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Series E have never been a good indicator for success, especially with the stock market behavior of late, and I don't see how HashiCorp's enterprise offerings a

Series E have never been a good indicator for success, especially with the stock market behavior of late, and I don't see how HashiCorp's enterprise offerings are worth a 5.1B valuation. They've continuously struggled to find a good fit for their "enterprise only" features, and the amount of money they charge for these features is nothing short of extortion. Vault seems to be the only runway they have, and I see that area ripe for competition (or even AWS Vault like they did with MongoDB). Also, based on the company's glassdoor reviews, it seems the exec team are a bunch of jerks, which is an interesting contrast to Armon/Mitchell. Unlike some of the other comments, I see HashiCorp as a textbook example of poor execution for converting customers. They clearly have the things people want, but they have always struggled to give people a reason to pay for them. They've created a community that would easily raze the goodwill they've floated on if they started to heavily monetize their products, so they're in a lose/lose situation to me. I see them being acquired, but I can't think of any cloud provider that would pay for them. Maybe Oracle? :)

toomuchtodo 7y ago
I know of orgs who are writing 7 figure checks to Hashicorp without batting an eye. They are seeing rapid adoption in large enterprises who are willing to pay for it https://stackshare.io/terraform https://stackshare.io/terraform https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/category/case-study/ https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/category/case-study/ It seems like you don't think the value is there, and I supposed for some use cases that may be true, but I assure you they're getting paid for the value they're delivering (which is substantial). Disclaimer: I am not associated with Hashicorp, just a satisfied user of their products who freely teaches Terraform and Vault usage and pays my own way to go to Hashiconf.
- candiddevmike 7y ago
  My viewpoint is based on the products they're competing against: - Their OSS offerings - Other OSS offerings like Istio, Ansible, Conjour, and Kubernetes - Hybrid cloud solutions like Outpost and Anthos Additionally, I think HashiCorp not embracing kubernetes and trying to push Nomad was a huge miscalculation. None of their products have particularly noteworthy integrations with it, with the community picking up the slack (almost like internally they don't care).
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    As soon as you're working with more than a few people at a time, or in an environment that has compliance, governance, or auditing requirements, you're moving up to Terraform Enterprise (either SaaS or on-prem). I admit you can get pretty far on their OSS offerings, but most folks who need the enterprise features are going to pay for them (SAML/SSO, audit log emissions, private datacenter/on-prem installs, etc). Small shops, startups, and the like? Probably not, but they don't have that much cash anyway; the benefit of marketing to them is a) if they do get big, you're already in the door to sell to them or b) they don't get big, but they grow the ecosystem with engineers knowing and using the products. Those engineers might either end up working for Hashicorp, or landing a gig at a job where they can evangelize the tools and advocate paying for them. Very similar to GitHub's model, and I'd argue it works for everyone; people who can pay, do, people who can't or won't still get value they otherwise wouldn't. IMHO, configuration management compliments Packer and Terraform, it doesn't compete against it (based on my experience using Ansible and Packer for VMs of all sorts). Kubernetes is a beast in itself; the firms who implement Nomad are not the same as those who would go all in on k8s. Personally, I think Kubernetes is overly complex and prefer Nomad as a scheduler, YMMV (my jobs are more batch in nature, less services).
  - purpleidea 7y ago
    > Additionally, I think HashiCorp not embracing kubernetes and trying to push Nomad was a huge miscalculation. Nah, embracing kubernetes is the miscalculation that every other company is making. It's a dead end. This part they're doing right. (Not saying I'm fond of nomad, but kube is absurd.)
    - techntoke 7y ago
      Lol, that is why it took HashiCorp 6 months to write a broken Ansible playbook for Vault that takes an hour to deploy (they couldn't even do it with Terraform) when it takes less than 30 seconds to deploy on Kubernetes natively.
      - mbag 7y ago
        Can you please share a link to ansible playbook and Kubernetes manifest for comaprison?
- manigandham 7y ago
  How many checks does it take to payback $175M? The VC treadmill is concerning for many tech companies.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Fortune 500 companies represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP with $13.7 trillion in revenues, $1.1 trillion in profits, $22.6 trillion in market value, so there's money to be had in helping them accommodate cloud agnostic best practices through tooling. There are lots of companies that aren't tech companies, but who still need tech (insert the caveat "software eating the world", "all companies are tech companies", and so on).
    - adventured 7y ago
      They are a giant part of the US economy, however they don't represent 2/3 of US GDP, their sales are equivalent to that figure. These are global corporations that in many cases do business in nearly every country. Many of the largest S&P 500 companies have 2/3, 3/4 or more of their business overseas. They're typically under-represented in the US domestic economy, as the US is ~22% of global GDP, and these are typically among the largest corporations in their segments.
      - toomuchtodo 7y ago
        Point taken! I still put forth that Hashicorp’s valuation is sound based on the market size and their lack of competitors. I would invest my own funds into Hashicorp if I could at this valuation.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      So instead of being “locked in to the cloud”, you’re “locked in to Hashicorp”. Meet the new boss.... But the idea that you’re not de facto locked into your cloud provider once you are at any type of scale is a fantasy. To paraphrase Cory Quinn (?) “Infrastructure has weight”. Its a major undertaking fraught with regressions and unexpected costs to migrate from one provider to another and the benefits are usually not worth it.
scarface74 7y ago
What is the purpose of Vault if you’re already on AWS? Even though I prefer CloudFormation, Terraform is quite popular. As far as Consul and Nomad, they are both nice for on prem infrastructure - I’ve used both - but once you’re on either AWS or Azure, the native solutions are a lot less of a hassle and Nomsd (sadly) will never get the mindshare of k8s.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  .. if you're in more than one cloud, and want a singular solution.
  - smt88 7y ago
    This is pretty rare, and it's getting rarer. Clouds are successfully locking people in volume discounts, proprietary technology (like AWS Aurora), and non-transferrable configuration tasks. I agree that cloud-agnostic tooling should exist, but as a for-profit company trying to find a large customer base, it's not a big market.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      AWS Aurora is not “proprietary”. It’s basically a fork of Mysql/Postgres with a more performant storage layer.
      - smt88 7y ago
        Even if you're right about that, it doesn't refute my overall point that clouds are seeking to create lock-in and succeeding to some degree.
        scarface74 7y ago
        Once you’re at any scale, you’re already de facto locked in. “Infrastructure has weight”. It’s a major undertaking to migrate infrastructure once you e spent time creating data, setting up a hybrid network infrastructure, training, going through compliance, DNS entries, configuration, load balancers, validation and regression testing, etc. The typical large corporation depends on so much third party software and so many services, it’s a pain and costly to migrate from any of them. You can’t imagine how much coupling companies can do to something as simple as WorkDay. I wish all of the idealists who want to maintain “cloud independence” would do a thought experiment and set up a realistic project plan and budget to migrate their infrastructure to another platform even if they didn’t use any proprietary offerings. And then take that plan to their CTO and see where he wouid place it on the list of priorities for their company and do a realistic cost/benefit and risk analysis.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

I know of orgs who are writing 7 figure checks to Hashicorp without batting an eye. They are seeing rapid adoption in large enterprises who are willing to pay for it https://stackshare.io/terraform https://stackshare.io/terraform https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/category/case-study/ https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/category/case-study/ It seems like you don't think the value is there, and I supposed for some use cases that may be true, but I assure you they're getting paid for the value they're delivering (which is substantial). Disclaimer: I am not associated with Hashicorp, just a satisfied user of their products who freely teaches Terraform and Vault usage and pays my own way to go to Hashiconf.

candiddevmike 7y ago
My viewpoint is based on the products they're competing against: - Their OSS offerings - Other OSS offerings like Istio, Ansible, Conjour, and Kubernetes - Hybrid cloud solutions like Outpost and Anthos Additionally, I think HashiCorp not embracing kubernetes and trying to push Nomad was a huge miscalculation. None of their products have particularly noteworthy integrations with it, with the community picking up the slack (almost like internally they don't care).
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  As soon as you're working with more than a few people at a time, or in an environment that has compliance, governance, or auditing requirements, you're moving up to Terraform Enterprise (either SaaS or on-prem). I admit you can get pretty far on their OSS offerings, but most folks who need the enterprise features are going to pay for them (SAML/SSO, audit log emissions, private datacenter/on-prem installs, etc). Small shops, startups, and the like? Probably not, but they don't have that much cash anyway; the benefit of marketing to them is a) if they do get big, you're already in the door to sell to them or b) they don't get big, but they grow the ecosystem with engineers knowing and using the products. Those engineers might either end up working for Hashicorp, or landing a gig at a job where they can evangelize the tools and advocate paying for them. Very similar to GitHub's model, and I'd argue it works for everyone; people who can pay, do, people who can't or won't still get value they otherwise wouldn't. IMHO, configuration management compliments Packer and Terraform, it doesn't compete against it (based on my experience using Ansible and Packer for VMs of all sorts). Kubernetes is a beast in itself; the firms who implement Nomad are not the same as those who would go all in on k8s. Personally, I think Kubernetes is overly complex and prefer Nomad as a scheduler, YMMV (my jobs are more batch in nature, less services).
- purpleidea 7y ago
  > Additionally, I think HashiCorp not embracing kubernetes and trying to push Nomad was a huge miscalculation. Nah, embracing kubernetes is the miscalculation that every other company is making. It's a dead end. This part they're doing right. (Not saying I'm fond of nomad, but kube is absurd.)
  - techntoke 7y ago
    Lol, that is why it took HashiCorp 6 months to write a broken Ansible playbook for Vault that takes an hour to deploy (they couldn't even do it with Terraform) when it takes less than 30 seconds to deploy on Kubernetes natively.
    - mbag 7y ago
      Can you please share a link to ansible playbook and Kubernetes manifest for comaprison?
manigandham 7y ago
How many checks does it take to payback $175M? The VC treadmill is concerning for many tech companies.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Fortune 500 companies represent two-thirds of the U.S. GDP with $13.7 trillion in revenues, $1.1 trillion in profits, $22.6 trillion in market value, so there's money to be had in helping them accommodate cloud agnostic best practices through tooling. There are lots of companies that aren't tech companies, but who still need tech (insert the caveat "software eating the world", "all companies are tech companies", and so on).
  - adventured 7y ago
    They are a giant part of the US economy, however they don't represent 2/3 of US GDP, their sales are equivalent to that figure. These are global corporations that in many cases do business in nearly every country. Many of the largest S&P 500 companies have 2/3, 3/4 or more of their business overseas. They're typically under-represented in the US domestic economy, as the US is ~22% of global GDP, and these are typically among the largest corporations in their segments.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Point taken! I still put forth that Hashicorp’s valuation is sound based on the market size and their lack of competitors. I would invest my own funds into Hashicorp if I could at this valuation.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    So instead of being “locked in to the cloud”, you’re “locked in to Hashicorp”. Meet the new boss.... But the idea that you’re not de facto locked into your cloud provider once you are at any type of scale is a fantasy. To paraphrase Cory Quinn (?) “Infrastructure has weight”. Its a major undertaking fraught with regressions and unexpected costs to migrate from one provider to another and the benefits are usually not worth it.

scarface74 7y ago

What is the purpose of Vault if you’re already on AWS? Even though I prefer CloudFormation, Terraform is quite popular. As far as Consul and Nomad, they are both nice for on prem infrastructure - I’ve used both - but once you’re on either AWS or Azure, the native solutions are a lot less of a hassle and Nomsd (sadly) will never get the mindshare of k8s.

lallysingh 7y ago
.. if you're in more than one cloud, and want a singular solution.
- smt88 7y ago
  This is pretty rare, and it's getting rarer. Clouds are successfully locking people in volume discounts, proprietary technology (like AWS Aurora), and non-transferrable configuration tasks. I agree that cloud-agnostic tooling should exist, but as a for-profit company trying to find a large customer base, it's not a big market.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    AWS Aurora is not “proprietary”. It’s basically a fork of Mysql/Postgres with a more performant storage layer.
    - smt88 7y ago
      Even if you're right about that, it doesn't refute my overall point that clouds are seeking to create lock-in and succeeding to some degree.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Once you’re at any scale, you’re already de facto locked in. “Infrastructure has weight”. It’s a major undertaking to migrate infrastructure once you e spent time creating data, setting up a hybrid network infrastructure, training, going through compliance, DNS entries, configuration, load balancers, validation and regression testing, etc. The typical large corporation depends on so much third party software and so many services, it’s a pain and costly to migrate from any of them. You can’t imagine how much coupling companies can do to something as simple as WorkDay. I wish all of the idealists who want to maintain “cloud independence” would do a thought experiment and set up a realistic project plan and budget to migrate their infrastructure to another platform even if they didn’t use any proprietary offerings. And then take that plan to their CTO and see where he wouid place it on the list of priorities for their company and do a realistic cost/benefit and risk analysis.