
Salesforce buys Demandware for $2.8B - billhendricksjr
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/01/salesforce-buys-demandware-for-2-8b-taking-a-big-step-into-e-commerce/
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samfisher83
This seems like a lot to pay for company that isn't cashflow positive. Even if
we take out 147 million they spend for sales for synergy reasons. Keep the
growth rate similar. We end up with FCF of 200 mil. That is paying something
like 15x FCF using some crazy assumptions.

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Cieplak
Does seem like quite a lot for a software company. Could hire quite a few devs
with a billion dollars. I imagine most of the price could be attributed to
Demandware's existing customer relationships and Demandware's employees,
although the latter is difficult to value especially considering that most
folks worth their salt are out as soon as their options vest.

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vasaulys
Does Salesforce pursue the same model of customer acquisition as Oracle does?
I know Oracle is known to sell to existing customers additional products &
services, so Salesforce might be "acquiring" new customers if there is little
overlap in current customer base.

It seems highly unlikely this sort of acquisition is for the technology alone.

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kmnc
Most of the Salesforce purchases seem to be about opening up new marketing
channels.

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shaqbert
\- 11.8x 2015 sales \- Company was growing around 50%/ year \- With -18% opinc
margin \- Customer base mostly mid tier and less savy ecommerce customers,
read: future Amazon victims

=> Extremely steep price

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origami777
What do you mean by "Customer base mostly mid tier and less savy ecommerce
customers, read: future Amazon victims"?

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JimmyAustin
I think he is talking about organisations that are either: A) likely to fail
victim to Amazon beginning to sell Amazon branded products under the
"AmazonBasics" brand. B) Increasingly unlikely to be able to compete against
the sheer scale of Amazon as a storefront as it expands.

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JoshGlazebrook
Very curious what they will do with this. Demandware is horrible to develop
for.

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stanmancan
It can't possibly be any worse than developing for Salesforce.

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JoshGlazebrook
I've not personally touched Salesforce, but demandware centers around
"pipelines" which essentially I would equate them to a visual route
handler/middleware combination. Which works in combination with their
propriety scripting language (javascript based), templating system, etc.

pipelines:

[http://blog.baha.dk/content/images/2015/12/dwpipeline-1.png](http://blog.baha.dk/content/images/2015/12/dwpipeline-1.png)

general overview:

[http://blog.baha.dk/2015/12/19/part-2-developing-
demandware/](http://blog.baha.dk/2015/12/19/part-2-developing-demandware/)

~~~
stanmancan
Salesforce has its "server" side language APEX which is sort of kinda based on
Java, then they have SOQL which is their own, limited and akward version of
SQL, and Visualforce which is their front end. So many limitations that make
no sense. Documentation rarely tells you the whole picture. The whole thing is
full of gotchas that you only learn through experience. Ugh.

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Jach
Don't forget Aura/Lightning for one of the weirdest ugh-inducing front end /
back end development rides you can find:
[https://github.com/forcedotcom/aura](https://github.com/forcedotcom/aura)

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andrewfromx
bets on the next big buy from SF: either
[https://www.onelogin.com](https://www.onelogin.com) or
[https://www.bitium.com](https://www.bitium.com)

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bpicolo
Lots of options in this space, huh?
[https://www.okta.com/](https://www.okta.com/)

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andrewfromx
well okta raised way too much money for SF to buy them. The other two are much
more likely.

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notmything
The comments on this story are really reflective of the kind of people on HN -
no idea what's going on with the bigger picture - if it's not completely dev
focussed then it's stupid and wrong...... Sad

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Huhty
Would have expected an Alexa rank much higher than 66,890 for a business worth
2.8 BILLION dollars.

~~~
bpicolo
Alexa isn't a great indicator for enterprise software. You wouldn't expect
them to have any visitors, despite the sites for all their brands having many
many visitors.

