Article · 18 min read

Snowflake S-1 and IPO Teardown

Jon Ma · Public Comps Free Advanced

The primary-source teardown behind the famous 158 percent net dollar retention, including the detail most people miss: it was above 200 percent a year earlier, and half of revenue growth came from existing customers expanding usage.

• Snowflake went public with 158 percent net dollar retention, down from above 200 percent a year earlier.
• 3,117 customers as of July 2020 (up 101 percent), of which 56 paid over 1 million dollars a year, up from 22.
• Gross margin was only about 60 percent because of AWS, GCP and Azure costs, though up from 44 to 45 percent two years before.