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Domo Enters Trading Friday with IPO

New York City—Silicon Slopes took another step in the march towards publicdom Friday as Domo hit the stock market.

“This is a milestone for us, definitely. We’re kind of telling the world we’re ready to be grown up and it kind of reflects the enterprise customers in our company,” said Domo Founder and CEO Josh James. “Going public is an opportunity to efficiently raise some money and it’s enough to get us to cash flow break even, and it’s also a really cool branding event for us.”

Mr. James said going public at this time made sense for the company because of the growing base of high-powered customers and Domo’s desire to elevate that experience. The company’s offerings have improved over even what was available to customers a year and a half or two years ago, Mr. James said, and customers are talking about it.

“We have over 1,500 customers and of those customers, 400 have their CEOs log in regularly and use our product. Some of them are Fortune 50 companies and some of them have over 10,000 users in their company and one of them is a CEO, so it scales all the way to the top and all the way to the bottom employees,” he said. “The real linchpin is when you have customers willing to get out there and talk about what they’re doing with your products. We’re seeing other CEOs saying they want to talk about it.”

The American Fork-based data analytics company announced their plan to go public at the beginning of June. The announcement fulfilled months of speculation about who among the Silicon Slopes giants would be next to show up on the Nasdaq ticker, especially after learning and development company Pluralsight took its turn ringing the bell last month. Its 9.2 million shares of Class B stock hit the market for $23.80 each (According to the U.S. Department of Securities and Exchanges, 3.2 million shares of Class A Domo stock are controlled by Cocolalla, LLC, for which Mr. James also serves as manager). Stock rose 21 percent at its peak before settling to a closing price of $27.30.

Despite its upward gains, many called its opening shaky and were critical of the lower-than-anticipated revenue of the IPO. Mr. James, however, was unphased.

“It’s always important when you have customers making bets on you and individuals making a career bet on you in an organization when they can see the stability that comes from being a public company,” he said. “From an employee’s perspective, it’s been really galvanizing. There’s always naysayers … We just kind of laugh and say, well, just watch us. We’re going to get more customers and show you.”

Mr. James said Domo’s capability to show real-time data will be the proof in the pudding for its success. He says the company gets excited for its future watching what its customers are doing with its software, and he’s in it for the long haul.

“Going public really truly is just a milestone. What’s important is what your stock does, what your company does down the road. The focus is what are you doing for your customers, are you delivering value for your customers, and if you do that, everything else will work itself out,” he says. “that’s the pitch that we gave to our investors.

“We’ve always said we want to create a really, really large business,” he added. “I’d love to be doing this 30 years down the road and have it be doing $50 billion in business. That’s what we’re shooting for.”

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