Sep

02

Okta’s Execution Mess

Okta, the cloud identity provider, reported earnings this week and while the results were very strong on the surface, the

Sep 2, 2022

8 min read

Aug

29

Salesforce’s Best Acquisition Yet: Itself

Salesforce is the granddaddy of cloud stocks. It was the first sizeable SaaS company to go public, in 2004, and

Aug 29, 2022

8 min read

Aug

24

Stripe vs. Adyen: Collision Course

Adyen reported earnings last week and the company showed its usual strong growth with processed volumes up 60 percent year-over-year

Aug 24, 2022

9 min read

Aug

12

Twilio’s Margin Target: How Achievable is It?

Twilio reported Q2 earnings on August 5th and despite delivering on its promise of organic growth of at least 30

Aug 12, 2022

7 min read

Aug

10

Square’s Margins, Square vs. Shopify

Square, now called Block, reported Q2 earnings last week. The company delivered solid growth, with net revenues excluding bitcoin and

Aug 10, 2022

8 min read

Aug

09

Ping and SailPoint: A Look at Thoma Bravo’s Identity Rollup

Thoma Bravo is a private equity company with ~$100 billion in AUM and a strong track record investing in software

Aug 9, 2022

13 min read

Aug

03

Tesla and Shopify: Integration, Modularity, and Value Capture

This is a follow-up on my recent posts on Shopify and Tesla. It occurred to me that there’s an

Aug 3, 2022

6 min read

Aug

02

Shopify: A Rake Not Far Enough

Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist, once wrote a post called A Rake Too Far: Optimal Platform Pricing Strategy. “Rake” is

Aug 2, 2022

13 min read

Jul

27

Chasing Tesla: There is No Catalog

In chapter five of their book The Innovator’s Solution, Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor wrote that managers must ask,

Jul 27, 2022

13 min read

Jul

22

Netflix’s Advertising Ambitions

Consumers are feeling the pain of inflation. Yesterday, AT&T reported that its wireless customers are having trouble paying their

Jul 22, 2022

6 min read