
CrowdStrike S-1 - itsovermyhead
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1535527/000104746919003095/a2238800zs-1.htm
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badrabbit
For the uninitiated: Crowdstrike Falcon is basically the highest quality
Endpoint Defense and Response product in the market.

They are not fool proof but I would be extremely surprised if any untargeted
malware infected a Crowdstrike enabled device.

They are extremely popular in the market,it's pretty awesome the level of
protection they give traditional businesses that don't have large security
teams who can't readily adopt to attacker techniques.

They've been spreading themselves a bit thin lately trying to to do things a
bit outside of their domain. But as someone that finds it very easy to find
fault and criticize, I find almost no bad things to say about their offering
(aside from the price tag).

Hope going public won't ruin them. Their threat intel is always a page turner
too!

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gadnuk
"We have incurred net losses in all periods since our inception, and we may
not achieve or maintain profitability in the future. We experienced net losses
of $91.3 million, $135.5 million, $140.1 million for fiscal 2017, fiscal 2018,
and fiscal 2019, respectively. As of January 31, 2019, we had an accumulated
deficit of $519.1 million."

Wow, I knew that they had great revenues and growth but this nugget is now
becoming a common theme for all tech companies going IPO these days.

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tptacek
Yes, and usually for a pretty straightforward reason: these companies are
investing substantial sums of money into buying market share, and, when they
(a) win themselves a defensible position in the market and (b) generate enough
revenue to prove the market to investors, they can cut back on those expenses
and take profits. Meanwhile, investors are looking for growth and, more
generally, future profits; nobody's all that interested in taking a
Crowdstrike dividend this year.

If a dollar in profits taken today is multiple dollars in future profits left
on the table, you can see why a business would engineer its finances to plow
every cent back into the business.

Obviously, this plan can always go spectacularly wrong, but you can't just
point to the strategy itself as evidence that will happen. You need an actual
argument to back it up.

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rossdavidh
It's always possible to make a semi-plausible argument that money will be made
someday. Perhaps that's enough for an angel investor, maybe a VC, but by the
time you IPO, you really ought to have demonstrated it. But, not lately.

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mason55
Why? Why should public markets be the red line?

If you’re not profitable yet then that means there’s lots of room for growth.
If companies are going public when there’s still all that room for growth then
it means the public gets to share more in the growth.

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tptacek
I assume the subtext is: because reliable, growing profits are hard to fake,
and there's a broad suspicion that a lot of big tech companies are essentially
"fake it 'til you make it" counterfeit businesses.

I think it's a critique that makes sense for some kinds of tech companies and
not for others.

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cwkoss
Crowdstrike seems very well-connected politically. The DNC chose to have them
forensically examine their hacked servers _to the exclusion of the FBI_.

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tptacek
George Kurtz is not a Democrat. Crowdstrike is also a giant in this field. I
assume the connection is, the DNC wanted to go with a safe, big name.

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monocasa
Political connectedness exists on many spectrums other than the usual Red vs
Blue. An interesting one you can see from the outside (that might not have
anything to do here, it's just an example) is CIA vs NSA. You can see Nancy
Pelosi's statements back that look like "we've always been at war with East
Asia" and "we've never been at war with East Asia" wrt to the intelligence
apparatus depending on which agency screwed up.

And Dmitri Alperovitch seems to see the shadows of the Russian political
establishment everywhere he looks, though, which makes Crowdstrike an...
interesting choice for that work.

Edit: added the top paragraph.

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tptacek
All available evidence from credible sources seems to back up Crowdstrike's
attribution. I'm sure you can find a countervailing argument or two from some
credible source, but, to say the least, it does not look like Crowdstrike took
a flyer on this.

I don't think the Russia investigation has thing #1 to do with Crowdstrike's
IPO or what their business is like, though. That's much simpler: EDR is the
new antivirus, antivirus has historically been one of the most lucrative
enterprise technology products (to say nothing of security products), and
Crowdstrike has a commanding share of the EDR market.

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monocasa
You also have a former UK ambassador saying "the DNC wasn't hacked. I was part
of the process of exfiltrating the files from the DNC".

And I think a general willingness to parrot establishment rhetoric is part of
why they're as big as they are.

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tptacek
Well, if the "former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan" says so, who am I to tell
you to stop reading Infowars?

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monocasa
I mean, yeah, the former ambassador who lost his job for having too much
integrity to play the established game says "hey, the public record here isn't
right, and I know because I was one of the players. Here's the timeline that
lines up exactly with what happened and my previously published schedule", and
the reaction is either not mentioning him at all, or saying the equivalent of
"lol, idk, fuck that guy I guess", then yeah I'm going to give some respect to
what he says.

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tmcw
Is it unusual that on $313M ARR, the CEO’s yearly compensation, including
options, is… $44.9M? CEO pay is 15% of total revenue?

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tptacek
Fun additional detail:

 _As part of our sales and marketing activities, we sponsor a CrowdStrike-
branded professional racing car, which our President and Chief Executive
Officer drives in some races at no incremental cost to us and in lieu of us
hiring a professional driver. As we do not pay any amounts to our President
and Chief Executive Officer under these arrangements, it is not reflected in
the above table._

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chii
If I was an investor, I would say this is reckless.

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tptacek
Lots of companies sponsor race cars, and Crowdstrike seems to have gotten a
co-branding thing out of it (they're now the EDR product for some Formula One
teams or something). It's about as reckless or not reckless as any other
marketing expense.

Unless you mean the potential for George to meet his fiery doom in an F1 car,
in which case, yes, I agree.

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cwkoss
F1 Teams hacking each other to gain advantage would make a great movie, I
wonder if it has ever happened in real life.

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moandcompany
As a former Crowdstrike engineering employee, congratulations to everyone that
helped get the company get to where it is today. Super proud of you and our
work together.

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WestCoastJustin
Anyone know why this is so popular and getting upvoted?

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cwperkins
It's a filing for CrowdStrike to go public. They open their books for the
public to view.

HN is a very entrepreneurial board and we applaud any Silicon Valley company
going public.

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moandcompany
What might be more interesting is that CrowdStrike is not really a Silcon
Valley company, but has Silicon Valley investors, including Google Capital.

Crowdstrike is headquartered in Irvine, California (Orange County), and a
large number of its engineering teams are actually remote/distributed.

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rossdavidh
So, is someone who invested in a lot of may-never-be-profitable companies,
suddenly needing their money back, whether it's the right time for an IPO or
not?

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hsnewman
Anyone have experience using the product?

