Domo We Didn't Need the Money

If you work at a startup eventually some of your colleagues will leave for another startup. Some of my old colleagues are now at startups like Fuze, Continnum and Domo, so I keep a lazy eye on any news from those companies. Yesterday a Series D raise was announced for Domo. It was in the amount of $131 Million. Wow.

Utah-based Domo has been a force in the enterprise space for a few years with its data management platforms, but the team is poised for growth with an additional $131 million in Series D funding from existing and new investors, including BlackRock, Credit Suisse and others. These $131 million are an addition to Domo’s previously announced $200 million Series D round. The company says it is now valued at $2 billion.

You read that right, the company is now valued at $2 Billion dollars. The best part? CEO Josh James says they “didn’t need the money.”

“We didn’t need the money,” Domo founder and CEO Josh James said of the funding round. He called it a “nice buffer,” but insists that the team didn’t require the cash and plans to go public within the year. via TechCrunch

I get that having extra money is a “nice buffer” but what about the terms? Unless the money was given to you with very little strings attached, money raises always come with terms.

So what gives? It might have to do with a messaging service that their offering on their recently released app store. It’s too early to tell but this could be a shot at Slack. The $131 million is about 38% of the total raise that Slack ($339 million) got so far. If Domo is going after them, then this “needless raise” is a good start.