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\u2019s stock price followed the stellar execution under Slootman and CFO Mike Scarpelli\u2019s leadership. When they took the reins at Snowflake, expectations were already set that they\u2019d repeat the feat but this time, if anything, the company was overvalued out of the gate.\xa0
It can be argued that most people didn\u2019t really understand the market opportunity any better this time around. Other than that it was a bet on Slootman\u2019s track record of execution\u2026and data. Good bets; but folks really didn\u2019t appreciate that Snowflake wasn\u2019t just a better data warehouse. That it was building what the company calls a data cloud\u2026and we\u2019ve termed a data supercloud.\xa0
In this Breaking Analysis and ahead of Snowflake Summit, we\u2019ll 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\u2019s CFO has been telling anyone who will listen; 3) Share our view of what Snowflake is building \u2013 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\u2019s Palace in Las Vegas.