Mongo's current cashflow is negative, and the trend is increasingly negative. I had a look at their prospectus, which describes the bulk of their revenue as su

Mongo's current cashflow is negative, and the trend is increasingly negative. I had a look at their prospectus, which describes the bulk of their revenue as subscriptions. Subscriptions sound like good unit economics. It's instructive to compare their pitch to investors to the pitch they make their customers: http://s3.amazonaws.com/info-mongodb-com/TCO_MongoDB_vs._Oracle.pdf http://s3.amazonaws.com/info-mongodb-com/TCO_MongoDB_vs._Ora... When Mongo talk to their customers, they describe the license cost as $0 --- they fold that into support. That sounds more like a service. In other words: customer fires $100k of staff, pays Mongo $80k in "subscription", Mongo hires $120k of staff, which they tally up as "customer success". There's no expense category for support in their prospectus, so clearly the support personnel are filed under "sales and marketing". It's the same old story. They're just selling $1 bills for $0.80 a piece.