Domo

Domo was a business intelligence (BI) and data visualization startup founded by Josh James, who had previously built Omniture (acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion). With his track record, James raised an extraordinary $690 million in private funding — one of the largest pre-IPO raises in SaaS history — at a peak private valuation of over $2 billion. Domo built a cloud-based BI platform that aimed to be the single pane of glass for business data, connecting hundreds of data sources and providing real-time dashboards accessible to executives and line-of-business users. The vision was ambitious: replace the fragmented BI landscape with one unified platform. But Domo's timing and execution struggled. The company went public in June 2018 at a market cap well below its private valuation, and the stock continued to decline. Revenue growth, while steady, was far too slow for a company that had raised $690M — growing from $108M at IPO to approximately $300M by 2024. The BI market was also rapidly evolving: Tableau (acquired by Salesforce for $15.7B) dominated the visualization space, Looker (acquired by Google for $2.6B) owned the modern BI analytics layer, and Microsoft Power BI was available essentially free for Office 365 subscribers. Domo occupied an awkward middle ground — too expensive for SMBs, not deep enough for enterprise data teams, and competing against effectively free alternatives from Microsoft. By 2024, Domo's stock had lost over 90% from its peak, the company had never achieved sustained profitability, and it explored strategic alternatives including a potential sale. For investors who put in $690 million, the outcome was devastating.