As embattled software company Tableau Software gets its big multi-day conference under way in Austin, it will have to deal with a noisy and gate-crashing Utah unicorn looking to hijack the spotlight -- and bringing Flo Rida and Snoop Dogg with it.
Domo CEO Josh James smells blood in the water at Tableau. With revenue of more than $800 million per year and a market capitalization of about $3 billion, Tableau's still much bigger than Domo. Despite tens of thousands of customers and being called a new "gold standard" for business intelligence in recent years, Tableau's stock is down more than 50% for the year and recently named a new CEO. James' company has raised hundreds of millions at a valuation from private investors of $2 billion, but as a private company, doesn't face the same degree of scrutiny. James has said Domo has billings of $100 million and works with several dozen of the country's largest 500 companies.
The two companies haven't ostensibly competed in the past, with Tableau known for its compelling and easy-to-make visualizations, Domo more of a business dashboard to check various data sources for a business in real time. When Tableau signs up around 300 customers a quarter to $100,000-plus deals, it's not Domo it's competing with, but Microsoft's Power BI product, Qlik and older players like SAS and SAP. But according to James, customers that start working with Domo don't stay Tableau customers for long. "We weren't seeing their deals, but customers inevitably call us and say, oh we don't need to use Tableau anymore. So we thought, maybe we should go after those guys more aggressively," says James. "It felt to me that 90% of Tableau's business is fragile and vulnerable."
What Domo's doing this week during Tableau's conference can certainly be called that. Starting on Monday, the company will post dozens of staff outside Tableau's event space, referring attendees to Domo's own lounge and party space across the street, themed "Escape Tableau hell." On Monday night, Domo's hosting a free event with Flo Rida. On Tuesday it's sponsoring a pub crawl around Austin's famous Sixth Street corridor of bars. And on Wednesday, while Tableau hosts its "Data Night Out" with a group of bands including Misterwives and Walk The Moon, Domo plans to run out Snoop Dogg.
In response to Domo's appearance in Austin, Tableau CMO Elissa Fink had the following statement: “We find it flattering that companies want to crash our conference and we see this kind of thing happen from time to time. We have a customer base that is incredibly passionate about Tableau and hey, we think we throw a heck of a conference! We’re excited about the fun week of events ahead.”
A Domo staffer signalling conference attendees to "escape Tableau hell" in Austin. (Credit: Domo)
Domo says real business wins are behind the stunt. One of the country's biggest retailers recently replaced 800 Tableau seats with Domo, James says, one of several customers that asked not to be named that FORBES confirmed have made the switch. Domo compiled about 30 such testimonials on the subject, ranging from a medical devices to global telecom equipment, healthcare, tech, professional services, security, mortgage lending and security. Those customers mentioned being able to plug in more data sources using Domo that updated in real time without additional code, while providing a centralized hub for all the reports and visualizations created. Domo was also more flexible in which tool sets it allows users to bring into one report, customers wrote.
Tech veteran Matthew March used Tableau at his previous two companies before he became chief information officer at Colony American Finance, a real estate lender. "The reports looked so beautiful that people assumed they were accurate," March says. "But that wasn't the case." Business intelligence professionals would inevitably end up scrambling, pulling data themselves from a range of places and get things wrong, March says. About a year ago as he set policy at his new company, March chose to implement Domo over Tableau (at 25% of its cost, he says) and Power BI.
For any customers it can sway in upcoming days, Domo packaged up some of the tools those customers were using into a new analyzer tool kit that offers simultaneous previews of visualizations and tables. James says that while the tools are more a feature set than a new product, Domo will remain committed to them for the long term.
But James is also famous in the tech industry for his charisma veering on boastfulness, dating back to his days founding and selling Omniture for $1.8 billion in 2009. Analysts say Domo still has a long way to go to be considered a true competitive threat to a company like Tableau. Crashing your competitor's event is nothing new, says analyst Steve Koenig at Wedbush. But Koenig hasn't seen signs that Domo's a significant competitor to Tableau yet, at least in enterprise or mid-market companies. A recent survey by Robert W. Baird & Co. found just 1 of 17 channel partners mentioning Domo as becoming more competitive, compared to zero in the survey a quarter before, notes senior research analyst Steve Ashley.
"Domo has long been known as a rising competitor in the analytics/BI/visualization space, but one that appears to still be more hype than substance," writes Stifel managing director Tom Roderick in an email. James has bragged about being opaque about his true business intentions in the past, the analyst notes, and Domo seems to have had its own healthy share of sales turnover over in recent years. Adds Brent Thill from UBS: "Products win customers, not bands."
Despite the skepticism, Roderick at least says he plans to go see Domo's demo in Austin -- and maybe even check out the Flo Rida concert. And that's precisely what James wants. The CEO says he's fine with some attendees or watchers seeing the move as a stunt, though he says it's one that's "well calculated." Domo only needs to snag three or four large customers in Austin for the concerts and marketing to pay for itself.
"Will it be comfortable to everyone at Tableau when we do this? No," James said in an interview on Friday. "But that's what competition is all about. Part of the sport is, it's a zero sum game."
