DigitalOcean以债务融资1亿美元，中小企业云业务逼近3亿美元营收

做的是什么生意

DigitalOcean is a cloud infrastructure provider for smaller businesses and developers, attracting customers through self-serve signup — about four million people visit the site each month and tens of thousands become customers — rather than through sales teams.

启动资金：Announced 2020-02-20: $100M in new debt from a group of investors, taking the 2016-era debt facility to roughly $300M; with an $83M Series B in 2015, total capital raised was about $400M, only a little over a quarter of it equity.

起因

DigitalOcean had about eight years of customer cohorts by 2020 and built its business around smaller businesses and younger companies, whose needs the big clouds served poorly. CEO Yancey Spruill, hired in 2019 alongside an IPO-experienced CFO, told TechCrunch every annual cohort had grown and that churn became minimal once customers stayed a year or more.

经过

After the $83M Series B in 2015, DigitalOcean put roughly $200M of debt on its books in 2016 and then ran on cash flow: run rate reached ~$200M in 2018 and ~$250M by end-2019, with all revenue recurring, mid-20s percentage growth and low-20s EBITDA. On 2020-02-20 it announced $100M more debt, pushing the facility to ~$300M, and said it expected a $300M annualized run rate in H1 2020, free-cash-flow profitability within two years and $1B in revenue in five, with an IPO 'on the table' but not imminent.

可借鉴之处

当获客成本低、收入具经常性且留存复利增长时，债务可成为增长燃料；自助式分发让DigitalOcean三者兼具，颠覆了股权稀释的算盘。