Somewhat off topic but, when I simply typed the site bill.com on Firefox's private browsing, scrolled down a bit, they show me a popup to chat and they have my first and last name there.
The same thing happened when I went on my cell using Firefox Focus, which doesn't keep any cookies.
1. Anyone else seeing this?
2. I hate it
3. Where do they get this info from?
This is a Drift chat widget so they have your information stored somewhere, probably from some interaction you had with it on a different site. They also appear to do IP lookup as well.
Important that they're aiming to _raise_ $100MM, not going public at a $100MM valuation as I first thought. Funny how IPOing to raise capital has become secondary to IPOing to provide liquidity in this late stage of the tech credit cycle.
Tech IPOs seem to be splitting into two very different tiers.
Some don't need the cash and may even do a direct listing with no capital raise, like Spotify and Slack.
Others have such huge losses that the IPO cash is acutely needed. I'd put Lyft and Uber in that bucket. WeWork of course is the poster child — it nearly collapsed after the IPO was pulled and cash from public markets wasn't forthcoming after all.
If you have positive return on cash invested people will be happy to keep giving you more money for decades even if you plough all your profits back into expansion. Amazon has had the option of returning profits for decades and has always aimed to just barely make a profit.
> Amazon was founded in 1994, first traded publicly in 1997, and didn’t turn a profit until 2001.
Not every company is Amazon but Bill.com is showing 57% year on year growth this year after 71% last year, with over $35m in quarterly revenue for the last quarter. With those kinds of numbers they can invest less in customer acquisition and turn on the money tap any time they want.
> Bill.com reported about $35.2 million in total revenue for the third quarter of 2019, representing nearly 57 percent year-over-year growth compared to $22.4 million in total revenue for the third quarter of 2018. For context, Bill.com’s total revenue grew 71 percent between the third quarter of 2017 and the third quarter of 2018. The company’s growth is slowing down, which isn’t unusual as companies mature.
>With those kinds of numbers they can invest less in customer acquisition and turn on the money tap any time they want.
Where does this notion come from that these companies can "make money whenever they want", but haven't done so in a decade or more? People point to Amazon as an analogy all the time: it took Amazon about 5 years to make a profit, and this was the early internet. Bill.com is not Amazon.com.
That's a theory, a selling-point, and it comes from "Silicon Valley" itself. In reality, the growth tends to come from the customer acquisition spend, and growth will likely cease the minute customer acquisition spending stops. Growth is already slowing down, and this company has never made a dime. So what value do you put on it now?
Where does the idea assumption from that these companies are "putting profits back into the company"? That money has to show up in the financials statements as well, it's not magic.
I think the unclear part about this theory is the case where your customer acquisition cost is partly a customer retention cost. As long as you're sure that's not the case, go ahead.
Not profitable, has never been profitable, its losses are actually growing over time in absolute terms, it's IPO'ing anyway...and yet, it looks (even to me) prudent and reasonable in the current climate.
I used bill.com and ran quite a bit of money through there but I find the UX to be terrible. Second only to WorkDay.
I never asked but maybe the accounting team loves it. As an approver and receiver (separate companies) it never made sense to me. I used it only because I had to.
I have never had a good experience with their platform, or their customer support.
I've had an account bug with them for over a year, and every time I reach out to their customer support they just tell me I'm wrong and everything is okay with my account...
Meanwhile, the dashboard is essentially "bricked" for me and I have to send invoices to my customer via email (how I prefer, but not how my customer that pays all their bills through bill.com prefers).
Is the experience sticky? Stripe supports ACH transfers, so I would assume it would be straightforward to build on top of Stripe to replicate bill.com’s functionality.
Not sure if the joke was if they were valued at $100M or not. But they last raised at Unicorn valuation. If they’re selling 10% of the company or less for $100M, then they’ll still be a Unicorn.
