Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily news and commentary show, hosted by Cloud Wars Founder, Bob Evans. The next three minutes are packed with insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the Cloud! Today’s Topic: Snowflake and the Direct-to-Consumer Revolution
Highlights
0:45 – Within the greatest growth market the world has ever known, one of the fastest growing big cloud companies is Snowflake. On the company’s recent Q3 earnings call, CEO Frank Slootman paid particular attention to one driver behind the company’s 110% revenue growth: the move towards direct-to-consumer among its customers, a trend that I’m calling a revolution.
01:20 – In the past, companies have been separated from their consumers by different channel levels or other factors. Now, that style of doing business is fading, as customers demand to have direct relationships with the companies they’re buying from.
01:53 – On the earnings call, Slootman said that a major trigger behind Snowflake’s Q3 revenue growth is “the inexorable march towards direct-to-consumer,” as Snowflake customers are going to need new data-driven and digital capabilities to meet the demands of the moment. This leads to increased investment in data operations and data science, which plays right into Snowflake’s hands.
02:50 – Either Slootman or Snowflake CFO Mike Scarpelli also mentioned that of Snowflake’s top 10 customers, four are from the Fortune 500 and four are less than 10 years old. This shows just how widespread both the direct-to-consumer revolution and the increased need for data operations are.