Tableau, the visual business intelligence provider, has seen shares "pop" by more than 50% since its initial public offering today.
The company has raised in the region of $250 million in the IPO. But according to CEO Christian Chabot, the IPO was less about raising capital than it was raising awareness.
"If you look at our financials, we've been a very capital efficient company," he told Information Age shortly after trading began. "So, believe it or not, going public is actually foremost about increasing the awareness and the credibility of the company."
"We make products that, unlike any others, are applicable to people of all skill levels," he said. "So increasing the awareness of the company is a great opportunity for us and an important part of the business model."
Chabot reiterated that the company plans to use the money raised to expand beyond its core markets in the US and UK, and to continue its investment in R&D.
Interest in analytics and business intelligence is at an all time high, and yet some conventional BI vendors – including MicroStrategy and Teradata – have recently reported shrinking revenues.
But, as was revealed in its pre-IPO documents, Tableau's sales doubled last year to $128 million.
"What we are seeing in the market place is a shift towards Tableau's way of doing things, which is more self-service, it's more agile, it's more respectful to employees," Chabot said today. "Most people in most companies feel that they don't have the technology to answer questions about data, and I think that's absurd."
"We'll look back at the analytics industry today like we currently look back at typing pools," he said. "All the people in a company who have questions are reliant on a priesthood of specialists in the back room to answer questions they had."
Chabot's claim that the IPO was not about the money echoes similar remarks from Workday, the software-as-a-service HR provider that floated last October.
"You're never going to believe me if I say it wasn't about the money," CTO Stan Swete told Information Age in February. "But truthfully, for Workday, the IPO was just a step in us progressing forward and validating the company as we continue to talk to larger and larger enterprises."
