materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our business and continued growth depend in part on the ability of our existing and potential customers to access our platform at any time and within an acceptable amount of time. Our agreements with customers typically provide for service level commitments. If we are unable to meet these commitments or if we suffer unexcused periods of downtime for our platform, we may be contractually obligated to provide financial credits or extend the term of the subscription for the period of unexcused downtime, or our customers may be entitled to terminate their agreements and obtain a pro rata refund. We have in the past provided, and may in the future be required to provide, financial credits and pro rata refunds as a result of not being able to meet these commitments. We have experienced, and may in the future experience, disruptions, outages, defects, and other performance and quality problems with our platform. We have also experienced, and may in the future experience, disruptions, outages, defects, and other performance and quality problems with the public cloud and internet infrastructure on which our platform relies. These problems can be caused by a variety of factors, including infrastructure changes, introductions of new functionality, vulnerabilities and defects in proprietary and open-source software, human error or misconduct, capacity constraints due to an overwhelming number of users accessing our platform simultaneously, design limitations, or denial of service attacks or other security-related incidents. The performance and availability of the cloud computing infrastructure that we use to host our
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platform and many of the internal tools we use to operate our business is outside our control; therefore, we are not in full control of whether we meet the service level commitments under our customer agreements. As a result, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected if we suffer unscheduled downtime that exceeds the service level commitments we have made to our customers. Any extended service outages could materially adversely affect our business and reputation.
Our Digital Optimization System is proprietary, and we rely on the expertise of members of our engineering, operations, product, and software development teams for their continued performance. It may become increasingly difficult and costly to maintain and improve our performance, especially during peak usage times and as our platform becomes more complex and our user traffic increases. 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 materially adversely affected.
We depend and rely on third-party hosted cloud services and internet infrastructure in order to operate critical functions of our business. For example, our platform and internal tools use computing, storage capabilities, bandwidth, and other services provided by AWS. If these services become unavailable due to extended outages, interruptions, or because they are no longer available on commercially reasonable terms, our expenses could increase, our ability to manage our business could be interrupted, and our processes for managing sales of and delivering our Digital Optimization System could be impaired until we are able to identify, obtain, and implement equivalent services, if we are able to do so at all. Any of these circumstances could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Any disruptions, outages, defects, and other performance and quality problems with our platform or with the public cloud and internet infrastructure on which it relies, or any material change in our contractual and other business relationships with any public cloud providers we contract with, could result in reduced use of our platform, increased expenses, including service credit obligations, and harm to our brand and reputation, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Real or perceived errors, failures, or bugs in our platform could materially adversely affect our business and growth prospects.
Because our platform is complex, undetected errors, failures, vulnerabilities, or bugs may occur, especially when updates are deployed. We have discovered and expect we will continue to discover software errors, failures, vulnerabilities, and bugs in our platform and anticipate that certain of these errors, failures, vulnerabilities, and bugs will only be discovered and remediated after deployment to customers. Software errors, failures, vulnerabilities, and bugs in our platform could materially adversely affect our business and growth prospects.
Any failure to offer high-quality product support may adversely affect our relationships with our customers, our reputation, and our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
In using our Digital Optimization System, our customers depend on our product support team to resolve complex technical and operational issues. We may be unable to respond quickly enough to accommodate short-, medium-, and long-term increases in customer demand for product support. We also may be unable to modify the nature, scope, and delivery of our product support to compete with changes in product support services provided by our competitors. Increased customer demand for product support, without corresponding revenue, could increase costs and materially adversely affect our results of operations. Our sales are highly dependent on our business reputation and on positive recommendations from our existing customers. Any failure to maintain high-quality product support, or a market perception that we do not maintain high-quality product support, could materially adversely affect our reputation, our ability to sell our Digital Optimization System to existing and prospective customers, our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
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Incorrect or improper implementation or use of our Digital Optimization System could result in customer dissatisfaction and materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We often assist our customers in implementing our Digital Optimization System (whether through us directly or a third party implementation partner), and they may need training in the proper use of our Digital Optimization System to maximize its potential and avoid inadequate performance. If we or our implementation partners fail to train customers on how to efficiently and effectively use our Digital Optimization System or we fail to provide adequate product support to our customers, we may lose opportunities for additional subscriptions, customers may choose not to renew or expand the use of our Digital Optimization System, we may experience negative publicity or legal claims against us, and our reputation and brand may suffer. Any of these circumstances could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
If we fail to integrate our platform with a variety of operating systems, software applications, and platforms that are developed by others, our platform may become less marketable, less competitive, or obsolete, and our business, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects could be materially adversely affected.
Our customers and prospective customers expect our Digital Optimization System to integrate with a variety of software platforms, and we need to continuously modify and enhance our platform to adapt to changes in software, browser, and database technologies. We have developed our platform to be able to integrate with third-party SaaS applications through the interaction of application programming interfaces (APIs). In general, we rely on the fact that the providers of such software systems continue to allow us access to their APIs to enable these custom integrations. We are subject to the standard terms and conditions of such providers, or other agreements we may have with them, which govern the distribution, operation, and fees of such software systems, and which may be subject to change by such providers. As a result of limits or prohibitions by other parties, unacceptable terms, technical difficulties, our failure to recognize demand, or for other reasons, we may not successfully build, deploy, or offer the integrations needed. If we fail to offer a variety of integrations or the integrations that our customers and prospective customers expect and demand, then our Digital Optimization System may become less marketable, less competitive, or obsolete, and our business, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects could be materially adversely affected.
We do not have the history with our subscription or pricing models necessary to accurately predict optimal pricing necessary to attract new customers and retain existing customers.
We have limited experience with respect to determining the optimal prices for our Digital Optimization System and, as a result, we have in the past and expect in the future that we will need to change our pricing model from time to time. As the market for our Digital Optimization System matures, or as new competitors introduce new products or services that compete with ours, we may be unable to attract new customers at the same price or based on the same pricing models as we have used historically. Pricing decisions may also impact the mix of adoption among our subscription plans and negatively impact our overall revenue. Although we occasionally upsell within contract terms based on customer needs, substantially all of our customer contracts have a subscription period of one year or longer, for which we primarily bill annually in advance with no obligation to renew. As a result, potential changes in our pricing policies, or our rate of customer expansion or retention, may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. Moreover, larger organizations may demand price concessions. As a result, in the future we may be required to reduce our prices, which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Failure to effectively develop and expand our sales and marketing capabilities, including our relationships with channel partners, could harm our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our products and platform.
In order to increase our sales to new and existing customers, we must expand our sales and marketing operations, including our sales force and third-party channel partners, and continue to dedicate significant resources to inbound sales and marketing programs, both domestically and internationally. Our ability to increase
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our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our products will depend, in part, on our ability to effectively organize, focus, and train our sales and marketing personnel. If we are unable to increase adoption of our Digital Optimization System by new and existing customers, especially enterprise customers, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially adversely affected.
Our efforts to develop and expand our sales and marketing capabilities will require us to invest significant financial and other resources, including in industries and sales channels in which we have limited experience to date. We may not achieve anticipated revenue growth from expanding our sales and marketing capabilities, and our business, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects may be materially adversely affected, if we are unable to hire, develop, integrate, and retain talented and effective sales personnel and global systems integrators, consultancies, and digital agencies; if our new and existing sales personnel are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time; or if our sales and marketing programs are not effective.
We may be unable to build and maintain successful relationships with our channel partners or such channel partners may fail to perform, which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects.
We employ a go-to-market business model whereby a portion of our revenue is generated by sales through our channel partners, such as independent software vendors and resellers, that further expand the reach of our direct sales force into additional geographies, sectors, and industries. In particular, we have entered, and intend to continue to enter, into strategic sales distributor and reseller relationships in certain international markets where we do not have a local presence. We provide certain of our channel partners with specific training and programs to assist them in selling access to our Digital Optimization System, but there can be no assurance that these steps will be effective, and restrictions on travel and other limitations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic undermine our efforts to provide training and build relationships. In addition, if our channel partners are unsuccessful in marketing and selling access to our Digital Optimization System, it would limit our expansion into certain geographies, sectors, and industries. If we are unable to develop and maintain effective sales incentive programs for our channel partners, we may not be able to incentivize these partners to sell access to our Digital Optimization System to customers.
Some of these partners may also market, sell, and support offerings that are competitive with ours, may devote more resources to the marketing, sales, and support of such competitive offerings, may have incentives to promote our competitors offerings to the detriment of our own, or may cease selling access to our Digital Optimization System altogether. Our channel partners could subject us to lawsuits, potential liability, and reputational harm if, for example, any of our channel partners misrepresents the functionality of our Digital Optimization System to customers or violates laws or our or their corporate policies. Our ability to achieve revenue growth in the future will depend, in part, on our success in maintaining successful relationships with our channel partners, identifying additional channel partners, including in new markets, and training our channel partners to independently sell access to our Digital Optimization System. If our channel partners are unsuccessful in selling access to our Digital Optimization System, or if we are unable to enter into arrangements with or retain a sufficient number of high-quality channel partners in each of the regions in which we sell access to our Digital Optimization System and keep them motivated to sell access to our Digital Optimization System, our business, financial condition, results of operations, and growth prospects could be adversely affected.
If our marketing strategies are not effective in attracting new and retaining existing customers, our business and ability to grow our revenues would be harmed.
We rely on our marketing strategies consisting of a combination of online and offline marketing programs such as online advertising, blogs, public relations, social media, user conferences, educational white papers and webinars, product demos, workshops, roundtables, and customer case studies, offering customers a free-tier, self-service option, and other inbound lead generation and outbound sales strategies to drive our sales and revenue. These strategies may not continue to generate the level of sales necessary to increase our revenue. If our outbound sales efforts are unsuccessful at attracting and retaining new and existing customers, we may be unable to grow our
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market share and revenue. If our customer base does not continue to grow through word-of-mouth marketing and viral adoption or outbound sales efforts, we may be required to incur significantly higher sales and marketing expenses in order to acquire new subscribers, which could materially adversely affect our business and results of operations. In addition, high levels of customer satisfaction and market adoption are central to our marketing model. Any decrease in our customers satisfaction with our products, including as a result of actions outside of our control, could harm word-of-mouth referrals and our brand.
Additionally, many customers never convert from our free-tier, self-service option to a paid subscription contract. Further, we often depend on individuals within an organization who initiate our free-tier, self-service option being able to convince decision-makers within their organization to convert to a subscription contract. Many of these organizations have complex and multi-layered purchasing requirements. To the extent that these free-tier customers do not become paying subscribers, we will not realize the intended benefits of this marketing strategy.
Sales efforts to larger organizations involve risks that may not be present or that are present to a lesser extent with respect to sales to smaller organizations.
We have experienced rapid growth in our customer base since our inception. Although our growth strategy includes acquiring new customers across industries, company size, and stages of digital maturity, with 26 of the Fortune 100 in our customer base, we believe there is continued significant opportunity to continue to penetrate the largest global organizations. Sales to larger organizations involve risks that may not be present or that are present to a lesser extent with sales to smaller organizations, 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, which we define as customers with more than 1,000 employees, may require considerable time to evaluate and test our Digital Optimization System prior to 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 Digital Optimization System, 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 enterprises typically taking longer to complete. During the quarter ended June 30, 2021, the average length of our sales cycle to enterprises was four to six months, as compared to one to two months to non-enterprise customers. In addition, larger organizations may demand more features and integration services. Sales to larger organizations also may increase the variability of our financial results. If we are unable to close one or more expected significant transactions with these customers in a particular period, or if an expected transaction is delayed until a subsequent period, our results of operations for that period, and for any future periods in which revenue from such transaction would otherwise have been recognized, may be adversely affected. If we fail to effectively manage these risks associated with sales cycles and sales to larger organizations, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially adversely affected.
If we are unable to maintain and enhance our brand, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially adversely affected.
We believe that maintaining and enhancing our reputation as a differentiated and category-defining company in digital optimization is critical to our relationships with our existing customers and to our ability to attract new customers. The successful promotion of our brand attributes will depend on a number of factors, including our marketing efforts, our ability to ensure that our platform remains reliable and secure, our ability to continue to develop high-quality software, and our ability to successfully differentiate our Digital Optimization System from competitive products and services. In addition, independent industry analysts often provide reviews of our Digital Optimization System, as well as products and services offered by our competitors, and perception of our Digital Optimization System in the marketplace may be significantly influenced by these reviews. If these reviews are negative, or less positive as compared to those of our competitors products and services, our brand may be adversely affected. It may also be difficult to maintain and enhance our brand in connection with sales through channel or strategic partners.
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The promotion of our brand requires us to make substantial expenditures, and we anticipate that the expenditures will increase as our market becomes more competitive, as we expand into new markets, and as more sales are generated through our channel partners. To the extent that these activities yield increased revenue, this revenue may not offset the increased expenses we incur. If we do not successfully maintain and enhance our brand, our business may not grow, we may have reduced pricing power relative to competitors, and we could lose customers or fail to attract potential customers, all of which would materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our operations are international in scope, and we plan further geographic expansion, creating a variety of operational challenges.
For the year ended December 31, 2020 and six months ended June 30, 2021, 36% of our revenue was generated outside the United States. A component of our growth strategy involves the further expansion of our operations and customer base internationally, which will require significant dedication of management attention and financial resources. 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. Our sales organization outside the United States is substantially smaller than our sales organization in the United States, and to date, only a very small portion of our sales has been driven by resellers or other channel partners. To the extent we are unable to effectively engage with non-U.S. customers due to our limited sales force capacity and limited channel partners, we may be unable to effectively grow in international markets.
Our current and future international business and operations involve a variety of risks, including:
| slower than anticipated public cloud adoption by international businesses; |
| changes, which may be unexpected, in a specific countrys or regions political, economic, or legal and regulatory environment, including Brexit, pandemics, terrorist activities, tariffs, trade wars, or long-term environmental risks; |
| the need to adapt and localize our Digital Optimization System for specific countries; |
| longer payment cycles and greater difficulty enforcing contracts, collecting accounts receivable, or satisfying revenue recognition criteria, especially in emerging markets; |
| new, evolving, and 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; |
| 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; |
| difficulties in managing a business in new markets with diverse cultures, languages, customs, legal systems, alternative dispute systems, and regulatory systems; |
| 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; |
| 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; |
| 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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| COVID-19 or other pandemics or epidemics that could decrease economic activity in certain markets, decrease use of our products and services, or decrease our ability to import, export, or sell our products and services to existing or new customers in international markets; |
| exposure to liabilities under export control, economic and trade sanction, anti-corruption, and anti-money laundering laws, including the Export Administration Regulations, the OFAC regulations, the FCPA, U.S. bribery laws, the UK Bribery Act, and similar laws and regulations in other jurisdictions; |
| increased financial accounting and reporting burdens and complexities; |
| requirements or preferences for domestic products; |
| differing technical standards, existing or future regulatory and certification requirements, and required features and functionality; |
| burdens of complying with laws and regulations related to privacy and data security, including the EU GDPR and similar laws and regulations in other jurisdictions; and |
| burdens of complying with laws and regulations related to taxation; and regulations, 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, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.
We derive, and expect to continue for some time to derive, substantially all of our revenue from our Amplitude Analytics product.
Although we recently released our Amplitude Recommend and Amplitude Experiment products, we currently derive, and expect to continue for some time to derive, substantially all of our revenue from our Amplitude Analytics product. As such, the continued growth in demand for and market acceptance of Amplitude Analytics is critical to our success. Demand for Amplitude Analytics and our other products and platform functionality is affected by a number of factors, many of which are beyond our control, such as continued market acceptance of our products by customers for existing and new use cases, the timing of development and release of new products, features, and functionality that are lower cost alternatives introduced by us or our competitors, technological changes and developments within the markets we serve, and growth or contraction in our addressable markets. If we are unable to continue to meet customer demands or to achieve more widespread market acceptance of our products, particularly our Amplitude Analytics product, our business, financial condition, and results of operations could be materially adversely affected.
We invest significantly in research and development, and to the extent our research and development investments do not translate into new products or material enhancements to our current products, or if we do not use those investments efficiently, our business, financial condition, and results of operations would be materially adversely affected.
For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020 and for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, our research and development expenses were 28%, 25%, 31%, and 21% of our revenue, respectively. If we do not spend our research and development budget efficiently or effectively on compelling innovation and technologies, our business may be harmed. Moreover, research and development projects can be technically challenging and expensive. The nature of these research and development cycles may cause us to experience delays between the time we incur expenses associated with research and development and the time we are able to offer compelling products and generate revenue, if any, from such investment. Additionally, anticipated customer demand for a product or service we are developing could decrease after the development cycle has commenced, and we would nonetheless be unable to avoid substantial costs associated with the development of any such product or service.
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If we expend a significant amount of resources on research and development and our efforts do not lead to the successful introduction or improvement of products that are competitive in our current or future markets, it would materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We agree to indemnify customers and other third parties, which exposes us to substantial potential liability.
Our contracts with customers and other third parties may include indemnification or other provisions under which we agree to indemnify or otherwise be liable to them for losses arising from alleged infringement, misappropriation, or other violation of intellectual property rights, data protection violations, breaches of representations and warranties, damage to property or persons, or other liabilities arising from our platform or such contracts. Although we attempt to limit our indemnity obligations, an event triggering our indemnity obligations could give rise to multiple claims involving multiple customers or other third parties. These claims may require us to initiate or defend protracted and costly litigation on behalf of our customers and other third parties, regardless of the merits of these claims. We may not have adequate or any insurance coverage and may be liable for up to the full amount of the indemnified claims, which could result in substantial liability or material disruption to our business or could negatively impact our relationships with customers or other third parties, reduce demand for our products, and materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
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 do not know 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 materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations. If we incur 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 Our Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property rights may not protect our business or provide us with a competitive advantage, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
To be successful, we must protect our technology and brand in the United States and other jurisdictions through trademarks, trade secrets, patents, copyrights, service marks, invention assignments, contractual restrictions, and other intellectual property rights and confidentiality procedures. Despite our efforts to implement these protections, these measures may not protect our business or provide us with a competitive advantage for a variety of reasons, including:
| our failure to obtain patents and other intellectual property rights for important innovations or maintain appropriate confidentiality and other protective measures to establish and maintain our trade secrets; |
| uncertainty in, and evolution of, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability, and scope of protection of intellectual property rights; |
| potential invalidation of our intellectual property rights through administrative processes or litigation; |
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| any inability by us to detect infringement or other misappropriation of our intellectual property rights by third parties; and |
| other practical, resource, or business limitations on our ability to enforce our rights. |
Further, the laws of certain foreign countries, particularly certain developing countries, do not provide the same level of protection of corporate proprietary information and assets, such as intellectual property, trademarks, trade secrets, know-how, and records, as the laws of the United States. As a result, we may encounter significant problems in protecting and defending our intellectual property or proprietary rights in foreign jurisdictions. Additionally, we may also be exposed to material risks of theft or unauthorized reverse engineering of our proprietary information and other intellectual property, including technical data, data sets, or other sensitive information. Our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights in such foreign countries may be inadequate to obtain a significant commercial advantage from the intellectual property that we develop, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with the parties with whom we have strategic relationships and business alliances. No assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to and distribution of our products and proprietary information. Further, these agreements may not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our platform and offerings.
Further, litigation may be necessary to enforce our intellectual property or proprietary rights, protect our trade secrets, or determine the validity and scope of proprietary rights claimed by others. Any litigation, whether or not resolved in our favor, could result in significant expense to us, divert the efforts of our technical and management personnel, and result in counterclaims with respect to infringement of intellectual property rights by us. If we are unable to prevent third parties from infringing upon or misappropriating our intellectual property or are required to incur substantial expenses defending our intellectual property rights, our business, financial condition, and results of operations may be materially adversely affected.
We may become subject to intellectual property disputes, which are expensive to support, and if resolved adversely, may subject us to significant liability and increased costs of doing business, which could have a material adverse effect on us.
We compete in markets where there are a large number of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and other intellectual and proprietary rights, as well as disputes regarding infringement of these rights. Many of the holders of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and other intellectual and proprietary rights have extensive intellectual property portfolios and greater resources than we do to enforce their rights. As compared to our large competitors, our patent portfolio is relatively undeveloped and may not provide a material deterrent to such assertions or provide us with a strong basis to counterclaim or negotiate settlements. Further, to the extent assertions are made against us by entities that hold patents but are not operating companies, our patent portfolio may not provide deterrence because such entities are not concerned with counterclaims.
Any intellectual property litigation to which we become a party may require us to do one or more of the following:
| cease selling, licensing, or using products or features that incorporate the intellectual property rights that we allegedly infringe, misappropriate, or violate; |
| make substantial payments for legal fees, settlement payments, subscription fee refunds, or other costs or damages, including indemnification of third parties; |
| obtain a license or enter into a royalty agreement, either of which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all, in order to obtain the right to sell or use the relevant intellectual property; or |
| redesign the allegedly infringing products to avoid infringement, misappropriation, or violation, which could be costly, time-consuming, or impossible. |
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Intellectual property litigation is typically complex, time consuming, and expensive to resolve and would divert the resources, time, and attention of our management and technical personnel, which might seriously harm our business, results of operations, and financial condition. We may be required to settle such litigation on terms that are unfavorable to us. For example, a settlement may require us to obtain a license to continue practices found to be in violation of a third partys rights, which may not be available on reasonable terms and may significantly increase our operating expenses. A license to continue such practices may not be available to us at all. As a result, we may also be required to develop alternative non-infringing technology or practices or discontinue the practices. The development of alternative non-infringing technology or practices would require significant effort and expense. Similarly, if any litigation to which we may be a party fails to settle and we go to trial, we may be subject to an unfavorable judgment which may not be reversible upon appeal.
Further, such litigation may also result in adverse publicity, which could harm our reputation and ability to attract or retain customers. As we grow, we may experience a heightened risk of allegations of intellectual property infringement. An adverse result in any litigation claims against us could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our use of open-source software could negatively affect our ability to sell our platform and subject us to possible litigation.
We use software in our Digital Optimization System that is licensed from third parties pursuant to open-source licenses. Certain open-source software licenses require a user who distributes or otherwise makes available the open-source software in connection with the users proprietary software to disclose publicly part or all of the source code to the users proprietary software. The use and distribution of open-source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open-source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. Additionally, certain open-source software licenses are difficult to interpret and require the user of such software to make the source code of any derivative works of the open-source code and certain related software available to third parties with few restrictions on the use or further distribution of such software by such third parties. As a result, we may face claims from others seeking to enforce the terms of an open-source license, including by demanding the release of derivative works of the open-source software and our proprietary source code that was developed or used in connection with such software. These claims could also result in litigation and require us to replace certain open-source software with proprietary software licensed under costly commercial licenses or require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our platform, any of which would have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations. Although we have implemented policies to regulate the use and incorporation of open-source software into our platform, we cannot be certain that we have not incorporated open-source software in our platform in a manner that is inconsistent with such policies. Any use of open-source software inconsistent with our policies or licensing terms could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Risks Related to Regulatory Compliance and Legal Matters
We are subject to government regulation, including import, export, economic sanctions, and anti-corruption laws and regulations, that may expose us to liability and increase our costs.
Our Digital Optimization System is subject to U.S. export controls, including the U.S. Department of Commerces Export Administration Regulations and economic and trade sanctions regulations administered by the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control. These regulations may limit the export of our products and provision of our services outside of the United States, or may require export authorizations, including by license, a license exception, or other appropriate government authorizations, including annual or semi-annual reporting and the filing of an encryption registration. Export control and economic sanctions laws may also include prohibitions on the sale or supply of certain of our products to embargoed or sanctioned countries, regions, governments, persons, and entities. In addition, various countries regulate the importation of
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certain products, through import permitting and licensing requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to distribute our products. The exportation, reexportation, and importation of our products and the provision of services, including by our partners, must comply with these laws or else we may be adversely affected, through reputational harm, government investigations, penalties, and a denial or curtailment of our ability to export our products or provide services. Complying with export control and sanctions laws may be time consuming and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities. Although we have controls designed to prevent our services from being used in violation of such laws, we are aware of a limited number of past occasions in which persons from U.S. sanctioned countries or regions appear to have accessed our platform. We have taken measures to prevent such situations from reoccurring, but there can be no guarantee that such measures will be successful in every case. If we are found to be in violation of U.S. sanctions or export control laws, it could result in substantial fines and penalties for us and for individuals working for us. Changes in export or import laws, or corresponding sanctions, may delay the introduction and sale of our services in international markets, or, in some cases, prevent the export or import of our services to certain countries, regions, governments, persons, or entities altogether, which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We are also subject to various domestic and international anti-corruption laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the UK Bribery Act, as well as other similar anti-bribery and anti-kickback laws and regulations. These laws and regulations generally prohibit companies and their employees and intermediaries from directly or indirectly authorizing, promising, offering, or providing payments or benefits to government officials and other recipients for improper purposes, such as to obtain or retain business improperly or secure an improper business advantage. We rely on certain third parties to support our sales and regulatory compliance efforts and can be held liable in certain cases for their corrupt or other illegal activities, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities. The FCPA also requires that we keep accurate books and records and maintain a system of adequate internal controls. Although we take precautions to prevent violations of these laws, we cannot provide assurance that our internal controls and compliance systems will always prevent misconduct by our employees, agents, third parties, or business partners. Our exposure for violating these laws will increase as our international presence expands and as we increase sales and operations in foreign jurisdictions.
Violations of applicable anti-corruption laws could subject us to significant sanctions, including civil or criminal fines and penalties, disgorgement of profits, injunctions, and debarment from government contracts, as well as related stockholder lawsuits and other remedial measures, all of which could adversely affect our reputation, business, financial condition, and results of operations. Violations or allegations of violations could also result in whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage, and investigations, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our reputation, business, and results of operations.
Complying with evolving privacy and other data-related laws as well as contractual and other requirements may be expensive and force us to make adverse changes to our business, and the failure or perceived failure to comply with such laws, contracts, and other requirements could result in adverse reputational and brand damage and significant fines and liability or otherwise materially adversely affect our business and growth prospects.
We are subject to numerous federal, state, local, and foreign privacy and data protection laws, regulations, policies, and contractual obligations that apply to the collection, transmission, storage, processing, sharing, disclosure, security, and use of personal information or personal data, which among other things, impose certain requirements relating to the privacy and security of personal information and other data. Laws and regulations governing privacy and data protection, the use of the internet as a commercial medium, the use of data in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and data sovereignty requirements are rapidly evolving, extensive, complex, and include inconsistencies and uncertainties and may conflict with other rules or our practices. Further, new laws, rules and regulations could be enacted with which we are not familiar or with which our practices do not comply.
We may incur significant expenses to comply with the laws, regulations and other obligations that apply to us. For example, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) imposes stringent data protection requirements for processing the personal data of individuals within the European Economic Area (the EEA).
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The GDPR enhances data protection obligations for processors and controllers of personal data, including, for example, expanded disclosure requirements, limitations on retention of personal data, mandatory data breach notification requirements, and additional obligations. Non-compliance with the GDPR can trigger fines of up to the greater of 20 million or 4% of our global annual turnover. 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, and the efficacy and longevity of current transfer mechanisms between the E.U. and the United States remains uncertain. For example, in 2016, the E.U. and United States agreed to a transfer framework for data transferred from the E.U. to the United States, called the Privacy Shield, but the Privacy Shield was invalidated in July 2020 by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The CJEU also raised questions about whether the European Commissions Standard Contractual Clauses, one of the primary mechanisms used by companies to transfer personal data out of the EEA, complies with the GDPR. While the CJEU upheld the validity of the Standard Contractual Clauses, the CJEU ruled that the underlying data transfers must be assessed on a case-by-case basis by the data controller to determine whether the personal data will be adequately protected. As a result, on June 4, 2021 the European Commission published a decision adopting an updated set of Standard Contractual Clauses designed to address issues identified by the CJEU. Use of the Standard Contractual Clauses will still need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis taking into account the legal regime applicable in the destination country, in particular applicable surveillance laws and rights of individuals. The exact scope and applicability of the new Standard Contractual Clauses is currently unclear, particularly regarding transfers to parties outside the EEA who are already subject to the GDPR. We are awaiting further clarification from the European Commission and therefore the full scope of application of the Standard Contractual Clauses remains subject to review and change as we get a better understanding from the European Commission and national regulators. As such, we will need to review existing transfers of personal data out of the EEA and put in place measures to implement the new Standard Contractual Clauses, subject to a transition period. Accordingly, unless we put in place such measures by the end of the applicable transition period, any transfers by us of personal data from Europe may not comply with European data protection laws and may increase our exposure to the GDPRs heightened sanctions for violations of its cross-border data transfer restrictions. Loss of our ability to transfer personal data from Europe may also require us to increase our data processing capabilities in those jurisdictions at significant expense.
Further, from January 1, 2021, companies have to comply with both the GDPR and the United Kingdom GDPR (UK GDPR), which, together with the amended UK Data Protection Act 2018, retains the GDPR in UK national law. The UK GDPR mirrors the fines under the GDPR, imposing fines up to the greater of 20 million (£17.5 million) or 4% of global turnover. The relationship between the United Kingdom and the E.U. in relation to certain aspects of data protection law remains unclear, and it is unclear how United Kingdom data protection laws and regulations will develop in the medium to longer term, and how data transfers to and from the United Kingdom will be regulated in the long term. These changes will lead to additional costs and increase our overall risk exposure. Currently, there is a four- to six-month grace period agreed in the E.U. and United Kingdom Trade and Cooperation Agreement, ending June 30, 2021 at the latest, while the parties discuss an adequacy decision. The European Commission published a draft adequacy decision on February 19, 2021. If adopted, the decision will enable data transfers from E.U. member states to the United Kingdom for a four-year period, subject to subsequent extensions.
In addition to the E.U. and UK, a growing number of other global jurisdictions are considering or have passed legislation implementing data protection requirements or requiring local storage and processing of data or similar requirements that could increase the cost and complexity of delivering our platform, particularly as we expand our operations internationally. Some of these laws, such as the General Data Protection Law in Brazil, or the Act on the Protection of Personal Information in Japan, impose similar obligations as those under the GDPR. Others, such as those in Russia, India, and China, could potentially impose more stringent obligations, including data localization requirements. If we are unable to develop and offer features that meet legal requirements or help our customers meet their obligations under the laws or regulations relating to privacy, data protection, or information security, or if we violate or are perceived to violate any laws, regulations, or other obligations relating to privacy, data protection, or information security, we may experience reduced demand for our Digital Optimization System, harm to our reputation, and become subject to investigations, claims, and other remedies, which would expose us to significant fines, penalties, and other damages, all of which would harm our business. Further, given the breadth and depth of changes in global data protection obligations, compliance has caused us
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to expend significant resources, and such expenditures are likely to continue into the future as we continue our compliance efforts and respond to new interpretations and enforcement actions.
The data protection landscape is also rapidly growing and evolving in the United States. As our operations and business grow, we may become subject to or affected by new or additional data protection laws and regulations and face increased scrutiny or attention from regulatory authorities. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (the CCPA) became effective on January 1, 2020. The CCPA requires companies that process information on California residents to make new disclosures to consumers about their data collection, use, and sharing practices, allows consumers to opt out of certain data sharing with third parties and exercise certain individual rights regarding their personal information, provides a new private right of action for data breaches, and provides for penalties for noncompliance of up to $7,500 per violation. Additionally, the California Privacy Rights Act (the CPRA) was recently passed in California. The CPRA will impose additional data protection obligations on covered businesses, including additional consumer rights processes, limitations on data uses, new audit requirements for higher risk data, and opt outs for certain uses of sensitive data. It will also create a new California data protection agency authorized to issue substantive regulations and could result in increased privacy and information security enforcement. The majority of the CPRA provisions will go into effect on January 1, 2023, and additional compliance investment and potential business process changes may be required. Similar laws have been proposed, and likely will be proposed, in other states and at the federal level, and if passed, such laws may have potentially conflicting requirements that would make compliance challenging.
Furthermore, the Federal Trade Commission (the FTC) and many state Attorneys General continue to enforce federal and state consumer protection laws against companies for online collection, use, dissemination, and security practices that appear to be unfair or deceptive. For example, according to the FTC, failing to take appropriate steps to keep consumers personal information secure can constitute unfair acts or practices in or affecting commerce in violation of Section 5(a) of the Federal Trade Commission Act. The FTC expects a companys data security measures to be reasonable and appropriate in light of the sensitivity and volume of consumer information it holds, the size and complexity of its business, and the cost of available tools to improve security and reduce vulnerabilities. There are a number of legislative proposals in the United States, at both the federal and state level, and in the E.U. and more globally, that could impose new obligations in areas such as e-commerce and other related legislation or liability for copyright infringement by third parties. We cannot yet determine the impact that these future laws, regulations, and standards may have on our business.
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 managements attention and resources, which might materially adversely affect 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 (including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements). A claim brought against us that is uninsured or underinsured could result in unanticipated costs, potentially having a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, we cannot be sure that our existing insurance coverage and coverage for errors and omissions will continue to be available on acceptable terms or that our insurers will not deny coverage as to any future claim.
Risks Related to Tax and Accounting Matters
We face exposure to foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations.
We conduct transactions, particularly intercompany transactions, in currencies other than the U.S. dollar. While we have primarily transacted with customers and vendors in U.S. dollars, we have transacted in foreign currencies for subscriptions to our Digital Optimization System, and we expect to significantly expand the number of transactions with customers for our Digital Optimization System that are denominated in foreign
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currencies. We do not currently maintain a program to hedge transactional exposures in foreign currencies. However, in the future, we may use derivative instruments, such as foreign currency forward and option contracts, to hedge certain exposures to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates. The use of these hedging instruments may not offset any or more than a portion of the adverse financial effects of unfavorable movements in foreign exchange rates over the limited time the hedges are in place and may introduce additional risks if they are not structured effectively.
In addition, our international subsidiaries maintain net assets denominated in currencies other than the functional operating currencies of these entities. Accordingly, changes in the value of foreign currencies relative to the U.S. dollar can affect our revenue and results of operations due to transactional and translational remeasurements. As a result of these foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations, it could be more difficult to detect underlying trends in our business and results of operations. To the extent that fluctuations in currency exchange rates cause our results of operations to differ from our expectations or the expectations of our investors, the trading price of our Class A common stock could be adversely affected.
Our global operations and structure subject us to potentially adverse tax consequences.
We generally conduct our global operations through subsidiaries and report our taxable income in various jurisdictions worldwide based upon our business operations in those jurisdictions. A change in our global operations could result in higher effective tax rates, reduced cash flows, and lower overall profitability. In particular, our intercompany relationships are subject to complex transfer pricing regulations administered by taxing authorities in various jurisdictions. The relevant revenue and taxing authorities may disagree with positions we have taken generally, or our determinations as to the value of assets sold or acquired or income and expenses attributable to specific jurisdictions. If such a disagreement were to occur, and our position were 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.
In addition, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has initiated a base erosion and profit shifting project that seeks to establish certain international standards for taxing the worldwide income of multinational companies. As a result of these developments, the tax laws of certain countries in which we do business could change on a prospective or retroactive basis, and any such changes could increase our liabilities for taxes, interest, and penalties, and therefore could materially adversely affect our cash flows, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our ability to use our net operating loss carryforwards may be limited.
Under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code), and corresponding provisions of state law, if a corporation undergoes an ownership change, which is generally defined as a greater than 50 percentage point change (by value) in its equity ownership by certain stockholders over a three-year period, the corporations ability to use its pre-change net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs) to offset its post-change income or taxes may be limited. We have completed a Section 382 study and have determined that none of the operating losses will expire solely due to Section 382 limitations. However, we may experience ownership changes as a result of subsequent shifts in our stock ownership, some of which may be outside of our control. Such change could limit the amount of NOLs that we can utilize annually to offset future taxable income or tax liabilities. Subsequent ownership changes and changes to the U.S. tax rules in respect of the utilization of NOLs may further affect the limitation in future years. In addition, at the state level, there may be periods during which the use of NOLs is suspended or otherwise limited, which could accelerate or permanently increase state taxes owed.
Changes in our effective tax rate or tax liability may have a material adverse effect on our results of operations.
We are subject to income taxes in the United States and various foreign jurisdictions. The determination of our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities requires significant judgment by management,
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and there are many transactions where the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. We believe that our provision for income taxes is reasonable, but the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our consolidated financial statements and may materially affect our financial results in the period or periods in which such outcome is determined.
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 and the CARES 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 |
| the effects of acquisitions. |
Any of these developments could materially adversely affect our results of operations.
In addition, we may be subject to income tax audits by many tax jurisdictions throughout the world, many of which have not established clear guidance on the tax treatment of SaaS-based companies. Although we believe our income tax liabilities are reasonably estimated and accounted for in accordance with applicable laws and principles, an adverse resolution of one or more uncertain tax positions in any period could have a material adverse effect on the results of operations for that period.
We could be required to collect additional sales or indirect taxes or be subject to other tax liabilities that may increase the costs our customers would have to pay for our products and materially adversely affect our results of operations.
We currently collect and remit applicable sales and indirect taxes and other applicable transfer taxes in jurisdictions where we, through our employees or economic activity, have a presence and where we have determined, based on applicable legal precedents, that sales or licensing of our products are classified as taxable. We do not currently collect and remit state and local excise, utility user and ad valorem taxes, fees, or surcharges in jurisdictions where we believe we do not have sufficient nexus. There is uncertainty as to what constitutes sufficient nexus for a state or local jurisdiction to levy taxes, fees, and surcharges for sales made over the internet, and there is also uncertainty as to whether our characterization of our products as not taxable in certain jurisdictions will be accepted by state and local tax authorities.
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 (Wayfair), that online sellers can be required to collect sales and use tax despite not having a physical presence in the buyers 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 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.
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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 (GAAP) are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (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 materially 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 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 Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of OperationsCritical 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 those related to revenue recognition, deferred commissions, valuation of our stock-based compensation awards, including the determination of fair value of our common stock, valuation of goodwill and intangible assets, accounting for income taxes, and useful lives of long-lived assets, among others. Our results of operations may be materially 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.
If our goodwill or intangible assets become impaired, we may be required to record a significant charge to earnings.
We review our intangible assets for impairment when events or changes in circumstances indicate the carrying value may not be recoverable. Goodwill is required to be tested for impairment at least annually. An adverse change in market conditions, particularly if such change has the effect of changing one of our critical assumptions or estimates, could result in a change to the estimation of fair value that could result in an impairment charge to our goodwill or intangible assets. Any such charges may have a material adverse effect on our results of operations.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common Stock
Our listing differs significantly from an underwritten initial public offering.
Prior to the opening of trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, there will be no book building process and no price at which underwriters initially sell shares to the public to help inform efficient and sufficient price discovery with respect to the opening trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. This listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market differs from an underwritten initial public offering in several significant ways, which include, but are not limited to, the following:
| There are no underwriters. Therefore, buy and sell orders submitted prior to and at the opening of trading of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market will not have the benefit of being informed by a published price range or a price at which the underwriters initially sell shares to the public, as would be the case in an underwritten initial public offering. Moreover, there will be no underwriters assuming risk in connection with the initial resale of shares of our Class A common stock. Unlike in a traditional underwritten offering, this registration statement does not include the registration of additional shares that may be used at the option of the underwriters in connection with overallotment activity. Moreover, we will not engage in, and have not and will not, directly or indirectly, request the financial |
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advisors to engage in, any special selling efforts or stabilization or price support activities in connection with any sales made pursuant to this registration statement. In an underwritten initial public offering, the underwriters may engage in covered short sales in an amount of shares representing the underwriters option to purchase additional shares. To close a covered short position, the underwriters purchase shares in the open market or exercise the underwriters option to purchase additional shares. In determining the source of shares to close the covered short position, the underwriters typically consider, among other things, the price of shares available for purchase in the open market as compared to the price at which they may purchase shares through the underwriters option to purchase additional shares. Purchases in the open market to cover short positions, as well as other purchases underwriters may undertake for their own accounts, may have the effect of preventing a decline in the trading price of shares of our Class A common stock. Given that there will be no underwriters option to purchase additional shares and no underwriters engaging in stabilizing transactions with respect to the trading of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, there could be greater volatility in the trading price of our Class A common stock during the period immediately following the listing. See also Our stock price may be volatile, and could decline significantly and rapidly. |
| There is not a fixed or determined number of shares of Class A common stock available for sale in connection with the registration and the listing, except we expect approximately 1,271,058 shares of our Class A common stock to be sold on our first trading day in order to fund the tax withholding and remittance obligations arising in connection with the RSUs that will vest and settle upon that day. Therefore, there can be no assurance that any Registered Stockholders or other existing stockholders will sell any of their shares of Class A common stock, and there may initially be a lack of supply of, or demand for, shares of Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Alternatively, we may have a large number of Registered Stockholders or other existing stockholders who choose to sell their shares of Class A common stock in the near term, resulting in potential oversupply of our Class A common stock, which could adversely impact the trading price of our Class A common stock once listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and thereafter. |
| None of our Registered Stockholders or other existing stockholders have entered into contractual lock-up agreements or other restrictions on transfer. In an underwritten initial public offering, it is customary for an issuers officers, directors, and most or all of its other stockholders to enter into a 180-day contractual lock-up arrangement with the underwriters to help promote orderly trading immediately after such initial public offering. Consequently, any of our stockholders, including our directors and officers who own our Class A or Class B common stock and other significant stockholders, may sell any or all of their shares at any time (subject to any restrictions under applicable law, and in the case of shares of Class B common stock, upon conversion of any shares of Class B common stock into Class A common stock at the time of sale), including immediately upon listing. If such sales were to occur in a significant volume in a short period of time following the listing, it may result in an oversupply of our Class A common stock in the market, which could adversely impact the trading price of our Class A common stock. See also None of our stockholders are party to any contractual lock-up agreement or other contractual restrictions on transfer. Following our listing, sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets, or the perception that sales might occur, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline. |
| We will not conduct a traditional roadshow with underwriters prior to the opening of trading of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Instead, we will host an investor day on , 2021 and are engaging in certain other investor education meetings. On , 2021, we announced the date for this investor day over financial news outlets in a manner consistent with typical corporate outreach to investors. We will prepare an electronic presentation for this investor day, which will include content similar to a traditional roadshow presentation. We will make a version of the presentation publicly available, without restrictions, on our website. There can be no guarantee that the investor day and other investor education meetings will be as effective a method of investor education as a traditional roadshow conducted in connection with an underwritten initial public |
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offering. As a result, there may not be efficient or sufficient price discovery with respect to our Class A common stock or sufficient demand among potential investors immediately after our listing, which could result in a more volatile trading price of our Class A common stock. |
Such differences from an underwritten initial public offering could result in a volatile trading price for our Class A common stock and uncertain trading volume, which may adversely affect your ability to sell any Class A common stock that you may purchase.
We have agreed to indemnify certain of the Registered Stockholders for certain claims arising in connection with sales under this prospectus. Large indemnity payments would materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our stock price may be volatile, and could decline significantly and rapidly.
The listing of our Class A common stock and the registration of the Registered Stockholders shares of Class A common stock is a novel process that is not an underwritten initial public offering. We have engaged Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities, Citigroup, KeyBanc Capital Markets, Baird, UBS Investment Bank, and William Blair to serve as our financial advisors. There will be no book building process and no price at which underwriters initially sell shares to the public to help inform efficient and sufficient price discovery with respect to the opening trades on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Pursuant to Nasdaqs rules, once Morgan Stanley, in its capacity as our designated financial advisor to perform the functions under Nasdaq Rule 4120(c)(8), has notified Nasdaq that our shares of Class A common stock are ready to trade, Nasdaq will calculate the Current Reference Price for our shares of Class A common stock, in accordance with Nasdaqs rules. If Morgan Stanley then approves proceeding at the Current Reference Price, Nasdaq will conduct a price validation test in accordance with Nasdaq Rule 4120(c)(8). As part of conducting such price validation test, Nasdaq may consult with Morgan Stanley, if the price bands need to be modified, to select the new price bands for purposes of applying such test iteratively until the validation tests yield a price within such bands. Upon completion of such price validation checks, the applicable orders that have been entered will then be executed at such price and regular trading of our shares of Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market will commence. Under Nasdaqs rules, the Current Reference Price means: (i) the single price at which the maximum number of orders to buy or sell our shares of Class A common stock can be matched; (ii) if more than one price exists under clause (i), then the price that minimizes the number of our shares of Class A common stock for which orders cannot be matched; (iii) if more than one price exists under clause (ii), then the entered price (i.e. the specified price entered in an order by a customer to buy or sell) at which our shares of Class A common stock will remain unmatched (i.e. will not be bought or sold); and (iv) if more than one price exists under clause (iii), a price determined by Nasdaq after consultation with Morgan Stanley in its capacity as financial advisor. Morgan Stanley will exercise any consultation rights only to the extent that it may do so consistent with the anti-manipulation provisions of the federal securities laws, including Regulation M (to the extent applicable), or applicable relief granted thereunder. Morgan Stanley will determine when our shares of Class A common stock are ready to trade and approve proceeding at the Current Reference Price primarily based on consideration of volume, timing, and price. In particular, Morgan Stanley will determine, based primarily on pre-opening buy and sell orders, when a reasonable amount of volume will cross on the opening trade such that sufficient price discovery has been made to open trading at the Current Reference Price. If Morgan Stanley does not approve proceeding at the Current Reference Price (for example, due to the absence of adequate pre-opening buy and sell interest), Morgan Stanley will request that Nasdaq delay the open until such a time that sufficient price discovery has been made to ensure a reasonable amount of volume crosses on the opening trade. The length of such delay could vary greatly, from a short period of time such as one day, to a decision to not list our shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market at all. As a result, the absence of sufficient price discovery may result in delays in the opening of trading and, volatile prices and supply once trading commences. The opening public price may bear no relationship to the market price for our Class A common stock after our listing, and thus may decline below the opening public price.
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Moreover, prior to the opening trade, there will not be a price at which underwriters initially sell shares of Class A common stock to the public as there would be in an underwritten initial public offering. The absence of a predetermined initial public offering price could impact the range of buy and sell orders collected by Nasdaq from various broker-dealers. Consequently, upon listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, the trading price of our Class A common stock may be more volatile than in an underwritten initial public offering and could decline significantly and rapidly.
Further, if the trading price of our Class A common stock is above the level that investors determine is reasonable for our Class A common stock, some investors may attempt to short our Class A common stock after trading begins, which would create additional downward pressure on the trading price of our Class A common stock, and there will be more ability for such investors to short our Class A common stock in early trading than is typical for an underwritten public offering given the lack of contractual lock-up agreements or other restrictions on transfer.
The trading price of our Class A common stock following the listing also could be subject to wide fluctuations in response to numerous factors in addition to the ones described in the preceding risk factors, many of which are beyond our control, including:
| actual or anticipated fluctuations in our financial condition, results of operations, or operating metrics and those of our competitors; |
| the number of shares of our Class A common stock made available for trading; |
| failure of securities analysts to initiate or maintain coverage of us, changes in financial estimates by any securities analysts who follow our company, or variance in our financial performance from expectations of securities analysts; |
| changes in the pricing of our Digital Optimization System; |
| changes in our projected operating and financial results; |
| changes in laws or regulations applicable to our Digital Optimization System; |
| announcements by us or our competitors of significant business developments, acquisitions, or new offerings; |
| significant data breaches, disruptions to, or other incidents involving our platform; |
| our involvement in litigation; |
| future sales of our Class A common stock by us or our stockholders; |
| changes in our board of directors, senior management, or key personnel; |
| the trading volume of our Class A common stock; |
| changes in the anticipated future size and growth rate of our market; |
| general economic and market conditions; |
| other events or factors, including those resulting from war, incidents of terrorism, pandemics (including the COVID-19 pandemic), elections, or responses to these events; and |
| whether investors or securities analysts view our stock structure unfavorably, particularly our dual-class structure and the concentrated voting control of our executive officers, directors, and their affiliates. |
In addition, stock markets with respect to newly public companies, particularly companies in the technology industry, have experienced significant price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the stock prices of these companies. Stock prices of many companies, including technology companies, have fluctuated in a manner often unrelated to the operating performance of those companies. These fluctuations may be even more pronounced in the trading market for our Class A common stock shortly following the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market as a result of the supply and demand forces described above. 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 managements attention.
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The trading price of our Class A common stock, upon listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, may have little or no relationship to the historical sales prices of our capital stock in private transactions, and such private transactions have been limited.
Prior to the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, there has been no public market for our capital stock. There has been limited trading of our capital stock historically in private transactions. In the section titled Sale Price History of our Capital Stock, we have provided the historical sales prices of our capital stock in private transactions. Given the limited history of sales, this information may have little or no relation to broader market demand for our Class A common stock and thus the initial trading price of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market once trading begins. As a result, you should not place undue reliance on these historical sales prices as they may differ materially from the opening trading prices and subsequent trading prices of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. For more information about how the initial listing price on the Nasdaq Global Select Market will be determined, see Plan of Distribution.
An active, liquid, and orderly market for our Class A common stock may not develop or be sustained. You may be unable to sell your shares of Class A common stock at or above the price at which you purchased them.
We currently expect our Class A common stock to be listed and traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Prior to listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, there has been no public market for our Class A common stock. Moreover, consistent with Regulation M and other federal securities laws applicable to our listing, we have not consulted with Registered Stockholders or other existing stockholders regarding their desire or plans to sell shares in the public market following the listing or discussed with potential investors their intentions to buy our Class A common stock in the open market. While our Class A common stock may be sold after our listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market by the Registered Stockholders pursuant to this prospectus or by our other existing stockholders in accordance with Rule 144 of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act) unlike an underwritten initial public offering, there can be no assurance that any Registered Stockholders or other existing stockholders will sell any of their shares of Class A common stock, and there may initially be a lack of supply of, or demand for, Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Conversely, there can be no assurance that the Registered Stockholders and other existing stockholders will not sell all of their shares of Class A common stock, resulting in an oversupply of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. In the case of a lack of supply of our Class A common stock, the trading price of our Class A common stock may rise to an unsustainable level. Further, institutional investors may be discouraged from purchasing our Class A common stock if they are unable to purchase a block of our Class A common stock in the open market in a sufficient size for their investment objectives due to a potential unwillingness of our existing stockholders to sell a sufficient amount of Class A common stock at the price offered by such institutional investors and the greater influence individual investors have in setting the trading price. If institutional investors are unable to purchase our Class A common stock in a sufficient amount for their investment objectives, the market for our Class A common stock may be more volatile without the influence of long-term institutional investors holding significant amounts of our Class A common stock. In the case of a lack of demand for our Class A common stock, the trading price of our Class A common stock could decline significantly and rapidly after our listing. Therefore, an active, liquid, and orderly trading market for our Class A common stock may not initially develop or be sustained, which could significantly depress the trading price of our Class A common stock and/or result in significant volatility, which could affect your ability to sell your shares of Class A common stock.
Our principal stockholders will have the ability to influence the outcome of director elections and other matters requiring stockholder approval.
Our directors, executive officers, and holders of more than 5% of our capital stock and their affiliates will collectively beneficially own, in the aggregate, shares representing approximately 67.0% of the voting power of our outstanding Class A and Class B common stock, voting together as a single class, based on the number of shares outstanding as of June 30, 2021, giving effect to Existing Preferred Stock Conversion and the
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Reclassification and without giving effect to any conversions to Class A common stock in anticipation of our listing or any sales or purchases that these holders may make upon our listing. These stockholders currently have, and likely will continue to have, considerable influence with respect to the election of our board of directors and approval or disapproval of all significant corporate actions. The concentrated voting power of these stockholders could have the effect of delaying or preventing a significant corporate transaction, such as a merger or other sale of our company or our assets. 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 be adverse to the interests of other stockholders.
The dual class structure of our common stock will have the effect of concentrating voting control with our existing stockholders, executive officers, directors, and their affiliates, which will limit your ability to influence the outcome of important transactions and to influence corporate governance matters, such as electing directors, and to approve material mergers, acquisitions, or other business combination transactions that may not be aligned with your interests.
Our Class B common stock has five votes per share, whereas our Class A common stock, which is the stock we are listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and is being registered pursuant to the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, has one vote per share. Our stockholders, who will hold shares of Class B common stock upon the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, will collectively own shares representing approximately 99.5% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, based on the number of shares outstanding as of June 30, 2021, giving effect to the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion, the Reclassification, and the RSU Settlement and without giving effect to any conversions to Class A common stock in anticipation of our listing or any sales or purchases that these holders may make upon our listing. Our directors, executive officers, and holders of more than 5% of our capital stock and their affiliates will collectively beneficially own, in the aggregate, shares representing approximately 67.0% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock, based on the number of shares outstanding as of June 30, 2021, and giving effect to the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion and the Reclassification and without giving effect to any conversions to Class A common stock in anticipation of our listing or any sales or purchases that these holders may make upon our listing. 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, until the date that is six months following the date on which no founder is an employee or director of our company (unless a founder has rejoined our company during such six-month period), when all outstanding shares of Class A common stock and Class B common stock will convert automatically into shares of a single class of common 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. As a result, it is possible that one or more of the persons or entities holding our Class B common stock could gain significant voting control as other holders of Class B common stock sell or otherwise convert their shares into Class A common stock.
In addition, while we do not expect to issue any additional shares of Class B common stock following the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, any future issuances of Class B common stock would be dilutive to holders of Class A common stock.
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 listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global
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Select Market, 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 indices. In July 2017, FTSE Russell and Standard & Poors 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.
None of our stockholders are party to any contractual lock-up agreement or other contractual restrictions on transfer. Following our listing, sales of substantial amounts of our Class A common stock in the public markets, or the perception that sales might occur, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline.
In addition to the supply and demand and volatility factors discussed above, sales of a substantial number of shares of our Class A common stock into the public market, particularly sales by our directors, executive officers, and principal stockholders, or the perception that these sales might occur in large quantities, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline.
As of June 30, 2021, after giving effect to the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion and the Reclassification, we had 99,873,225 shares of Class B common stock outstanding, all of which are restricted securities (as defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act). Approximately of these shares of Class B common stock may be converted to Class A common stock and then immediately sold either by the Registered Stockholders pursuant to this prospectus or by our other existing stockholders under Rule 144 since such shares held by such other stockholders will have been beneficially owned by non-affiliates for at least one year. Moreover, once we have been a reporting company subject to the reporting requirements of Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Exchange Act for 90 days and assuming the availability of certain public information about us, (i) non-affiliates who have beneficially owned our common stock for at least six months may rely on Rule 144 to sell their shares of common stock, and (ii) our directors, executive officers, and other affiliates who have beneficially owned our common stock for at least six months, including certain of the shares of Class A common stock covered by this prospectus to the extent not sold hereunder, will be entitled to sell their shares of our Class A common stock subject to volume limitations under Rule 144 and various vesting agreements.
In addition, following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, we intend to file a registration statement to register all shares subject to options and RSUs outstanding or reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans. As of June 30, 2021, giving effect to the Equity Award Amendment, we had 28,806,581 options outstanding that, if fully exercised, would result in the issuance of shares of Class A common stock, as well as 3,050,911 shares of Class A common stock subject to RSU awards.
Accordingly, these shares will be able to be freely sold in the public market upon issuance, subject to applicable vesting requirements and compliance by affiliates with Rule 144.
None of our securityholders are subject to any contractual lock-up or other restriction on the transfer or sale of their shares.
Following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, the holders of up to approximately 86.2 million shares of our common stock will have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements for the public resale of the Class A common stock issuable upon the conversion of shares of our Class B common stock into shares of our Class A common stock or to include such shares in registration statements that we may file for us or other stockholders. Any registration statement we file to register additional shares, whether as a result of registration rights or otherwise, could cause the trading price of our Class A common stock to decline or be volatile.
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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.
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 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 (Section 404), reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, and exemptions from the requirements of holding a non-binding 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 the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market; (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 date we qualify as a large accelerated filer, with at least $700 million of equity securities held by non-affiliates.
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 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.
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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 restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws, as they will be in effect immediately following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. Our 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; |
| 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; |
| prohibit cumulative voting in the election of directors; |
| provide that our directors may only be removed for cause; |
| 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.
Claims for indemnification by our directors and officers may reduce our available funds to satisfy successful third-party claims against us and may reduce the amount of money available to us.
Our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws, as they will be in effect immediately following the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part, will provide that we will indemnify our directors and officers, in each case to the fullest extent permitted by Delaware law.
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In addition, as permitted by Section 145 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, our amended and restated bylaws and indemnification agreements that we have entered or intend to enter into with our directors and officers will provide that:
| we will indemnify our directors and officers for serving us in those capacities or for serving other business enterprises at our request, to the fullest extent permitted by Delaware law. Delaware law provides that a corporation may indemnify such person if such person acted in good faith and in a manner such person reasonably believed to be in or not opposed to the best interests of the corporation and, with respect to any criminal proceeding, had no reasonable cause to believe such persons conduct was unlawful; |
| we may, in our discretion, indemnify employees and agents in those circumstances where indemnification is permitted by applicable law; |
| we are required to advance expenses, as incurred, to our directors and officers in connection with defending a proceeding, except that such directors or officers shall undertake to repay such advances if it is ultimately determined that such person is not entitled to indemnification; |
| the rights conferred in our amended and restated bylaws are not exclusive, and we are authorized to enter into indemnification agreements with our directors, officers, employees, and agents and to obtain insurance to indemnify such persons; and |
| we may not retroactively amend our amended and restated bylaw provisions to reduce our indemnification obligations to directors, officers, employees, and agents. |
While we have procured directors and officers liability insurance policies, such insurance policies may not be available to us in the future at a reasonable rate, may not cover all potential claims for indemnification, and may not be adequate to indemnify us for all liability that may be imposed.
Our restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws will provide for an exclusive forum in the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware for certain disputes between us and our stockholders, and that the federal district courts of the United States will be the exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action under the Securities Act.
Our restated certificate of incorporation and our amended and restated bylaws will provide that: (i) unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware (or, if such court does not have subject matter jurisdiction thereof, the federal district court of the State of Delaware) will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for: (A) any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf, (B) any action asserting a claim for or based on a breach of a fiduciary duty owed by any of our current or former directors, officers, other employees, agents, or stockholders to us or our stockholders, including, without limitation, a claim alleging the aiding and abetting of such a breach of fiduciary duty, (C) any action asserting a claim against us or any of our current or former directors, officers, other employees, agents, or stockholders arising pursuant to any provision of the Delaware General Corporation Law or our certificate of incorporation or bylaws or as to which the Delaware General Corporation Law confers jurisdiction on the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware, or (D) any action asserting a claim related to or involving us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine; (ii) unless we consent in writing to the selection of an alternative forum, the federal district courts of the United States of America will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the sole and exclusive forum for the resolution of any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act and the rules and regulations promulgated thereunder; (iii) the exclusive forum provisions are intended to benefit and may be enforced by us, our officers and directors, the financial advisors to any offering giving rise to such complaint, and any other professional or entity whose profession gives authority to a statement made by that person or entity and who has prepared or certified any part of the documents underlying the offering; and (iv) any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in our shares of capital stock will be deemed to have notice of and consented to these provisions.
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Nothing in our current certificate of incorporation or bylaws or our restated certificate of incorporation or amended and restated bylaws precludes stockholders that assert claims under the Exchange Act from bringing such claims in federal court, to the extent that the Exchange Act confers exclusive federal jurisdiction over such claims, subject to applicable law.
We believe these provisions may benefit us by providing increased consistency in the application of Delaware law and federal securities laws by chancellors and judges, as applicable, particularly experienced in resolving corporate disputes, efficient administration of cases on a more expedited schedule relative to other forums, and protection against the burdens of multi-forum litigation. If a court were to find the choice of forum provision that will be contained in our restated certificate of incorporation or our amended and restated bylaws to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
General Risk Factors
Our inability to attract and retain highly skilled employees could materially adversely affect our business.
In order to execute our growth plan, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. Competition for these personnel in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located, and in other locations where we maintain offices, is intense, especially for engineers experienced in designing and developing software and experienced sales professionals. We have, from time to time experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining employees with appropriate qualifications. The cost of living is high in the San Francisco Bay Area, which may make it harder for us to attract and retain highly skilled employees. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel may have greater resources than we have. As our company grows and evolves, we may need to implement more complex organizational management structures or adapt our corporate culture and work environments. These changes could have an adverse impact on our corporate culture, which could harm our ability to retain and recruit personnel. 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, job candidates 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, it may adversely affect our ability to recruit and retain highly skilled employees. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and growth prospects could be materially adversely affected.
We depend on our executive officers and other key employees, and the loss of one or more of these employees could materially adversely affect our business.
Our success depends largely upon the continued services of our executive officers and other key employees. We rely on our leadership team in the areas of research and development, operations, security, marketing, sales, support, general and administrative functions, and on individual contributors in our research and development and operations. From time to time, there may be changes in our executive management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. We do not have employment agreements with our executive officers or other key personnel that require them to continue to work for us for any specified period; therefore, they could terminate their employment with us at any time. The loss of one or more of our executive officers, especially our Chief Executive Officer, or key employees could have an adverse effect on our business.
Changes in the business, regulatory, or political climate in the San Francisco Bay Area could adversely affect our operations.
Changes in the business, regulatory, or political climate in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located and most of our employees live, could affect our ability to expand or continue our
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operations there, which could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition, and results of operations. For example, if we were required to move our headquarters or downsize our operations in the San Francisco Bay Area due to material adverse changes in the business, regulatory, or political climate such as increases in local tax rates, we may lose key employees and incur significant costs of relocation.
Changes in laws and regulations related to the internet or changes in the internet infrastructure itself may diminish the demand for our Digital Optimization System, and could harm our business.
The future success of our business depends upon our customers and potential customers access to the internet. Federal, state, or foreign government bodies or agencies have in the past adopted, and may in the future adopt, laws or regulations affecting the use of the internet. Changes in these laws or regulations could require us to modify our platform in order to comply with these changes. In addition, government agencies or private organizations may impose additional laws, regulations, standards, or protocols involving taxation, tariffs, privacy, data protection, information security, content, copyrights, distribution, electronic contracts and other communications, consumer protection, and the characteristics and quality of services, any of which could decrease the demand for our Digital Optimization System or result in reductions in the demand for internet-based platforms such as ours. In addition, the use of the internet as a business tool could be harmed due to delays in the development or adoption of new standards and protocols to handle increased demands of internet activity, security, reliability, cost, ease-of-use, accessibility, and quality of service. The performance of the internet and its acceptance as a business tool has been harmed by viruses, worms, and similar malicious programs, and the internet has experienced a variety of outages and other delays as a result of damage to portions of its infrastructure. If the use of the internet is adversely affected by these issues, demand for our Digital Optimization System could decline.
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.
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. 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 companies covered by our market opportunity estimates will purchase our Digital Optimization System or generate any particular level of revenue for us. Any expansion in our markets depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance, and perceived value associated with our Digital Optimization System and the products of our competitors. Even if the markets in which we compete achieve the forecasted growth, our business could fail to grow at similar rates, if at all.
Acquisitions, mergers, 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 materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
We have in the past and intend in the future to seek to acquire or invest in businesses, joint ventures, and platform technologies that we believe could complement or expand our Digital Optimization System, enhance our technology, or otherwise offer growth opportunities. Any such acquisitions or investments 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, personnel, or operations of any acquired companies, particularly if the key personnel of an acquired company choose not to work for us, the acquired companys 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. Any such transactions that we are able to complete may not result in the synergies or other benefits we expect to achieve, which could result in substantial impairment charges. These transactions
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could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities, the incurrence of debt or adverse tax consequences, which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Our business could be disrupted by catastrophic occurrences and similar events.
Natural disasters or other catastrophic events may cause damage or disruption to our operations, international commerce, and the global economy, and could harm our business. We have a large employee presence in San Francisco, California. In the event of a major earthquake, fire, power loss, telecommunications failure, cyberattack, war, terrorist attack, sabotage, other intentional acts of vandalism or misconduct, geopolitical event, disease, or other catastrophic occurrence, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, delays in our application development, lengthy interruptions in our products, breaches of data security, and loss of critical data, all of which could materially adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.
Additionally, we rely on our network and third-party infrastructure and applications, internal technology systems, and our websites for our development, marketing, operational support, hosted services, and sales activities. If these systems were to fail or be negatively impacted as a result of a natural disaster or other catastrophic event, our ability to deliver products to our customers would be impaired.
As we grow our business, the need for business continuity planning, incident response planning, and disaster recovery plans will grow in significance. If we are unable to develop adequate plans to ensure that our business functions continue to operate during and after a disaster, and successfully execute on those plans in the event of a disaster or emergency, our business and reputation would be harmed.
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 upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market 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.
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, Nasdaq rules, and other applicable securities rules and regulations impose various requirements on public companies. Our management and other personnel will need to 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 control 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 will be required, pursuant to Section 404, to furnish a report by management on, among other things, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting on an annual basis, beginning with our second annual report on Form 10-K. 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 have recently begun to establish a compliance and controls function and we will need to hire additional accounting and financial personnel 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.
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CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This prospectus contains forward-looking statements that reflect our current views with respect to, among other things, future events and our future business, financial condition, and results of operations. These statements are often, but not always, made through the use of words or phrases such as may, should, could, predict, potential, believe, expect, continue, will, anticipate, seek, estimate, intend, plan, projection, would, and outlook, or the negative version of those words or phrases or other comparable words or phrases of a future or forward-looking nature. These forward-looking statements are not statements of historical fact, and are based on current expectations, estimates, and projections about our industry as well as certain assumptions made by management, many of which, by their nature, are inherently uncertain and beyond our control. Forward-looking statements contained in this prospectus include, but are not limited to, statements about:
| 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 Digital Optimization System and upsell and cross sell additional products; |
| our ability to achieve or sustain our profitability; |
| our estimated market opportunity; |
| 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, including our ability to grow and maintain our channel partners, 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 increased expenses associated with being a public company. |
We caution you that the foregoing list may not contain all of the forward-looking statements made in this prospectus.
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, results of operations, and prospects. 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
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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.
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This prospectus includes estimates regarding market and industry data. Unless otherwise indicated, information concerning our industry and the markets in which we operate, including our general expectations, market position, market opportunity, and market size, are based on our managements knowledge and experience in the markets in which we operate, together with currently available information obtained from various sources, including publicly available information, industry reports and publications, surveys, our customers, trade and business organizations, and other contacts in the markets in which we operate. Certain information is based on management estimates, which have been derived from third-party sources, as well as data from our internal research.
In presenting this information, we have made certain assumptions that we believe to be reasonable based on such data and other similar sources and on our knowledge of, and our experience to date in, the markets in which we operate. While we believe the estimated market and industry data included in this prospectus is generally reliable, such information is inherently uncertain and imprecise. Market and industry data is subject to change and may be limited by the availability of raw data, the voluntary nature of the data gathering process, and other limitations inherent in any statistical survey of such data. In addition, projections, assumptions, and estimates of the future performance of the markets in which we operate are necessarily subject to uncertainty and risk due to a variety of factors, including those described in Risk Factors and Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements. These and other factors could cause results to differ materially from those expressed in the estimates made by third parties and by us. Accordingly, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such market and industry data or any other such estimates.
The source of certain statistical data, estimates, and forecasts contained in this prospectus are the following independent industry publications or reports:
| ROI Guidebook: Amplitude, November 2020, Nucleus Research, Inc. (Nucleus Research); |
| IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2020 Predictions, October 2019, International Data Corporation (IDC); |
| US adults added 1 hour of digital time in 2020, January 26, 2021, eMarketer, Inc. (eMarketer) and Insider Intelligence Inc. (Insider Intelligence) (including information that U.S. adults spend nearly 8 hours on average per day on digital activities); |
| Best Product Analytics Software, G2.com, Inc. (G2) (including G2s rankings of leading product analytics solutions. G2s product scores comprise customer satisfaction ratings derived from G2s user reviews, as well as market presence); and |
| Initial Public Offerings: Underpricing, December 29, 2020, Jay R. Ritter (the Ritter Report). |
The content of the above sources, except to the extent specifically set forth in this prospectus, does not constitute a portion of this prospectus and is not incorporated herein.
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TRADEMARKS, SERVICE MARKS, COPYRIGHTS, AND TRADENAMES
We own or otherwise have rights to the trademarks, service marks, and copyrights, including those mentioned in this prospectus, used in conjunction with the operation of our business. This prospectus includes our own trademarks, which are protected under applicable intellectual property laws, as well as trademarks, service marks, copyrights, and tradenames of other companies, which are the property of their respective owners. We do not intend our use or display of other companies trademarks, service marks, copyrights, or tradenames to imply a relationship with, or endorsement or sponsorship of us by, any other companies. Solely for convenience, trademarks and tradenames referred to in this prospectus may appear without the ®, , or SM symbols, but such references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights to these trademarks and tradenames.
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Registered Stockholders may, or may not, elect to sell shares of our Class A common stock covered by this prospectus. To the extent any Registered Stockholder chooses to sell shares of our Class A common stock covered by this prospectus, we will not receive any proceeds from any such sales of our Class A common stock. See Principal and Registered Stockholders.
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We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our capital stock. We do not currently anticipate paying dividends on our Class A common stock or Class B common stock. Any declaration and payment of future dividends to holders of our Class A common stock or Class B common stock will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on many factors, including our financial condition, earnings, capital requirements, level of indebtedness, statutory and contractual restrictions applying to the payment of dividends, the provisions of Delaware law affecting the payment of dividends and distributions to stockholders, and other considerations that our board of directors deems relevant. In addition, future agreements governing our indebtedness may limit our ability to pay dividends. See Risk FactorsRisks Related to Ownership of Our Class A Common StockWe 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.
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The following table sets forth our cash and cash equivalents, and our capitalization as of June 30, 2021 as follows:
| on an actual basis; and |
| on a pro forma basis to give effect to (i) the Reclassification, (ii) the Existing Preferred Stock Conversion, (iii) the receipt of aggregate net proceeds of approximately $26.5 million as a result of the issuance and sale of 827,609 shares of Series F redeemable convertible preferred stock after June 30, 2021, (iv) the RSU Settlement, (v) stock-based compensation expense of $3.7 million related to RSUs for which the time-based vesting condition was satisfied as of June 30, 2021, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, reflected as an increase to additional paid-in capital and accumulated deficit, and (vi) the filing and effectiveness of our restated certificate of incorporation and the adoption of our amended and restated bylaws, each of which will occur in connection with the effectiveness of the registration statement of which this prospectus forms a part. |
You should read this information in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and the related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus and the Summary Consolidated Financial and Operating Information and Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations sections of this prospectus.
As of June 30, 2021 | ||||||||
Actual | Pro Forma | |||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||
(in thousands, except share and per share data) |
||||||||
Cash and cash equivalents |
$ | 291,062 | $ | 317,562 | ||||
Redeemable convertible preferred stock, par value $0.00001 per share; 67,963,609 shares authorized, actual; no shares authorized, pro forma; 67,136,000 shares issued and outstanding, actual; and no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma |
361,113 | | ||||||
Stockholders equity (deficit): |
||||||||
Preferred stock, par value $0.00001 per share; no shares authorized, issued, and outstanding, actual; 20,000,000 shares authorized, no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma |
| | ||||||
Common stock, par value $0.00001 per share; 135,100,000 shares authorized, actual; no shares authorized, pro forma; 31,909,616 shares issued and outstanding, actual; and no shares issued and outstanding, pro forma |
| | ||||||
Class A common stock, par value $0.00001 per share; no shares authorized, actual; 600,000,000 shares authorized, pro forma; no shares issued and outstanding, actual; and 2,571,430 shares of issued and outstanding, pro forma |
| | ||||||
Class B common stock, par value $0.00001 per share; no shares authorized, actual; 600,000,000 shares authorized, pro forma; no shares issued and outstanding, actual; and 99,873,225 shares issued and outstanding, pro forma |
| | ||||||
Additional paid-in capital |
55,657 | 446,949 | ||||||
Accumulated deficit |
(121,346 | ) | (125,025 | ) | ||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total stockholders equity (deficit) |
(65,689 | ) | 321,924 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
Total capitalization |
295,424 | 321,924 | ||||||
|
|
|
|
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The number of shares of our Class A common stock and Class B common stock outstanding as of June 30, 2021 excludes the following:
| 28,806,581 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of stock options outstanding as of June 30, 2021, with a weighted-average exercise price of $3.33 per share, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; |
| 192,134 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon exercise of stock options granted after June 30, 2021, with a weighted-average exercise price of $21.75 per share, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; |
| 479,481 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon settlement of RSUs outstanding as of June 30, 2021, for which the time-based vesting condition had not been satisfied as of such date, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; |
| 420,672 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon settlement of RSUs granted after June 30, 2021, for which the time-based vesting condition had not been satisfied as of such date, and for which the performance-based vesting condition will be satisfied upon the listing of our Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; |
| 46,875 shares of restricted Class A common stock granted after June 30, 2021, pursuant to our 2014 Plan; |
| 7,000 shares of Class B common stock issuable upon exercise of a warrant outstanding as of June 30, 2021; |
| 18,643,596 shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our 2021 Plan, as well as any future increases in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under the 2021 Plan; and |
| 2,663,371 shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under our ESPP, as well as any future increases in the number of shares of Class A common stock reserved for issuance under the ESPP. |
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MANAGEMENTS 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 Summary Consolidated Financial and Operating Information section of this prospectus and the consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this prospectus. This discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed below. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those identified below and those discussed in the Risk Factors section of this prospectus. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for any period in the future. Our fiscal year end is December 31, and references throughout this prospectus to a given fiscal year are to the 12 months ended on that date.
Overview
We have built the first unified system that empowers teams to understand how digital products drive their business, thereby unleashing the full potential of product-led growth for businesses of every size, industry, and stage in their digital maturity. Our Digital Optimization System brings an entirely new depth of customer understanding with the speed of action to optimize digital experiences in the moment. We power the teams behind many of the most-beloved digital products to make the right bets, drive innovation, and maximize business outcomes.
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At the core of our Digital Optimization System is our Behavioral Graph, a proprietary, purpose-built behavioral database that is the largest of its kind. Our Behavioral Graph, which processed approximately 900 billion monthly behavioral data points during the quarter ended June 30, 2021, instantly finds patterns, makes recommendations, and connects customer actions along their journeys to outcomes that drive engagement, growth, and loyalty. We have architected our Behavioral Graph to power numerous products linking data to insight to action, beginning first with our #1 ranked product analytics solution. We have since expanded our Digital Optimization System to include products that enable cross-functional teams to personalize the digital product experiences of their customers, including our Recommend and Experiment offerings, which were both released in 2021.
We have experienced significant growth in recent years driven by the rapid adoption of our Digital Optimization System by our diversified base of over 1,200 paying customers globally. Our customers span across industries and sizes, from the leading digital innovators to those looking to transform and adapt their business in the new digital age. For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, our revenue was $68.4 million and $102.5 million, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 50%. Our revenue was $46.0 million and $72.4 million, respectively, for the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, respectively, representing year-over-year growth of 57%. For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020 and six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, our net loss was $33.5 million, $24.6 million, $16.6 million, and $16.5 million, respectively. For the years ended December 31, 2019 and 2020 and six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, our net cash used in operating activities was $16.0 million, $10.4 million, $9.9 million, and $5.5 million, respectively, and our free cash flow was $(16.7) million, $(12.6) million, $(10.7) million, and $(6.9) million, respectively.
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Our Business Model
We generate revenue primarily through selling subscriptions to our platform. For the year ended December 31, 2020 and the six months ended June 30, 2021, subscription revenue comprised 97% of our total revenue. Our customers typically look to use our platform for an initial business use case they have identified, such as analytics on a digital product. As our customers experience the value of our platform in helping to drive business outcomes in that initial use case, they frequently expand that initial use case, expand into new use cases, and expand into additional products. Examples of ways customers expand the use of our platform include the following:
| Customers expand an initial use case by tracking additional events on a digital product to gain greater insight into customer journeys or add additional functionality (e.g. predictive analytics, behavioral reports) to meet the needs of teams across the organization; |
| Customers expand into new use cases by using our platform for additional digital products in their digital product portfolio and empowering additional teams (e.g. product, marketing, engineering, analytics) responsible for those digital product; and |
| Customers expand by layering on additional offerings, such as our Recommend and Experiment products, on our core Analytics offering to power new capabilities to drive business outcomes. |
Our pricing model is based on both the platform functionality required by our customers as well as committed event volume. An event could be any action that a user takes in a digital product, such as Create account, Add to cart, or Share photo. Events can also be actions that occur in a product without user action, such as Verification completed. Customers have the flexibility to choose the events sent to our platform and can also attach custom properties to an event to enable greater insight on the digital product end user.
We have been effective in helping our customers to gauge the proper event volume to contract to ensure that they maximize their investment in our platform. In situations where customers exceed their committed event volume in a given period, they incur overage charges that we have the contractual right to bill at our discretion. Depending on the circumstances, we often use this as an opportunity to re-negotiate a customer contract to ensure they have the right contracted event volume to meet their business objectives. Historically, overage charges have not made up a significant portion of our revenue. In many cases, customers will proactively expand their contract within the contract term, generally increasing event volume and platform capabilities to expand existing or address new use cases. Substantially all of our customer contracts have a subscription period of one year or longer. In 2020, we billed a majority of these contracts annually in advance with the remainder billed monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually.
We offer a variety of plans that are right-sized to match the depth and breadth of our customers needs and complexity. Our Starter plan is a free-tier, self-service option that allows prospects to easily sign up and begin to leverage the power of the platform in rapid fashion. This plan includes core product analytics with the ability to track up to 10 million events per month. Users of this plan get access to unlimited user seats and are encouraged to add additional team members across functions to proliferate the use of our platform within their organization.
In the scenario that a prospect outgrows the usage limits in the Starter plan or requires additional features such as predictive analytics, behavioral reports, or additional event volume, we offer a Growth plan that requires conversion to a paid subscription contract. Growth plan users also get access to dedicated customer support to further maximize the value from the platform. Customers that require the complete analytics tool kit to handle more scale and larger, sophisticated use cases can purchase our Enterprise plan. The Enterprise plan includes everything in the Growth plan as well as additional robust features such as advanced data governance, custom user permissions and roles, automated insights, and more. At any point, a customer that needs additional capabilities can purchase add-on functionality or products, including Recommend and Experiment, which are natively integrated with Amplitude Analytics.
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Our land-and-expand business model is powered by the ease of use, rapid time to value, and broad applicability of our platform to provide actionable insights in real time to numerous teams across an organization. This model has enabled us, in many cases, to significantly expand the reach of our platform within organizations.
As of December 31, 2020, we had 262 customers that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR and 15 customers that each represented greater than $1 million in ARR, demonstrating the mission critical nature of our platform to help customers succeed in the new digital age. In comparison, we had 208 customers that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR and 11 customers that each represented greater than $1 million in ARR for the period ended December 31, 2019, representing year-over-year growth of 26% and 36%, respectively. As of June 30, 2021, we had 311 customers that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR and 22 customers that represented greater than $1 million in ARR, representing growth of 40% and 69%, respectively, compared to June 30, 2020. Customers that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR accounted for approximately 71% and 72% of our total ARR as of December 31, 2019 and 2020, respectively. As of June 30, 2020 and 2021, customers that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR accounted for approximately 71% and 73% of our total ARR, respectively. We define ARR as the annual recurring revenue of subscription agreements at a point in time based on the terms of customers contracts. ARR should be viewed independently of revenue, and does not represent our U.S. GAAP revenue on an annualized basis, as it is an operating metric that can be impacted by contract start and end dates and renewal rates. ARR is not intended to be a replacement or forecast of revenue. No single customer accounted for more than 3% of our revenue in 2020 and no single customer accounted for more than 4% of our revenue for the six months ended June 30, 2021.
Our ability to expand within our customer base is also demonstrated by our strong dollar-based net retention rate. As of December 31, 2019 and 2020, our dollar-based net retention rate across paying customers was 116% and 119%, respectively. As of June 30, 2020 and 2021, our dollar-based net retention rate across paying customers was 118% and 119%, respectively.
Key Factors Affecting Our Performance
We believe that the growth and future success of our business depends on many factors. While each of these factors presents significant opportunities for our business, they also pose important challenges that we must successfully address in order to sustain our growth and improve our results of operations.
Customer Acquisition and Expansion
We believe that our Digital Optimization System can help businesses across industries, company size, and stages of digital maturity drive better business outcomes through optimizing the digital product experience of their customers. We are focused on continuing to acquire new customers and expanding our relationships with our existing installed base to support our long-term growth. We have invested, and expect to continue to invest, in our sales and marketing efforts to drive customer acquisition.
As of December 31, 2020 and June 30, 2021, we had over 1,000 and 1,200 paying customers, respectively, representing an increase of 41% and 51% year-over-year, respectively. As of December 31, 2020 and June 30, 2021, 25 and 26 of the Fortune 100 were paying customers, respectively, which demonstrates both our traction to date as well as our significant opportunity to continue to penetrate into the largest global organizations. Our relationship with some of the worlds most beloved product-led companies has resulted in increased brand credibility and access to many attractive growth opportunities.
We have been successful at efficiently growing our customer spend over time as evidenced by our dollar-based net retention rates. As of December 31, 2020 and June 30, 2021, our dollar-based net retention rate was 119% for paying customers. We continue to increase the number of customers who have entered and grown into larger subscriptions with us. As of December 31, 2020 and June 30, 2021, we had 262 and 311 customers, respectively, that each represented greater than $100,000 in ARR, representing a 26% and 40% increase
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year-over-year, respectively. Additionally, we had 15 and 22 customers, respectively, that each represented greater than $1 million in ARR, up 36% and 69% year-over-year, respectively. The number of customers representing greater than $100,000 and $1 million in ARR demonstrates the strategic importance of our platform and our ability to both initially land significant accounts and grow them over time.
Investments in Platform
We believe that our customers will demand additional features and capabilities beyond our current platform offerings to assist them in optimizing their digital products. We have a history of, and will continue to invest significantly in, developing and delivering innovative products, features, and functionality targeted at our core customer base. For example, in 2021, we announced the launch of our Recommend and Experiment, and we are encouraged by early adoption by our customers. Furthermore, we may choose to add new products and offerings or enhance our platform capabilities through acquisitions. In 2020, we acquired ClearBrain to bolster our predictive analytics capabilities, and, in 2021, we announced the acquisition of Iteratively, a software company that bolsters our ability to empower developers to more quickly, easily, and accurately instrument data into our platform. Going forward, we may pursue both strategic partnerships and acquisitions that we believe will be complementary to our business, accelerate customer acquisition, increase usage of our platform, and/or expand our product offerings in our core markets.
Investing for Growth
Our investment for growth encompasses multiple critical areas, including product expansion, our salesforce, sales support, partner ecosystem, and our international presence. We continue to evolve our technology to ensure that we are best serving our customers needs. We believe this will lead to continued increased retention and positive customer referrals that will continue to generate expansion opportunities within our existing installed base and from new customers. We plan to continue to invest in our R&D organization to maintain and strengthen our market leadership position, and we believe that attracting the best engineering talent will continue to be critical to our long-term success. As we continue to invest in our platform, we expect our research and development expenses to continue to increase in dollar amount, and although we believe these expenses as a percentage of revenue will decrease over the longer term, we expect these expenses as a percentage of revenue will increase in the short term as we invest in product innovation.
We will continue to invest in expanding our salesforce and associated sales support to pursue attractive growth opportunities and ensure customer success, particularly with larger enterprises where we have experienced significant traction to date. We also plan to invest in our channel partners, such as independent software vendors, and resellers, to extend our reach faster than we could do on our own. As we continue to invest in our sales efforts, we expect our sales and marketing expenses to continue to increase in dollar amount, and although we believe these expenses as a percentage of revenue will decrease over the longer term, we expect these expenses as a percentage of revenue will increase in the short term as we invest in sales growth.
Finally, we see opportunities to expand offices and headcount internationally to better service targeted international markets where we believe we have significant opportunity to accelerate existing traction and success. For the year ended December 31, 2020 and six months ended June 30, 2021, 36% of our revenue was generated outside the United States.
Key Business Metrics
We review a number of operating and financial metrics, including the following key metrics to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business, formulate business plans, and make strategic decisions. We are not aware of any uniform standards for calculating these key metrics, which may hinder comparability with other companies who may calculate similarly-titled metrics in a different way.
As of December 31, | As of June 30, | |||||||||||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | YoY Growth | 2020 | 2021 | YoY Growth | |||||||||||||||||||
Paying Customers |
739 | 1,039 | 41 | % | 845 | 1,280 | 51 | % | ||||||||||||||||
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate |
116 | % | 119 | % | N/A | 118 | % | 119 | % | N/A |
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Paying Customers
We believe our ability to grow the number of paying customers on our platform provides a key indicator of the demand for our platform, growth of our business, and our future business opportunities. Increasing awareness of our platform and its broad range of capabilities, coupled with the mainstream adoption of cloud-based technology, has expanded the diversity of our customer base to include organizations of different sizes across virtually all industries.
For purposes of customer count, a customer is defined as an entity that has a unique Dunn & Bradstreet Global Ultimate (GULT) Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number and an active subscription contract as of the measurement date. The DUNS number is a global standard for business identification and tracking. We make exceptions for holding companies, government entities, and other organizations for which the GULT, in our judgment, does not accurately represent the Amplitude customer or the DUNS does not exist.
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate
We calculate our dollar-based net retention rate to measure our ability to retain and expand ARR from our customers and believe it is an indicator of the value our platform delivers to customers and our future business opportunities. Our dollar-based net retention rate compares our ARR from the same set of customers across comparable periods and reflects customer renewals, expansion, contraction, and attrition.
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 (the Prior Period ARR). We then calculate the ARR from these same customers as of the current period-end (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 as well as any overage charges 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.
Response to COVID-19
While the COVID-19 pandemic has had an adverse effect on the global economy, including the businesses of many of our customers and prospective customers and did, in the early stages of the pandemic, result in increased attrition from our smaller customers and those customers in the most impacted industries such as travel and entertainment, overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in favorable trends for our business and the businesses of those customers who have been able to leverage digital optimization of their products as sales increasingly shifted online. For example, during the second quarter of fiscal year 2020, the average customers event utilization rate, which is the percent of contracted event volume a customer consumes, increased to over 100% signaling early upsell opportunities.
Although we believe the COVID-19 pandemic has largely resulted in favorable trends for our business, we have experienced business disruptions, particularly at our San Francisco headquarters due to shelter-in-place orders and restrictions on our ability to travel to customers. Moreover, our existing and prospective customers have experienced and may continue to experience slowdowns in their businesses, including due to ongoing worldwide supply chain disruptions, which in turn has and may result in reduced demand for our platform, lengthening of sales cycles, loss of customers, and difficulties in collections. In addition, the pandemic has resulted in, and may continue to result in, significant disruption of global financial markets, which could limit our ability to access capital on favorable terms or at all. The ongoing impact of the pandemic on our future business, financial condition, and results of operations depends on the pandemics duration and severity, which are difficult to assess or predict. See Risk Factors for further discussion of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business.
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Non-GAAP Financial Measures
The following table presents certain non-GAAP financial measures, along with the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measure, for each period presented below. In addition to our results determined in accordance with U.S. GAAP, we believe these non-GAAP financial measures are useful in evaluating our operating performance. See below for a description of the non-GAAP financial measures and their limitations as an analytical tool. A reconciliation is also provided below for each non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable financial measure stated in accordance with U.S. GAAP.
Year Ended December 31, | Six Months Ended June 30, | |||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Gross Profit |
$ | 46,337 | $ | 71,981 | $ | 32,506 | $ | 49,974 | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Gross Profit |
$ | 46,695 | $ | 72,798 | $ | 32,749 | $ | 51,108 | ||||||||
Gross Margin |
68 | % | 70 | % | 71 | % | 69 | % | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Gross Margin |
68 | % | 71 | % | 71 | % | 71 | % | ||||||||
Loss from Operations |
$ | (34,331 | ) | $ | (24,003 | ) | $ | (16,502 | ) | $ | (15,896 | ) | ||||
Non-GAAP Loss from Operations |
$ | (26,955 | ) | $ | (6,610 | ) | $ | (5,704 | ) | $ | (7,392 | ) | ||||
Loss from Operations Margin |
(50 | )% | (23 | )% | (36 | )% | (22 | )% | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Loss from Operations Margin |
(39 | )% | (6 | )% | (12 | )% | (10 | )% | ||||||||
Net Cash Used in Operating Activities |
$ | (16,036 | ) | $ | (10,392 | ) | $ | (9,942 | ) | $ | (5,523 | ) | ||||
Free Cash Flow |
$ | (16,684 | ) | $ | (12,600 | ) | $ | (10,671 | ) | $ | (6,909 | ) | ||||
Net Cash Used in Operating Activities Margin |
(23 | )% | (10 | )% | (22 | )% | (8 | )% | ||||||||
Free Cash Flow Margin |
(24 | )% | (12 | )% | (23 | )% | (10 | )% |
Non-GAAP Gross Margin and Non-GAAP Operating Margin
We define non-GAAP gross profit and non-GAAP gross margin as U.S. GAAP gross profit and U.S. GAAP gross margin, respectively, excluding stock-based compensation expense and related employer payroll taxes, amortization of acquired intangible assets, and non-recurring costs, which currently consist exclusively of direct listing costs.
We define non-GAAP loss from operations and non-GAAP operating margin as U.S. GAAP loss from operations and U.S. GAAP operating margin, respectively, excluding stock-based compensation expense and related employer payroll taxes, amortization of acquired intangible assets, and non-recurring costs, such as direct listing costs.
We exclude stock-based compensation expense and related employer payroll taxes, which is a non-cash expense, from certain of our non-GAAP financial measures because we believe that excluding this item provides meaningful supplemental information regarding operational performance. We exclude amortization of intangible assets, which is a non-cash expense, related to business combinations from certain of our non-GAAP financial measures because such expenses are related to business combinations and have no direct correlation to the operation of our business. Although we exclude these expenses from certain non-GAAP financial measures, the revenue from acquired companies subsequent to the date of acquisition is reflected in these measures and the acquired intangible assets contribute to our revenue generation. We exclude non-recurring costs from certain of our non-GAAP financial measures because such expenses do not repeat period over period and are not reflective of the ongoing operation of our business.
We use non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP operating margin in conjunction with traditional U.S. GAAP measures to evaluate our financial performance. We believe that non-GAAP gross margin and non-GAAP
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operating margin provide our management and investors consistency and comparability with our past financial performance and facilitates period-to-period comparisons of operations.
Free Cash Flow and Margin
We define free cash flow as net cash used in operating activities, less cash used for purchases of property and equipment and capitalized internal-use software costs. We believe that free cash flow is a useful indicator of liquidity that provides information to management and investors, even if negative, about the amount of cash used in our operations other than that used for investments in property and equipment and capitalized internal-use software costs, adjusted for non-recurring expenditures. Free cash flow margin is calculated as free cash flow divided by total revenue.
Limitations and Reconciliations of Non-GAAP Financial Measures
Non-GAAP financial measures are presented for supplemental informational purposes only. Non-GAAP financial measures have limitations as analytical tools and should not be considered in isolation or as substitutes for financial information presented under U.S. GAAP. There are a number of limitations related to the use of non-GAAP financial measures versus comparable financial measures determined under U.S. GAAP. For example, other companies in our industry may calculate these non-GAAP financial measures differently or may use other measures to evaluate their performance. In addition, free cash flow does not reflect our future contractual commitments and the total increase or decrease of our cash balance for a given period. All of these limitations could reduce the usefulness of these non-GAAP financial measures as analytical tools. Investors are encouraged to review the related U.S. GAAP financial measures and the reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measures and to not rely on any single financial measure to evaluate our business.
The following tables reconcile the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP financial measure to each of these non-GAAP financial measures.
Non-GAAP Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
|||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Gross profit |
$ | 46,337 | $ | 71,981 | $ | 32,506 | $ | 49,974 | ||||||||
Add: |
||||||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation expense(1) |
$ | 358 | $ | 590 | $ | 243 | $ | 483 | ||||||||
Acquired intangible assets amortization |
$ | | $ | 227 | $ | | $ | 651 | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Gross Profit |
$ | 46,695 | $ | 72,798 | $ | 32,749 | $ | 51,108 | ||||||||
Non-GAAP Gross Margin |
68 | % | 71 | % | 71 | % | 71 | % |
(1) | Stock-based compensation expense-related charges include employer payroll tax-related expenses on employee stock transactions. |
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Non-GAAP Loss From Operations and Loss From Operations Margin
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
|||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Loss from operations |
$ | (34,331 | ) | $ | (24,003 | ) | $ | (16,502 | ) | $ | (15,896 | ) | ||||
Add: |
||||||||||||||||
Stock-based compensation expense(1) |
$ | 7,376 | $ | 16,648 | $ | 10,507 | $ | 5,714 | ||||||||
Acquired intangible assets amortization |
$ | | $ | 745 | $ | 291 | $ | 651 | ||||||||
Direct listing expenses |
$ | | $ | | $ | | $ | 2,139 | ||||||||
Non-GAAP loss from operations |
$ | (26,955 | ) | $ | (6,610 | ) | $ | (5,704 | ) | $ | (7,392 | ) | ||||
Non-GAAP loss from operations margin |
(39 | )% | (6 | )% | (12 | )% | (10 | )% |
(1) | Stock-based compensation expense-related charges include employer payroll tax-related expenses on employee stock transactions. |
Free Cash Flow and Free Cash Flow Margin
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
|||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities |
$ | (648 | ) | $ | (5,908 | ) | $ | (4,429 | ) | $ | 339 | |||||
Net cash provided by financing activities |
$ | 874 | $ | 54,245 | $ | 50,885 | $ | 179,313 | ||||||||
Net cash used in operating activities |
$ | (16,036 | ) | $ | (10,392 | ) | $ | (9,942 | ) | $ | (5,523 | ) | ||||
Less: |
||||||||||||||||
Purchase of property and equipment |
$ | (648 | ) | $ | (984 | ) | $ | (262 | ) | $ | (655 | ) | ||||
Capitalization of internal-use software costs |
$ | | $ | (1,224 | ) | $ | (467 | ) | $ | (731 | ) | |||||
Free cash flow |
$ | (16,684 | ) | $ | (12,600 | ) | $ | (10,671 | ) | $ | (6,909 | ) | ||||
Free cash flow margin |
(24 | )% | (12 | )% | (23 | )% | (10 | )% |
Components of Results of Operations
Revenue
We generate revenue primarily from sales of subscription services for customers to access our platform. Revenue is driven primarily by the number of paying customers and the level of subscription plan. We generally recognize revenue ratably over the related contractual term beginning on the date that the platform is made available to a customer. Revenue from professional services have primarily been attributed to implementation and training services. We recognize professional services revenue as services are delivered.
Cost of Revenue
Cost of revenue consists primarily of the cost of providing our platform to our customers and consists of third-party hosting fees, personnel-related expenses for our operations and support personnel, and amortization of our capitalized internal-use software and acquired developed software. As we acquire new customers and existing customers increase their use of our platform, we expect that our cost of revenue will continue to increase in dollar amount.
Gross Profit and Gross Margin
Gross profit, or revenue less cost of revenue, and gross margin, or gross profit as a percentage of revenue, has been and will continue to be affected by various factors, including the timing of our acquisition of new
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customers, renewals of and follow-on sales to existing customers, costs associated with operating our platform, and the extent to which we expand our operations and customer support organizations. In the long term, we expect our gross profit to increase in dollar amount and our gross margin to improve as we optimize our system performance and leverage ingested data for new products.
Operating Expenses
Our operating expenses consist of research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administrative expenses. Personnel-related expenses are the most significant component of operating expenses and consist of salaries, benefits, stock-based compensation expense, and, in the case of sales and marketing expenses, sales commissions. Operating expenses also include an allocation of overhead costs for facilities and shared IT-related expenses. As we continue to invest in our business, we expect our operating expenses to continue to increase in dollar amount, and although we believe our operating expenses as a percentage of revenue will decrease over the longer term, we expect operating expenses as a percentage of revenue will increase in the short term as we invest in product innovation and sales growth and incur additional professional services and compliance costs as we operate as a public company.
Research and Development
Research and development expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses. These expenses also include product design costs prior to the application development stage, third-party services and consulting expenses, software subscriptions, and allocated overhead costs for overhead used in research and development activities. A substantial portion of our research and development efforts are focused on enhancing our software, including researching ways to add new features and functionality to our platform. We anticipate continuing to invest in innovation and technology development, and as a result, we expect research and development expenses to continue to increase in dollar amount but to decrease as a percentage of revenue over the longer term, although the percentage may fluctuate from quarter to quarter depending on the extent and timing of product development initiatives. In the short term, we expect research and development costs to increase as a percentage of revenue as we invest in product innovation. In addition, we expect to record additional stock-based compensation expenses from the RSU Settlement upon the completion of our direct listing.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses and expenses for performance marketing and lead generation, and brand marketing. These expenses also include allocated overhead costs and travel-related expenses. Sales commissions earned by our sales force that are considered incremental and recoverable costs of obtaining a subscription with a customer are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the expected period of benefit of five years.
We continue to make investments in our sales and marketing organization, and we expect sales and marketing expenses to remain our largest operating expense in dollar amount. We expect our sales and marketing expenses to continue to increase in dollar amount but to decrease as a percentage of revenue over the longer term, although the percentage may fluctuate from quarter to quarter depending on the extent and timing of our marketing initiatives. In the short term, we expect research and development costs to increase as a percentage of revenue as we invest in product sales growth.
General and Administrative
General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel-related expenses for our finance, human resources, information technology, and legal organizations. These expenses also include non-personnel costs, such as outside legal, accounting, and other professional fees, software subscriptions, as well as certain tax, license, and insurance-related expenses, and allocated overhead costs.
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We also expect to recognize certain expenses as part of our transition to a publicly-traded company, consisting of professional fees and other expenses. In the quarters leading up to the listing of our Class A common stock, we expect to incur professional fees and expenses, and in the quarter of our listing we expect to incur fees paid to our financial advisors in addition to other professional fees and expenses related to such listing. Following the listing of our Class A common stock, we expect to continue 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 U.S. securities exchange and costs related to compliance and reporting obligations pursuant to the rules and regulations of the SEC. In addition, as a public company, we expect to incur additional costs associated with accounting, compliance, insurance, and investor relations. As a result, we expect our general and administrative expenses to continue to increase in dollar amount for the foreseeable future but to generally decrease as a percentage of our revenue over the longer term, although the percentage may fluctuate from period to period depending on the timing and amount of our general and administrative expenses, including in the short term as we expect to incur increased compliance and professional service costs.
Other Income (Expense), Net
Other income (expense), net consists primarily of interest income on our cash holdings offset by foreign currency transaction gains and losses.
Provision for Income Taxes
Provision for income taxes consists primarily of income taxes in certain foreign jurisdictions in which we conduct business. To date, we have not recorded any U.S. federal income tax expense, and our state and foreign income tax expenses have not been material. We have recorded deferred tax assets for U.S. federal income taxes for which we provide a full valuation allowance. These deferred tax assets primarily include net operating loss carryforwards of $93.2 million and tax credit carryforwards of $2.8 million, net of reserves as of December 31, 2020, which begin expiring in 2032 and 2033, respectively. We expect to maintain this full valuation allowance for the foreseeable future as it is not more likely than not the deferred tax assets will be realized based on our history of losses.
Results of Operations
The following tables set forth our results of operations for the periods presented and as a percentage of our revenue for those periods. The period-to-period comparison of financial results is not necessarily indicative of financial results to be achieved in future periods.
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
|||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands) (Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 68,442 | $ | 102,464 | $ | 46,022 | $ | 72,364 | ||||||||
Cost of revenue(1) |
22,105 | 30,483 | 13,516 | 22,390 | ||||||||||||
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Gross profit |
46,337 | 71,981 | 32,506 | 49,974 | ||||||||||||
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Operating expenses: |
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Research and development(1) |
19,036 | 26,098 | 14,141 | 15,529 | ||||||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) |
47,079 | 51,819 | 25,369 | 36,810 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative(1) |
14,553 | 18,067 | 9,498 | 13,531 | ||||||||||||
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Total operating expenses |
80,668 | 95,984 | 49,008 | 65,870 | ||||||||||||
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Loss from operations |
(34,331 | ) | (24,003 | ) | (16,502 | ) | (15,896 | ) | ||||||||
Other income, net |
1,460 | 269 | 227 | 20 | ||||||||||||
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Loss before provision for income taxes |
(32,871 | ) | (23,734 | ) | (16,275 | ) | (15,876 | ) | ||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
663 | 833 | 348 | 646 | ||||||||||||
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Net loss |
$ | (33,534 | ) | $ | (24,567 | ) | $ | (16,623 | ) | $ | (16,522 | ) | ||||
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(1) | Amounts include stock-based compensation expense as follows: |
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
|||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 358 | $ | 590 | $ | 243 | $ | 483 | ||||||||
Research and development |
1,419 | 5,582 | 3,986 | 2,063 | ||||||||||||
Sales and marketing |
4,429 | 6,512 | 3,705 | 1,689 | ||||||||||||
General and administrative |
1,128 | 3,869 | 2,552 | 1,361 | ||||||||||||
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Total stock-based compensation expense |
$ | 7,334 | $ | 16,553 | $ | 10,486 | $ | 5,596 | ||||||||
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Stock-based compensation expense for fiscal 2019, fiscal 2020 and the six months ended June 30, 2020 includes $2.2 million, $11.1 million, and $8.1 million, respectively, of compensation expense related common stock sales by select executives, which sales were made above fair value and were facilitated by us. For more information, refer to Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions and Note 5 of our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus.
The following table sets forth the components of our statements of operations data, for each of the periods presented, as a percentage of revenue.
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
|||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue |
100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||||||||
Cost of revenue |
32 | % | 30 | % | 29 | % | 31 | % | ||||||||
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Gross margin |
68 | % | 70 | % | 71 | % | 69 | % | ||||||||
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Operating expenses: |
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Research and development |
28 | % | 25 | % | 31 | % | 21 | % | ||||||||
Sales and marketing |
69 | % | 51 | % | 55 | % | 51 | % | ||||||||
General and administrative |
21 | % | 18 | % | 21 | % | 19 | % | ||||||||
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Total operating expenses |
118 | % | 94 | % | 106 | % | 91 | % | ||||||||
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Loss from operations |
(50 | %) | (23 | %) | (36 | %) | (22 | %) | ||||||||
Other income (expense), net |
2 | % | * | * | * | |||||||||||
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Loss before provision for income taxes |
(48 | %) | (23 | %) | (35 | %) | (22 | %) | ||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | ||||||||
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Net loss |
(49 | %) | (24 | %) | (36 | %) | (23 | %) | ||||||||
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* | less than 1% |
Note: Certain figures may not sum due to rounding
Comparison of Six Months Ended June 30, 2020 to Six Months Ended June 30, 2021
Revenue
Six Months Ended June 30, |
||||||||||||||||
2020 | 2021 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) (in thousands, except percentages) |
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Revenue |
$ | 46,022 | $ | 72,364 | $ | 26,342 | 57 | % |
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Revenue increased $26.3 million, or 57%, during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. The increase in revenue was primarily due to growth of our paying customer base of 51% and revenue generated from our existing paying customers as reflected by our dollar-based net retention of 119% as of June 30, 2021.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
Six Months Ended June 30, |
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2020 | 2021 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) (in thousands, except percentages) |
||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 13,516 | $ | 22,390 | $ | 8,874 | 66 | % | ||||||||
Gross Margin |
71 | % | 69 | % | N/A | N/A |
Cost of revenue increased $8.9 million, or 66%, during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. The increase was primarily due to an increase of $5.5 million in third-party hosting costs as we increased capacity to support paying customer usage and growth of our paying customer base and $2.5 million in personnel and related expenses directly associated with an increase in headcount, including an increase in allocated overhead costs. Additionally, cost of revenue increased by $0.7 million due to the amortization of acquired intangibles assets related to our business combinations.
Our gross margin decreased during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020 mainly due to increases in amortization of acquired intangible assets and stock-based compensation expenses.
Operating Expenses
Six Months Ended June 30, |
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2020 | 2021 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) (in thousands, except percentages) |
||||||||||||||||
Research and development |
$ | 14,141 | $ | 15,529 | $ | 1,388 | 10 | % | ||||||||
Sales and marketing |
25,369 | 36,810 | 11,441 | 45 | % | |||||||||||
General and administrative |
9,498 | 13,531 | 4,033 | 42 | % | |||||||||||
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Total operating expenses |
$ | 49,008 | $ | 65,870 | $ | 16,862 | 34 | % |
Research and Development
Research and development expenses increased $1.4 million, or 10%, during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. The increase was primarily due to an increase of $3.2 million in personnel and related expenses directly associated with an increase in headcount, including an increase in allocated overhead costs. These increases were partially offset by a $1.9 million decrease in stock-based compensation expenses driven by secondary sales of our common stock during the six months ended June 30, 2020 that did not recur during the six months ended June 30, 2021.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expenses increased $11.4 million, or 45%, during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. The increase was primarily due to an increase of $8.3 million in personnel and related expenses directly associated with an increase in headcount, including an increase in allocated overhead costs and an increase of $4.1 million related to expenses to support our marketing, lead generation and advertising programs. These increases were partially offset by a $2.0 million decrease in stock-based compensation expenses driven by secondary sales of our common stock during the six months ended June 30, 2020 that did not recur during the six months ended June 30, 2021.
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General and Administrative
General and administrative expenses increased $4.0 million, or 42%, during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. The increase was primarily due to $3.9 million in fees for professional services associated with preparing to be a public company, including direct listing expenses. This increase was also attributed to $0.9 million in personnel and related expenses directly associated with an increase in headcount, including an increase in allocated overhead costs. These increases were partially offset by a $1.2 million decrease in stock-based compensation expenses driven by secondary sales of our common stock during the six months ended June 30, 2020 that did not recur during the six months ended June 30, 2021.
Other Income (Expense), net
Six Months Ended June 30, |
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2020 | 2021 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) (in thousands, except percentages) |
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Other income (expense), net |
$ | 227 | $ | 20 | $ | (207) | (91 | )% |
Other income (expense), net decreased $0.2 million, or 91%, during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. The decrease is related to a $0.2 million decrease in interest income resulting from lower interest rates on our cash and cash equivalents for the six months ended June 30, 2021.
Provision for Income Taxes
Six Months Ended June 30, |
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2020 | 2021 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) (in thousands, except percentages) |
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Provision for income taxes |
$ | 348 | $ | 646 | $ | 298 | 86 | % |
Provision for income taxes increased $0.3 million, or 86%, during the six months ended June 30, 2021 compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020 due to increased foreign taxes resulting from increased foreign income.
Comparison of Fiscal 2019 and Fiscal 2020
Revenue
Year Ended December 31, |
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2019 | 2020 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 68,442 | $ | 102,464 | $ | 34,022 | 50 | % |
Revenue increased $34.0 million, or 50%, for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019. The increase in revenue was primarily due to growth of our paying customer base of 41% and revenue generated from our existing paying customers as reflected by our dollar-based net retention of 119% as of December 31, 2020.
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Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
Year Ended December 31, |
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2019 | 2020 | $ Change | % Change |
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(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 22,105 | $ | 30,483 | $ | 8,378 | 38 | % | ||||||||
Gross margin |
68 | % | 70 | % |
Cost of revenue increased $8.4 million, or 38%, for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019. The increase was primarily due to an increase of $6.0 million in third-party hosting costs as we increased capacity to support paying customer usage and growth of our paying customer base and $2.1 million in personnel and related expenses directly associated with an increase in headcount, including an increase in allocated overhead costs.
Our gross margin increased for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019 as we increased our revenue and more efficiently managed customer-related support costs.
Operating Expenses
Year Ended December 31, |
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2019 | 2020 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Research and development |
$ | 19,036 | $ | 26,098 | $ | 7,062 | 37 | % | ||||||||
Sales and marketing |
47,079 | 51,819 | 4,740 | 10 | % | |||||||||||
General and administrative |
14,553 | 18,067 | 3,514 | 24 | % | |||||||||||
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Total operating expenses |
$ | 80,668 | $ | 95,984 | $ | 15,316 | 19 | % | ||||||||
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Research and Development
Research and development expenses increased $7.1 million, or 37%, for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019. The increase was primarily due to an increase of $4.0 million in personnel and related expenses directly associated with an increase in headcount, including an increase in allocated overhead costs. This increase also was attributable to $4.2 million in stock-based compensation expenses as a result of secondary sales of our common stock, increased headcount and increased value of stock-based awards. These increases were partially offset by $1.2 million capitalized into internal-use software costs.
Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing expenses increased $4.7 million, or 10%, for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019. The increase was primarily due to an increase of $6.2 million in personnel and related expenses directly associated with an increase in headcount, including an increase in allocated overhead costs. This increase also was attributable to $2.1 million in stock-based compensation expenses as a result of secondary sales of our common stock, increased headcount, and increased value of stock-based awards. These increases were partially offset by a decrease of $2.4 million in travel-related expenses as a result of changes in sales and marketing travel due to travel restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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General and Administrative
General and administrative expenses increased $3.5 million, or 24%, for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019. The increase was primarily due to an increase of $2.7 million in stock-based compensation expense as a result of secondary sales of our common stock, increased headcount and increased value of stock-based awards. This increase was also attributed to an increase of $0.7 million in fees for professional services and an increase of $0.4 million in software subscriptions to support the growth of our business and related infrastructure.
Other Income (Expense), net
Year Ended December 31, |
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2019 | 2020 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Other income (expense), net |
$ | 1,460 | $ | 269 | $ | (1,191 | ) | (82 | %) |
Other income (expense), net decreased $1.2 million, or 82%, for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019. The decrease is primarily related to a $1.1 million decrease in interest income resulting from lower interest rates on our cash and cash equivalents for the fiscal year.
Provision for Income Taxes
Year Ended December 31, |
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2019 | 2020 | $ Change | % Change | |||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) | ||||||||||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
$ | 663 | $ | 833 | $ | 170 | 26 | % |
Provision for income taxes increased $0.2 million, or 26%, for fiscal 2020 compared to fiscal 2019 due to increased foreign taxes resulting from increased foreign income.
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Quarterly Results of Operations Data
The following tables set forth selected unaudited quarterly statements of operations data for each of the eight fiscal quarters ended June 30, 2021, as well as the percentage of revenue that each line item represents for each quarter. The information for each of these quarters has been prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP on the same basis as our audited annual consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus and includes, in the opinion of management, all adjustments, consisting only of normal recurring adjustments, necessary for the fair statement of the results of operations for these periods. This data should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. These quarterly results are not necessarily indicative of our results of operations to be expected for any future period.
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
September 30, 2019 |
December 31, 2019 |
March 31, 2020 |
June 30, 2020 |
September 30, 2020 |
December 31, 2020 |
March 31, 2021 |
June 30, 2021 |
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(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Revenue |
$ | 18,159 | $ | 20,094 | $ | 22,330 | $ | 23,692 | $ | 26,366 | $ | 30,076 | $ | 33,110 | $ | 39,254 | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue(1) |
5,594 | 6,098 | 6,310 | 7,206 | 7,765 | 9,202 | 10,225 | 12,135 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Gross profit |
12,565 | 13,996 | 16,020 | 16,486 | 18,601 | 20,874 | 22,855 | 27,119 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Operating expenses: |
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Research and development(1) |
4,450 | 4,587 | 5,655 | 8,486 | 5,586 | 6,371 | 6,985 | 8,544 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing(1) |
10,919 | 12,350 | 11,176 | 14,193 | 11,482 | 14,968 | 16,770 | 20,040 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
General and administrative(1) |
3,807 | 3,547 | 4,144 | 5,354 | 3,918 | 4,651 | 5,250 | 8,282 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Total operating expenses |
19,176 | 20,484 | 20,975 | 28,033 | 20,986 | 25,990 | 29,005 | 36,866 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Loss from operations |
(6,611 | ) | (6,488 | ) | (4,955 | ) | (11,547 | ) | (2,385 | ) | (5,116 | ) | (6,150 | ) | (9,747 | ) | ||||||||||||||||
Other income (expense), net |
339 | 274 | 175 | 51 | 18 | 25 | (12 | ) | 32 | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Loss before provision for income taxes |
(6,272 | ) | (6,214 | ) | (4,780 | ) | (11,496 | ) | (2,367 | ) | (5,091 | ) | (6,162 | ) | (9,715 | ) | ||||||||||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
156 | 177 | 128 | 219 | 207 | 279 | 278 | 368 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Net loss |
$ | (6,428 | ) | $ | (6,391 | ) | $ | (4,908 | ) | $ | (11,715 | ) | $ | (2,574 | ) | $ | (5,370 | ) | $ | (6,440 | ) | $ | (10,083 | ) | ||||||||
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(1) | Amounts include stock-based compensation expense as follows: |
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
September 30, 2019 |
December 31, 2019 |
March 31, 2020 |
June 30, 2020 |
September 30, 2020 |
December 31, 2020 |
March 31, 2021 |
June 30, 2021 |
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(in thousands) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
$ | 87 | $ | 123 | $ | 129 | $ | 114 | $ | 167 | $ | 180 | $ | 236 | $ | 247 | ||||||||||||||||
Research and development |
286 | 314 | 312 | 3,675 | 513 | 1,082 | 910 | 1,154 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing |
1,060 | 397 | 389 | 3,316 | 495 | 2,312 | 823 | 866 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
General and administrative |
297 | 270 | 262 | 2,290 | 263 | 1,054 | 609 | 752 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Total stock-based compensation expense |
$ | 1,730 | $ | 1,104 | $ | 1,092 | $ | 9,395 | $ | 1,438 | $ | 4,628 | $ | 2,578 | $ | 3,019 | ||||||||||||||||
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Stock-based compensation expense for the second quarter 2019, second quarter 2020, and fourth quarter 2020 includes $2.2 million, $8.1 million, and $3.0 million, respectively, of compensation expense related to common stock sales by select executives, which sales were made above fair value and were facilitated by us. For more information, refer to Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions and Note 5 of our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus.
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All values from the statements of operations data, expressed as a percentage of revenue, were as follows:
Three Months Ended | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
September 30, 2019 |
December 31, 2019 |
March 31, 2020 |
June 30, 2020 |
September 30, 2020 |
December 31, 2020 |
March 31, 2021 |
June 30, 2021 |
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Revenue |
100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | 100 | % | ||||||||||||||||
Cost of revenue |
31 | % | 30 | % | 28 | % | 30 | % | 29 | % | 31 | % | 31 | % | 31 | % | ||||||||||||||||
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Gross margin |
69 | % | 70 | % | 72 | % | 70 | % | 71 | % | 69 | % | 69 | % | 69 | % | ||||||||||||||||
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Operating expenses: |
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Research and development |
25 | % | 23 | % | 25 | % | 36 | % | 21 | % | 21 | % | 21 | % | 22 | % | ||||||||||||||||
Sales and marketing |
60 | % | 61 | % | 50 | % | 60 | % | 44 | % | 50 | % | 51 | % | 51 | % | ||||||||||||||||
General and administrative |
21 | % | 18 | % | 19 | % | 23 | % | 15 | % | 15 | % | 16 | % | 21 | % | ||||||||||||||||
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Total operating expenses |
106 | % | 102 | % | 94 | % | 118 | % | 80 | % | 86 | % | 88 | % | 94 | % | ||||||||||||||||
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Loss from operations |
(36 | )% | (32 | )% | (22 | )% | (49 | )% | (9 | )% | (17 | )% | (19 | )% | (25 | )% | ||||||||||||||||
Other income (expense), net |
2 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | * | * | * | * | * | |||||||||||||||||||||
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Loss before provision for income taxes |
(35 | )% | (31 | )% | (21 | )% | (49 | )% | (9 | )% | (17 | )% | (19 | )% | (25 | )% | ||||||||||||||||
Provision for income taxes |
1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | 1 | % | ||||||||||||||||
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Net loss |
(35 | %) | (32 | %) | (22 | %) | (49 | %) | (10 | %) | (18 | %) | (19 | )% | (26 | )% | ||||||||||||||||
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* | less than 1% |
Note: Certain figures may not sum due to rounding
Quarterly Trends
Revenue
Our quarterly revenue increased sequentially in each of the periods presented due primarily to the addition of new paying customers and revenue growth from expansion within our existing paying customer base. Our revenue growth was briefly slowed in the quarter ended June 30, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, customer retention and expansion improved resulting in increased revenue growth in subsequent quarters.
Cost of Revenue and Gross Margin
Cost of revenue increased sequentially in each of the quarters presented, primarily driven by increased third-party hosting-related costs due to expanded use of our platform by new and existing customers as well as increased headcount, which resulted in increased personnel expenses.
Our quarterly gross margins have fluctuated between 69% and 72% in each period presented. During the quarter ended March 31, 2020, gross margin increased primarily as a result of decreased third-party hosting services related to providing access to and supporting our platform due to decreased volumes. During the quarter ended June 30, 2020, gross margin decreased as a result of an increased third-party hosting fees and other services related to providing access to and supporting our platform as volumes increased compared to the previous quarter. These costs can fluctuate based on volume of data being used by new and existing customers.
Operating Expenses
Total operating expenses have increased sequentially in each quarter presented with the exception of the quarter ended September 30, 2020 as a result of $8.1 million in stock compensation expenses related to common
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stock sales by select executives during the quarter ended June 30, 2020, which sales were made above fair value and were facilitated by us. For more information, refer to Certain Relationships and Related Party Transactions and Note 5 of our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus. Other sequential increases in total operating expenses were primarily due to increases in personnel-related expenses as a result of increased headcount and other related expenses to support the growth of our business and related infrastructure. General and administrative expenses during the quarter ended June 30, 2021 also increased due to professional services associated with preparing to be a public company, including $2.1 million of direct listing expenses.
Other Income (Expense), net
Other income (expense), net generally decreased each period presented primarily due to lower interest rates resulting in a decrease in interest income on our cash and cash equivalents.
Liquidity and Capital Resources
Since inception, we have financed operations primarily through the net proceeds we have received from the sales of our preferred stock and common stock as well as cash generated from the sale of subscriptions to our platform. We have generated losses from our operations as reflected in our accumulated deficit of $121.3 million as of June 30, 2021 and negative cash flows from operating activities for fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2020 as well as the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021. Our future capital requirements will depend on many factors, including revenue growth and costs incurred to support our platform, including growth in our customer base and customer usage, increased research and development expenses to support the growth of our business and related infrastructure, and increased general and administrative expenses to support being a publicly-traded company.
As of June 30, 2021, our principal sources of liquidity were cash and cash equivalents of $291.1 million and restricted cash of $1.9 million. Subsequent to June 30, 2021, we also sold an additional 827,609 shares of Series F redeemable convertible preferred stock in exchange for $26.5 million in cash to certain new investors, including funds affiliated with Fidelity Management & Research Company. Additionally, a substantial source of our cash provided by operating activities is our deferred revenue, which is included on our consolidated balance sheets as a liability. Deferred revenue consists of the unearned portion of billed fees for our subscriptions, which is recorded as revenue over the term of the subscription agreement. As of December 31, 2019 and 2020 and June 30, 2021, we had $29.8 million, $40.8 million, and $61.1 million of deferred revenue, respectively, all of which were recorded as a current liability. This deferred revenue will be recognized as revenue when or as the related performance obligations are met.
We assess our liquidity primarily through our cash on hand as well as the projected timing of billings under contract with our paying customers and related collection cycles. We believe our current cash and cash equivalents on hand will be sufficient to meet our working capital and capital expenditure requirements for at least the next 12 months. In the event that additional financing is required from outside sources, we may seek to raise additional funds at any time through equity, equity-linked arrangements, and debt. If we are unable to raise additional funds when desired and at reasonable rates, our business, results of operations, and financial condition would be adversely affected. See Risk FactorsRisks Related to Our Business and IndustryWe may require additional capital to support the growth of our business, and this capital might not be available on acceptable terms, if at all.
Cash Flows
The following table shows a summary of our cash flows for the periods presented:
Year Ended December 31, |
Six Months Ended June 30, |
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2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(in thousands) (Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
Net cash used in operating activities |
$ | (16,036 | ) | $ | (10,392 | ) | $ | (9,942 | ) | $ | (5,523 | ) | ||||
Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities |
$ | (648 | ) | $ | (5,908 | ) | $ | (4,429 | ) | $ | 339 | |||||
Net cash provided by financing activities |
$ | 874 | $ | 54,245 | $ | 50,885 | $ | 179,313 |
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Operating Activities
Our largest source of operating cash is cash collection from sales of subscriptions to our paying customers. Our primary uses of cash from operating activities are for personnel-related expenses, marketing expenses, and third-party hosting-related and software expenses. In the last several years, we have generated negative cash flows from operating activities and have supplemented working capital requirements through net proceeds from the sale of preferred stock and common stock.
Net cash used in operating activities of $5.5 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021 reflects our net loss of $16.5 million, adjusted by non-cash items such as stock-based compensation expense of $5.6 million and depreciation and amortization of $1.3 million as well as net cash provided by changes in our operating assets and liabilities of $4.1 million. The net cash provided by changes in operating assets and liabilities primarily consisted of a $7.8 million increase in prepaid expenses and other current and noncurrent assets related to an increase in prepayments made in advance for future services, an increase in deferred commissions of $5.5 million, and a $7.8 million increase in accounts receivable due to higher customer billings. These decreases were partially offset by an $20.2 million increase in deferred revenue, resulting from increased billings for subscriptions, and a $4.5 million increase in accrued expenses and accounts payable, resulting primarily from increases in accrued professional services, marketing, accrued payroll, and benefits due to an increase in the size of our operations.
Net cash used in operating activities of $9.9 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020 reflects our net loss of $16.6 million, adjusted by non-cash items such as stock-based compensation expense of $10.5 million and depreciation and amortization of $0.7 million partially offset by net cash used from changes in our operating assets and liabilities of $4.6 million. The net cash used from changes in operating assets and liabilities primarily consisted of an increase in deferred commissions of $1.9 million and a $1.2 million decrease in accrued expenses and accounts payable as well as a $0.8 million increase in prepaid expenses and other current and noncurrent assets related to an increase in prepayments made in advance for future services.
Net cash used in operating activities of $10.4 million for fiscal 2020 reflects our net loss of $24.6 million, adjusted by non-cash items such as stock-based compensation expense of $16.6 million and depreciation and amortization of $1.7 million as well as net cash used from changes in our operating assets and liabilities of $4.3 million. The net cash used from changes in operating assets and liabilities primarily consisted of a $7.2 million increase in prepaid expenses and other current and noncurrent assets related to an increase in prepayments made in advance for future services, an increase in deferred commissions of $7.2 million, and a $5.6 million increase in accounts receivable due to higher customer billings. These decreases were partially offset by an $11.0 million increase in deferred revenue, resulting from increased billings for subscriptions, and a $4.1 million increase in accrued expenses and accounts payable, resulting primarily from increases in accrued professional services, marketing, accrued payroll, and benefits due to an increase in the size of our operations.
Net cash used in operating activities of $16.0 million for fiscal 2019 reflects our net loss of $33.5 million, adjusted by non-cash items such as stock-based compensation expense of $7.3 million and depreciation and amortization of $0.7 million partially offset by net cash provided from changes in our operating assets and liabilities of $9.3 million. The net cash provided from changes in operating assets and liabilities primarily consisted of a $13.5 million increase in deferred revenue, resulting from increased billings for subscriptions, and a $3.2 million increase in accrued expenses and accounts payable, resulting primarily from increases in accrued professional services, marketing, accrued payroll, and benefits due to increase in the size of our operations. This increase was partially offset by an increase in deferred commissions of $5.8 million and a $1.2 million increase in accounts receivable due to higher customer billings. Additionally, there was a $0.7 million increase in prepaid expenses and other current and noncurrent assets related to an increase in prepayments made in advance for future services.
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Investing Activities
Net cash provided by investing activities of $0.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021 consisted of $1.7 million in net cash acquired upon the acquisition of a privately-held company. The increases were partially offset by $0.7 million of capitalized internal-use software development costs and $0.7 million in purchases of property and equipment.
Net cash used in investing activities of $4.4 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020 consisted of $3.7 million in cash paid for an acquisition, $0.5 million of capitalized internal-use software development costs, and $0.3 million in purchases of property and equipment.
Net cash used in investing activities of $5.9 million for fiscal 2020 consisted of $3.7 million in cash paid for an acquisition, $1.2 million of capitalized internal-use software development costs, and $1.0 million in purchases of property and equipment.
Net cash used in investing activities of $0.6 million for fiscal 2019 consisted of $0.6 million in purchases of property and equipment.
Financing Activities
Net cash provided by financing activities of $179.3 million for the six months ended June 30, 2021 primarily consisted of $173.3 million in net proceeds from the sale and issuance of Series F preferred stock; and $6.0 million in proceeds from the exercise of stock options.
Net cash provided by financing activities of $50.9 million for the six months ended June 30, 2020 primarily consisted of $49.6 million in net proceeds from the sale and issuance of Series E preferred stock, $0.2 million in net proceeds from the sale and issuance of Series D preferred stock, and $1.0 million in proceeds from the exercise of stock options.
Net cash provided by financing activities of $54.2 million for fiscal 2020 primarily consisted of $49.6 million in net proceeds from the sale and issuance of Series E preferred stock, $0.2 million in net proceeds from the sale and issuance of Series D preferred stock, and $4.4 million in proceeds from the exercise of stock options.
Net cash provided by financing activities of $0.9 million for fiscal 2019 primarily consisted of $0.7 million in net proceeds from the sale and issuance of Series D preferred stock and $0.4 million in proceeds from the exercise of stock options.
Remaining Performance Obligations
Remaining performance obligations (RPO) as of December 31, 2019 and 2020 and the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021, including the expected timing of recognition is as follows:
As of December 31, | As of June 30, | |||||||||||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | % Change | 2020 | 2021 | % Change | |||||||||||||||||||
(in thousands, except percentages) (Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Less than or equal to 12 months |
$ | 58,629 | $ | 85,706 | 46 | % | $ | 66,459 | $ | 116,922 | 76 | % | ||||||||||||
Greater than 12 months |
5,015 | 9,931 | 98 | % | 10,917 | 21,955 | 101 | % | ||||||||||||||||
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Total remaining performance obligations |
$ | 63,644 | $ | 95,637 | 50 | % | $ | 77,376 | $ | 138,877 | 79 | % | ||||||||||||
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Our remaining performance obligations represent the amount of contracted future revenue that has not yet been recognized, including both deferred revenue and non-cancelable contracted amounts that will be invoiced and recognized as revenue in future periods. RPO excludes performance obligations from overages. RPO is
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influenced by a number of factors, including the timing of renewals, the timing of purchases, average contract terms, and seasonality. Due to these factors, it is important to review RPO in conjunction with product revenue and other financial metrics disclosed elsewhere in this prospectus.
Contractual Obligations and Commitments
As of December 31, 2020, the contractual commitment amounts in the table below are associated with agreements that are enforceable and legally binding. Purchase orders issued in the ordinary course of business are not included in the table below, as our purchase orders represent authorizations to purchase rather than binding agreements.
Total | Less than 1 year |
1-3 years | 3-5 years | More than 5 years |
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(in thousands) |
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Operating lease and real estate-related commitments(1) |
$ | 5,954 | $ | 2,999 | $ | 1,273 | $ | 1,219 | $ | 463 | ||||||||||
Purchase commitments(2) |
18,796 | 7,238 | 11,558 | | | |||||||||||||||
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Total contractual obligations |
$ | 24,750 | $ | 10,237 | $ | 12,831 | $ | 1,219 | $ | 463 | ||||||||||
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(1) | Consists of future real estate-related non-cancelable minimum rental payments under operating leases and real estate commitments with substitution rights. |
(2) | Included in this commitment is a hosting arrangement with Amazon Web Services (AWS). In October 2019, we entered into a 36-month contract with AWS for hosting-related services. Pursuant to the terms of the contract, we are required to spend a minimum of $15 million within each contract year for three years. As of December 31, 2020, we had $17 million remaining on the commitment. |
In May 2021, the Company entered into a new sublease agreement for its principal executive office located in San Francisco. As of June 30, 2021, the contractual commitment amounts were as follows:
Total | Remainder of 2021 |
2022 2023 | 2024 2025 | After 2025 | ||||||||||||||||
(in thousands) |
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Operating lease and real estate-related commitments(1) |
$ | 15,245 | $ | 636 | $ | 6,951 | $ | 7,195 | $ | 463 | ||||||||||
Purchase commitments(2) |
17,287 | 4,339 | 12,948 | | | |||||||||||||||
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Total contractual obligations |
$ | 32,532 | $ | 4,975 | $ | 19,899 | $ | 7,195 | $ | 463 | ||||||||||
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(1) | Consists of future real estate related non-cancelable minimum rental payments under operating leases and real estate commitments with substitution rights. |
(2) | Included in this commitment is a hosting arrangement with Amazon Web Services (AWS). In October 2019, we entered into a 36-month contract with AWS for hosting-related services. Pursuant to the terms of the contract, we are required to spend a minimum of $15 million within each contract year for three years. As of June 30, 2021, we had $15 million remaining on the commitment. |
Indemnification Agreements
In the ordinary course of business, we enter into agreements of varying scope and terms pursuant to which we agree to indemnify customers, vendors, lessors, business partners, and other parties with respect to certain matters, including, but not limited to, losses arising out of the breach of such agreements, services to be provided by us, or from intellectual property infringement claims made by third parties. Additionally, in connection with the listing of our Class A common stock, we have entered into indemnification agreements with our directors and certain officers and employees that will require us, among other things, to indemnify them against certain liabilities that may arise by reason of their status or service as directors, officers, or employees. No demands have been made upon us to provide indemnification under such agreements, and there are no claims that we are aware of that could have a material effect on our financial position, results of operations, or cash flows.
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Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements
For all periods presented, we did not have any relationships with unconsolidated organizations or financial partnerships, such as structured finance or special purpose entities, which would have been established for the purpose of facilitating off-balance sheet arrangements or other contractually narrow or limited purposes.
Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk
Interest Rate Risk
Our cash and cash equivalents consists of cash on hand. As of June 30, 2021, we had cash and cash equivalents of $291.1 million. We do not have any marketable securities and we do not enter into investments for trading or speculative purposes. Our investments are exposed to market risk due to fluctuations in interest rates, which may affect our interest income on cash and cash equivalents. However, an immediate 10% increase or decrease in interest rates would not have a material effect on the fair value of our portfolio. We therefore do not expect our operating results or cash flows to be materially affected by a sudden change in market interest rates.
Foreign Currency Risk
The vast majority of our subscription agreements are denominated in U.S. dollars, with a small number of subscription agreements denominated in foreign currencies. A portion of our operating expenses are incurred outside the United States, denominated in foreign currencies, and subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates, particularly changes in the Euro, British Pound, Canadian Dollar, Singapore Dollar, and Japanese Yen. Additionally, fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates may cause us to recognize transaction gains and losses in our consolidated statements of operations. As the impact of foreign currency exchange rates has not been material to our historical operating results, we have not entered into derivative or hedging transactions, but we may do so in the future if our exposure to foreign currency becomes more significant.
Inflation Risk
We do not believe that inflation has had a material effect on our business, results of operations, or financial condition. Nonetheless, if our costs were to become subject to significant inflationary pressures, we may not be able to fully offset such higher costs. Our inability or failure to do so could harm our business, results of operations, or financial condition.
Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates
Revenue Recognition
We generate revenue primarily from sales of subscription services. Revenue is recognized when, or as, the related performance obligation is satisfied by transferring the control of the promised service to a customer. The amount of revenue recognized reflects the consideration that we expect to be entitled to receive in exchange for these services.
We account for revenue contracts with customers by applying the requirements of ASC 606, which includes the following steps:
| Identification of the contract, or contracts, with the customer |
| Identification of the performance obligations in the contract |
| Determination of the transaction price |
| Allocation of the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract |
| Recognition of the revenue when, or as, a performance obligation is satisfied |
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Our SaaS subscription agreements with customers enable them to access and send event volume data to our platform. Subscription arrangements with customers do not provide the customer with the right to take possession of our software at any time. Instead, customers are granted continuous access to the platform over the contractual period. A time-elapsed method is used to measure progress because our obligation is to provide continuous service over the contractual period and control is transferred evenly over the contractual period. Accordingly, the fixed consideration related to subscription revenue is recognized ratably over the contract term beginning on the date access to the subscription product is provisioned. The typical subscription term is 12 months with various payment terms ranging from monthly to annual upfront payments. Most contracts are non-cancelable over the contractual term. Some customers have the option to purchase additional subscription services at a stated price. These options are evaluated on a case-by-case basis but generally do not provide a material right as they do not provide a discount to the customer that is incremental to the range of discounts typically given for the same services that are sold to a similar class of customers, even when the stand-alone selling price of the services subject to the option is highly variable.
Deferred Contract Acquisition Costs (Deferred Commissions)
We capitalize sales commissions that are recoverable and incremental due to the acquisition of customer contracts. We determine whether costs should be deferred based on its sales compensation plans, if the commissions are in fact incremental and would not have occurred absent the customer contract.
Commissions paid upon the initial acquisition of a contract are deferred and then amortized on a straight-line basis over a period of benefit, determined to be five years. The period of benefit is estimated by considering factors such as the expected life of our subscription contracts, historical customer attrition rates, technological life of our platform, as well as other factors. Sales commissions for renewal of a subscription contract are not considered commensurate with the commissions paid for the acquisition of the initial subscription contract given the substantive difference in commission rates between new and renewal contracts. We determine the period of benefit for renewal subscription contracts by considering the contractual term for renewal contracts.
Amounts anticipated to be recognized within 12 months of the balance sheet date are recorded as deferred commissions, current, with the remaining portion recorded as deferred commissions, noncurrent, in the consolidated balance sheets. Amortization of deferred commissions is included in sales and marketing expense in the consolidated statement of operations. We periodically review these deferred commissions to determine whether events or changes in circumstances have occurred that could impact recoverability or the period of benefit. There were no impairment losses recorded during the periods presented.
Stock-Based Compensation Expense
We measure and recognize compensation expense for all stock-based payment awards granted to employees, directors, and non-employees based on the estimated fair values on the date of the grant and vesting criteria. For options, vesting is typically over a four-year period and is contingent upon continued employment on each vesting date. In general, options granted to newly hired employees vest 25% after the first year of service and ratably each month over the remaining 36-month period.
The fair value of options granted are estimated on the grant date using the Monte Carlo simulation model. The determination of the grant date fair value is affected by the estimated fair value of our common stock as well as additional assumptions regarding a number of other subjective variables. These variables include expected stock price volatility over a contractual term, actual and projected employee stock option exercise behaviors, the risk-free interest rate for a contractual term, and expected dividends.
We recognize compensation expense for service-based stock-based awards as an expense over the employees or directors requisite service period on a straight-line basis. We also have certain options and awards
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that have performance-based vesting conditions upon certain liquidity events. As of December 31, 2019 and 2020 and June 30, 2020 and 2021, no such liquidity events have been achieved and therefore no expense has been recorded for performance-based awards. Forfeitures are accounted for as they occur. Stock-based compensation expense is allocated to cost of revenue and operating expenses on the consolidated statements of operations based on the associated employees functional department.
The following assumptions and data inputs were used for each respective period to calculate our stock-based compensation:
Year Ended December 31, | Six Months Ended June 30, | |||||||||||||||
2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2021 | |||||||||||||
(Unaudited) | ||||||||||||||||
Fair value of common stock |
$ | 2.26 - $3.24 | $ | 3.16 - $5.32 | $ | 3.16 - $3.70 | $ | 7.48 - $21.75 | ||||||||
Expected dividend yield |
% | % | | | ||||||||||||
Risk-free interest rate |
1.48% - 2.39% | 0.70% - 0.90% | 0.70% | 1.40% - 1.70% | ||||||||||||
Expected volatility |
61% | 70% - 75% | 72.5% - 75% | 60% - 70% | ||||||||||||
Contractual term (years) |
10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 |
Determining Fair Value of Stock Options
The fair value of each grant of stock option was determined by us using the methods and assumptions discussed below. The determination of each of these inputs is subjective and generally requires a level of judgment.
Expected volatility The expected stock price volatility assumption was determined by examining the historical volatilities of a group of industry peers over a period equal to the expected life of the options, as we did not have any trading history for our common stock.
Contractual term The contractual term of stock options is used to model the expected exercise behavior of the option holders with a 10-year exercise period. This method utilizes a Monte Carlo simulation based on historical exercise data as the options are not considered to be plain-vanilla where a simplified method is allowed as certain holders have up until option expiration to exercise regardless of employment status. The Monte Carlo simulation models expected exercise behavior utilizing an estimated stock price at which the holder of the option would choose to exercise an option prior to the end of the stated term. For this assumption, we utilized a value multiple on the strike price of 4.0 times.
Expected dividend The expected dividend assumption was based on our history and expectation that it will not declare dividend payout for the near future.
Risk free interest rate The risk-free interest rate is based on the U.S. Treasury zero coupon issues in effect at the time of grant for periods corresponding with the contractual terms.
Fair value of common stock The fair value of our common stock is determined by our board of directors, which intends all options granted to be exercisable at a price per share not less than the per share fair value of the common stock underlying those options on the date of grant. The valuations of our common stock are determined in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Practice Aid, Valuation of Privately-Held-Company Equity Securities Issued as Compensation. The board of directors considered numerous objective and subjective factors to determine the fair value of our common stock at each meeting in which awards were approved. The factors considered included, but were not limited to:
(i) the results of contemporaneous independent third-party valuations of our common stock;
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(ii) the prices, rights, preferences, and privileges of our redeemable convertible preferred stock relative to those of its common stock;
(iii) the lack of marketability of our common stock;
(iv) actual operating and financial results;
(v) current business conditions and projections;
(vi) the likelihood of achieving a liquidity event, such as an initial public offering, direct listing, or sale of our Company, given prevailing market conditions; and
(vii) precedent transactions involving our shares.
In valuing our common stock, the fair value of our business was determined using various valuation methods, including combinations of income and market approaches. The income approach estimates value based on the expectation of future cash flows that our company will generate. These future cash flows are discounted to their present values using a discount rate that is derived from an analysis of the cost of capital of comparable publicly-traded companies in our industry or similar business operations as of each valuation date and is adjusted to reflect the risks inherent in our cash flows. The market approach estimates value based on a comparison of our company to comparable public companies in a similar line of business and similar to us in economic drivers and operating characteristics. From the comparable companies, a representative market value multiple is determined and then applied to our prior financial results and future financial forecasts to estimate the value of our business. Concurrent with preferred stock financings, we also used the option pricing model to back solve the value of our common stock utilizing our most recent round of financing, which implies a total equity value as well as a per share common stock value.
For each valuation, the fair value of our business determined by the income and market approaches was then allocated to the common stock using either the option-pricing method (OPM), or a hybrid of the probability-weighted expected return method (PWERM) and OPM methods.
Our valuations prior to March 31, 2021 were allocated based on the OPM. Beginning March 31, 2021, our valuations were allocated based on a hybrid method of the PWERM and the OPM. Using the PWERM, the value of our common stock is estimated based upon a probability-weighted analysis of varying values for our common stock assuming possible future events for our company, including a scenario assuming we become a publicly-traded company and a scenario assuming we continue as a privately-held company.
In addition, we also considered and included secondary transactions involving our capital stock in our valuations. In our evaluation of those transactions, we considered the facts and circumstances of each transaction to determine the extent to which they represented a fair value exchange. Factors considered include transaction volume, timing, whether the transactions occurred among willing and unrelated parties, and whether the transactions involved investors with access to our financial information.
Upon the listing of our Class A common stock, our Class A common stock will be publicly traded and will therefore be subject to potentially significant fluctuations in the market price. Increases and decreases in the market price of our common stock will also increase and decrease the fair value of our stock-based awards granted in future periods.
Recent Accounting Pronouncements
See Note 1 to our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this prospectus for more information regarding recent accounting pronouncements.
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JOBS Act Accounting Election
We are an emerging growth company, as defined in the JOBS Act. The JOBS Act provides that an emerging growth company can take advantage of an extended transition period for complying with new or revised accounting standards. This provision allows an emerging growth company to delay the adoption of some accounting standards until those standards would otherwise apply to private companies. We have elected to use the extended transition period under the JOBS Act until the earlier of the date we (i) are no longer an emerging growth company or (ii) affirmatively and irrevocably opt out of the extended transition period provided in the JOBS Act. As a result, our financial statements may not be comparable to companies that comply with new or revised accounting pronouncements as of public company effective dates.
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A Letter from our Founders The ideas in this letter have passed through hundreds of digital products before making their way to you. Whether it's communication, entertainment, commerce, or business, digital products now shape the fabric of our lives and we can't imagine life without them. We love digital products. In 2011, as programmers passionate about creating products, we set out to change the world by bringing voice control to every mobile phone via Sonalight. We wanted Sonalight to be a great product. We got close, but in the process made an important realization about digital products. They're so powerful, and yet, they still frustrate us with bad experiences: issues logging in, clunky interfaces, not being able to find what we're looking for. We were shocked to find that the tools didn't exist to help us overcome that. We couldn't see the biggest issues our customers were having. We couldn't tell why people loved the product. We couldn't even be sure about whether the voice recognition technology was good enough. To answer these questions, we spent half of our time building our own analytics system. It was painful to spend so much time building infrastructure instead of innovating on product. It made us wonder - why doesn't every product creator have this? We started Amplitude to enable the world to build great digital products - data driven products. A decade in, our conviction has only grown stronger. As we bring Amplitude to the public markets, we hope you'll share in our enthusiasm.
Amplitude's Vision Amplitude's purpose is to help companies build better products. We aspire to change the way they are built - through data. The History of Products For most of human history, products were exclusive and expensive. Each breakthrough in product development dramatically improved our standard of living. The industrial revolution brought down the cost of manufacturing goods. Products like clothing and cookware became widely available. The digital revolution brought forth digital products with zero marginal cost of production. Software like Microsoft Word could be written once and be used by millions. The internet reduced the cost of distribution of these digital products to zero. It became possible to get a product in the hands of billions of people for free. Agile development enabled the development process to merge with production and distribution. Software could continually improve while being used, hundreds of times per day. The upshot is that product creators can produce, distribute, and improve products orders of magnitude faster and better than before. A small team can create an application today that hundreds of millions of people use tonight. The sum of these improvements has put us in a world of abundance. 500 million digital products have been built over the last 40 years and another 500 million will be built in the next 3 years. What People Want There is a last frontier that looms larger than ever: we don't know if we're building what people want. This has always been the central challenge of great product development. Every other part of the product development process has gone through transformational change except for this one. The state of the art for knowing what people want hasn't changed for hundreds of years: either use the product yourself or ask users. Users are great at raising problems but often come up short on solutions. The reality is we don't know what people want when it comes to products. Experts don't. Companies don't. Markets don't.
Data Driven Products Actions speak louder than words. What people do with a product is a far stronger signal of what they want than what they tell us. People are bad at knowing what they want and there's often a huge disconnect between what they say and what they do. We're at the start of a fundamental shift in the product development process. Because of the rise of digital products, it's now possible to observe those actions. How people use a product is no longer a black box. This is why Amplitude exists. This observation is a powerful tool in our arsenal to understand what people want. We can understand what motivates people to use a product, or what frustrates them and drives them away. We can uncover use cases that we had no idea were important. We can harness all of that data and use it to build better products. Facebook famously discovered that 7 friends was the key to great user engagement and redesigned its product experience around that. Calm learned that a huge part of their value was helping users build a habit around meditation through daily reminders. Peloton found that social interaction kept people coming back to classes and created leaderboards and high fives. It doesn't stop there. We can feed the observations we have on users back into their product experience without manual intervention. We've seen early attempts at creating an automated understanding of what people want: recency lists, customized interfaces, and personalized recommendations to name a few. Imagine a world where this plays out, and every part of the product becomes better based on what a user has done before. This all accelerates the rest of the product development process. As we continuously deploy new versions of a product, data driven product development allows us to directly measure what's working and what's not. We now have a continuous feedback loop for what we're building. The last barrier in product development is knowing what people want. If we can knock it down through data driven products, we can close the distance between product creators and their users. We can live in a world where products are much more effective than they are today. We can get to a transformative end state where
we know exactly what people want and exactly how to build products to suit their needs. That is the promise of data driven products. From Mad Men to Moneyball Product is not the first function in a company to become data driven. A lot of how marketing has changed in the last 20 years gives us clues to how it will play out. Marketing teams used to be run by Mad Men, the characters in the AMC show about 1960's marketing executives. Success was about coming up with a creative advertising campaign that felt compelling to an expert. It was impossible to attribute what led to success in marketing: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Over the last 20 years, the shift to data driven marketing has created an entirely new ecosystem. The internet made it possible to test, measure, and observe the success of marketing directly, and as a result, the martech ecosystem exploded. The marketing function grew in importance with the rise of the CMO. The demand generation function emerged, with quantitative evidence becoming commonplace in marketing decisions. Today, it's expected that every marketing team takes a data driven Moneyball approach. The shift to data driven product development will be even bigger. The early examples are promising. Facebook became a dominant tech company because they figured out the power of the social network through data. Netflix creates content on the basis of what people watch and has become the newest media powerhouse. Data driven products are winning, and they're just getting started. The Digital Optimization System Our Digital Optimization System is the continuous feedback loop that powers data driven products. It connects what people want to the product experience they get. We've spent the last ten years taking the methodology and systems of the best product teams in the world and making them available to everyone. We've seen thousands of products flourish as a result of it.
And yet, it's still early. We're primitive in leveraging data today compared to the future. If we succeed, we have an opportunity to fundamentally change the most important part of building products: knowing what people want. Building a Company Culture Culture is the most durable part of a company and our most powerful tool for creating long-term impact. We invest in Amplitude's "way of life" by consciously creating an environment that empowers people and teams to do great things. Our cultural values are: Humility. No ego. We operate from a place of empathy and openness and seek to understand many points of view. Ownership. We take the initiative to solve problems that drive our shared company success. Growth Mindset. We're tenacious in the face of challenges and seek input in order to grow ourselves and others. It's not enough to just talk about them. These values are embedded in the company's operations and the incentive structures that drive the business. We interview for them, we promote people based on them, and we celebrate them regularly. We're intensely retrospective on our business performance and any weaknesses we have. Every team sees and understands the goals of every other team, and then we collectively invest in turning those weaknesses into strengths. The challenges we face will change over time, and culture is what enables us to overcome them at every step. It defines what it means to be Amplitude. On Innovation The problems we solve at Amplitude are hard in that we need to innovate from both a product (what) and engineering (how) perspective. Many companies have
challenges in one of the two buckets, but the combination of the two is rare. We have thought carefully about how to create a product development organization that is exceptional at innovating on these types of problems. These are our principles: Ship early, ship often. Getting product in front of customers is the only time we learn whether what we have done is valuable. The velocity and number of iterations that we go through is the best predictor of product quality and success, not our ability to come up with some magic feature. We're always asking ourselves, "What is stopping us from shipping this today?" Own the customer experience. The goal of both our business and our product is to solve customer pain. If we're not doing that, it doesn't matter how great the technology is. We expect everyone at Amplitude to have clarity on how their work solves customer pain and to challenge those around them (especially managers!) when it's not clear. We treat the customer as part of the team and become experts on the problems they face. 10x engineering. All of our most valuable innovations have come from when an engineer with deep technical expertise combines that with a deep understanding of the customer problem. Engineers make hundreds of microdecisions as part of any project, and each one is more likely to be correct if they know the outcome they are trying to achieve. A top engineer that internalizes the problem context can easily create ten times the impact of an average engineer building towards a spec, and our processes and teams are built for those types of people. Long term. As companies mature, priorities change and culture dilutes - shipping fast, high ownership, and exceptionalness are met with stability concerns, organizational silos, and mediocrity. We don't accept that, because we're in this for the long term, and product innovation is the #1 priority for the long term. Not every potential employee or customer will agree with that, and that's fine. We want to work with you if you believe the future has yet to be created, and we are excited to help you create it.
SalesThere are so many amazing products that fail because their founding teams do not think about sales. Understanding the fundamental importance of sales has always been core to our success. In 2014 we wrote: Engineering and sales are the biggest challenges today and will always be our biggest challenges as they determine whether we succeed or fail. It remains true today. Prioritizing sales is pervasive in our culture. We regularly go on sales calls and we expect engineers to do the same. The two things we celebrate most are shipping features and closing deals. Everyone at Amplitude understands new bookings and net retention.Efficiency and HiringWe think a lot about creating a great long term business. Part of doing that is being efficient, especially with headcount. We operate with lean product development teams that have large scopes of ownership and product surface area. We believe in high-achieving sales teams and create opportunities for salespeople to have outsized success. Wed rather not hire people than lower the bar.Corporate GovernanceFuture ShareholdersWe have had great relationships with our shareholders as a private company and would like to continue this with our new shareholders as a public one.We are interested in working with you if you have the same long term outlook on Amplitude that we do. We would love to drive results for you as a shareholder over the coming decades.If you are not oriented towards the long term success of Amplitude or think we should sell the company, do not buy our stock. We cannot emphasize this enough.
Dual Class Shares In order to maintain the long term orientation, we will be listing with a dual class share structure. We dont love dual class structures in principle because they divorce economic ownership from control. We would ideally have a share structure that incentivizes maximizing the long term value of the stock instead of exploiting short term market inefficiencies in price. Absent that, a dual class structure allows us to focus on the long term in the face of activist investors or shareholders who are biased toward short term outcomes.That said, we certainly welcome the perspective of other shareholders who are similarly long term oriented. So we are setting the vote multiple to a lower than standard ratio of 5:1. Direct Listing Were taking Amplitude public through a Direct Listing. We strongly encourage other CEOs to do the same for their companies. The traditional IPO process systematically underprices the stock of companies who use it. From 1980 to 2020, companies going through the traditional IPO process have underpriced their stock by an average of 20% and left a collective $200 billion on the table.* 2020 alone was even worse with an average of 48% underpricing, and $30 billion left on the table. There are a lot of reasons companies use to convince themselves that underpricing is a good thing. Traditional thinking is that if the price is too high, no one will buy it. That thinking is backwards; high prices are a signal of lots of people wanting to buy. It reminds us of Yogi Berras joke: Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. We are fiduciaries to our current shareholders and have an obligation to get the best result for them. A Direct Listing is one of many ways we plan to do that. First, it allows us to get a market based price for our stock. Second, it provides an opportunity for all of our shareholders to participate without restrictions like lockups. We will continue to operate our company in a way that delivers these types of benefits and optimizes value for you as a future shareholder of Amplitude. * Initial Public Offerings: Underpricing, December 29, 2020, Jay R. Ritter.
Long Term View We are strong believers in the power of technology to improve lives. When you zoom out it's incredible to look at how much our lives are better than previous generations' thanks to technological progress. We hope for Amplitude to be a small part of the next wave of progress. To make such an impact requires commitment on the order of decades. Many companies do not think beyond making their next quarter successful. We are now ten years into the journey and hope it is the first of many decades for Amplitude. We are personally committed no matter the ups and downs we face along the way. We see an opportunity to build a company that enables the world to build data driven products. Bringing Amplitude to the public markets is the next step along that journey. We're excited to share that opportunity with you. Spenser Skates, Curtis Liu, and Jeffrey Wang.
Overview
We are pioneering a new category of software called Digital Optimization. Our Digital Optimization System serves as the command center for businesses to connect digital products to business outcomes. Digital optimization is emerging as a strategic investment for every company to survive in the digital-first world.
Digital products are embedded in every part of our daily lives. In 2020, U.S. adults spent nearly 8 hours on average per day on digital activities. Digital has become the primary way business is done, and the ability for companies to offer compelling digital products and services has become a matter of survival.
Digital products have become the center of how companies interact with customers. Digital-native companies like Twitter, DoorDash, PayPal, and Dropbox invest heavily in product innovation to fuel a product-led adoption model. It is not only the companies born in the past two decades that are betting it all on digital. Walmart, Disney, and IBM are reinventing their businesses around digital. Digital is the battleground and the businesses that fail to rise to the challenge and adapt to this new reality will face an existential crisis.
The way that companies build digital products is going through a fundamental change from being intuition-based to data-driven. Product teams have historically decided what to build based on qualitative gut feel and without a firm understanding of what will drive business results. Today, the best teams are those that build their strategy around product data, which connects the attributes of individual end users with their actual behavior. Product data has become the next untapped growth lever to transform how businesses build products, gain key insights into which features have the greatest business impact, and connect with customers.
The amount of time that consumers spend interacting with digital products has led to an explosion of both the quantity and diversity of data. Because products themselves are generators of data, for the first time, in-product behavior can now be analyzed. With product data, teams can gain insight from the specific actions end users take within digital products and answer important questions, such as where in the purchase journey do users experience friction, what are the top user paths between signup and trial conversion, and which features increase new customer retention.
Traditionally, businesses have spent billions of dollars on a patchwork of systems, including web and marketing analytics, business intelligence tools, and sentiment tools, to help understand how their digital product investments drive business outcomes. These tools were not built on product data and do not understand in-product behavior, nor were they built for the scale and complexity of digital products to provide actionable and real-time product-driven insights. Businesses today do not know if their strategic product decisions are the right ones, and they do not have the insights to help ensure they work.
The next evolution of digital transformation is the category-defining shift to digital optimization. The promise of digital optimization is connecting the dots between products and the business. It provides the breadth and depth of insights into customer behavior to understand what behaviors are linked to business impact. Digital optimization answers strategic questions such as what products to build, what digital bets to make, and which bets are working. It predicts which customers are likely to purchase or churn based on their behavior and automatically adapts products to each customer based on this intelligence to optimize the outcome.
While digital transformation is focused on building new digital products, digital optimization is focused on using product data to make strategic decisions and run a business, accelerate innovation, and increase the value of digital transformation efforts.
Product, data, engineering, and marketing teams are often forced to make business decisions in a vacuum and without understanding the linkage between product decisions and business outcomes. Digital optimization
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leverages the power of data-driven products to create this linkage automatically. In addition, having a common lens into customer and product data helps every team transform their function, from launching brand-defining marketing campaigns to reimagining customer support. Bringing shared data and common visibility to every team will be a business-critical requirement in the digital optimization era.
How Amplitude Powers Digital Optimization
We built the first Digital Optimization System that brings together a new depth of customer understanding with the speed of action to optimize experiences. We power some of the most-beloved and iconic consumer and B2B digital products. We enable businesses, regardless of size, industry, or where they are in their digital maturity, to unleash digital innovation and growth. Our system unifies product, marketing, data, and executive teams, by giving them the common visibility to drive business outcomes with agility and confidence.
Our Digital Optimization System consists of the following integrated solutions:
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