When Frank Slootman took ServiceNow public, many people undervalued the company, positioning it as just a better help desk tool. It turns out the firm actually had a massive TAM expansion opportunity in ITSM, HR, logistics, security, marketing and customer service management. NOW’s stock price followed the stellar execution under Slootman and CFO Mike Scarpelli’s leadership. When they took the reins at Snowflake, expectations were already set that they’d repeat the feat but this time, if anything, the company was overvalued out of the gate.
It can be argued that most people didn’t really understand the market opportunity any better this time around. Other than that it was a bet on Slootman’s track record of execution…and data. Good bets; but folks really didn’t appreciate that Snowflake wasn’t just a better data warehouse. That it was building what the company calls a data cloud…and we’ve termed a data supercloud.
In this Breaking Analysis and ahead of Snowflake Summit, we’ll do four things: 1) Review the recent narrative and concerns about Snowflake and its value; 2) Share survey data from ETR that will confirm almost precisely what the company’s CFO has been telling anyone who will listen; 3) Share our view of what Snowflake is building – i.e. trying to become the de facto standard data platform; and 4) Convey our expectations for the upcoming Snowflake Summit next week at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.