EVENT DETAILS:
- Date & Time: Monday 2/11 @ 12:30PM ET
- Dial-In & Video Link: To be provided in a follow-up invite
- Add Call Details to Outlook Calendar: CLICK HERE
Have you heard about the latest enterprise software IPO (not UPWK)? The company was doing pretty well as a private company, started penetrating the enterprise, got together with some VCs to jack S&M spending in an effort to pig-pile the funnel ahead of an IPO, redid all enterprise contracts with higher pricing to provide revenue runway post IPO, went public, then used that cash flow to buy a smaller private company starting to do well…and rinse and repeat? Ask me if you want some examples…[]
Investors love those companies. LOVE. Predetermined monetization and cash flow capture. I can’t say I will always hate them, but these days I barf.
When you predetermine the ending, you preclude the possible.
I see this kind of capital organization as false security; attempting to pre-engineer the conclusion (valuation), with the penalty of closing the unit adoption market. While this game can work for a period, it can also end suddenly and badly with major revaluations southward when organic unit growth hits a penetration curve wall that no one was looking for.
I much prefer open unit adoption stories. In the case of UPWK I found one. The company is LOWERING the long tail of the take rate and driving functionality higher. The combination of lower cost and higher function in a potentially giant market can drive open ended growth for Upwork. The company’s net expansion rate with clients is not contractual, it is adoption.
UPWK is changing the way to scale a labor force into a flexible, distributed, more agile method. If we are right on this opportunity, and the demographic changes, and if UPWK executes, this is the kind of stock that could be a 10 bagger over a long enough duration.
Join us Monday @ 12:30pm to learn more.
Please call or e-mail with any questions.
Ami Joseph
Managing Director
Yosef Vaitsblit
Analyst