ITEM 1. BUSINESS

Overview

Cloudera empowers organizations to become data‑driven enterprises. We have developed the modern platform for machine learning and analytics, optimized for the cloud. We collaborate extensively with the global open source community, continuously innovate in data management technologies and leverage the latest advances in infrastructure including the public cloud for “big data” applications. Our pioneering hybrid open source software (HOSS) model incorporates the best of open source with our robust proprietary software to form an enterprise‑grade platform. This platform delivers an integrated suite of capabilities for data management, machine learning and advanced analytics, affording customers an agile, scalable and cost effective solution for transforming their businesses. Our platform enables organizations to use vast amounts of data from a variety of sources, including the Internet of Things (IoT), to better serve and market to their customers, design connected products and services and reduce risk through greater insight from data.

Our scale‑out distributed architecture delivers high performance on inexpensive industry‑standard hardware and cloud infrastructure. We allow enterprises to operate, manage and move workloads across multiple architectures, mixing on‑premises and cloud environments, including all major public cloud infrastructure providers – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform – as well as managed service providers (MSPs). We also enable enterprises’ “multi‑cloud” strategies, allowing them to move workloads from the data center to the public cloud, among public cloud vendors, and back again, thus avoiding cloud lock‑in. This flexibility allows customers to continually determine and implement the most cost‑efficient strategies.

We offer our software platform primarily on a subscription basis and focus our selling efforts on the largest corporate enterprises and public sector organizations globally. We target these organizations because they capture and manage the majority of the world’s data and operate highly complex IT environments. These organizations are likely to realize the greatest value from our enterprise‑grade platform. We have achieved significant growth and global scale in a relatively short period of time. Our customers continue to expand their usage of our platform. The net expansion rate for our subscription revenue was 136% as of January 31, 2018. A growing, vibrant ecosystem of systems integrators, software developers, resellers, OEMs, data systems vendors and public cloud providers has developed around our platform. As part of this ecosystem, we have developed a strategic partnership with Intel Corporation, or Intel, to optimize our software for use with Intel processors and architecture.

Our Offerings

We have pioneered the HOSS model, open source software that is combined with proprietary software, for specific applications and to meet enterprise‑grade requirements. By integrating robust proprietary software with our open source platform built on the leading data management, machine learning and advanced analytics technologies such as Hadoop and Spark, we deliver a unique, high‑performance and cost‑effective platform to our customers for managing, analyzing and securing their data.

Platform Editions

Cloudera Enterprise is our machine learning and analytics platform with enterprise-scale data processing and multi-function analytics optimized for the cloud. We primarily offer subscriptions for the following five editions of our software platform to address the most common and critical data challenges enterprises face, including:

Other Technologies and Solutions

We continue to innovate and develop new technologies and solutions to extend our market leadership and enhance our platform for machine learning and analytics optimized for the cloud. Other notable additions to our offerings include:

Our Platform Technology

Differentiated Open Source

Our platform offerings are based on open source components developed in partnership with the broader open source community. Our engineers are actively involved in the development of the open source elements included in our platform and carefully curate which open source projects are integrated into the platform, ensuring interoperability and optimizing performance. The precise composition of the platform in its integrated form is unique to Cloudera and highly differentiated.

Differentiated Proprietary Software

In addition to the open source elements included in our platform, we develop proprietary, robust systems management, data governance, and cloud automation components to scale, secure and optimize our platform for the enterprise.

infrastructure providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, providing cloud automation and orchestration through an intuitive user interface.

Our Differentiation

Cloudera empowers organizations to become data‑driven enterprises. We empower organizations to maximize the value of their most valuable asset - their data - to grow, connect and protect their business with our modern platform for machine learning and analytics optimized for the cloud. The key benefits and differentiators of our solution include:

environments. We offer configurable monitoring, reporting and intuitive, robust troubleshooting to provide management of large, growing data sets and concurrent use cases.

Our Strategy

Key elements of our strategy include:

Customers

We focus on the largest corporate enterprises and public sector organizations globally. These organizations are likely to realize the greatest value from utilizing our enterprise‑grade platform. As of January 31, 2018 , we had more than 1,200 customers.

No individual customer represented more than 10% of revenue in fiscal 2018, 2017 or 2016.

Customer Support, Services and Education

We have built a company culture that focuses on consistently delivering value for our customers and ensuring their success and satisfaction. We deliver exceptional support, professional services and training to ensure our customers get the most out of our technology. We offer technical assistance through our large and experienced global support organization. Built on powerful predictive analytics using our own technology, we proactively monitor our customers’ platforms to prevent issues before they arise, avoid common cluster misconfigurations, and suggest optimization based on similar cases at other customers. Our predictive analytics allow us to proactively initiate a substantial fraction of our support engagements for customers, before they realize that they have a problem themselves.

In addition, our teams of experienced solution architects, business value consultants and training professionals are designed to enhance the customer experience with personalized assistance, from implementation and best practices to education and online training. We believe that we can further advance the community’s goals through education. In addition to offering online training, we have trained over 45,000 individuals in person through January 31, 2018 . Through the Cloudera Academic Program, we provide access to curriculum, software and training to colleges and universities to accelerate the adoption of the platform.

Sales and Marketing

We primarily sell through our direct sales force, which is comprised of field and inside sales personnel and was organized by enterprise size and geography in fiscal 2018. Based on our experience and analysis of customer buying behavior, beginning in fiscal 2019, we have refined our sales methodology to include field personnel dedicated primarily to acquiring new customers and field personnel dedicated primarily to expanding our relationships with existing customers.

Our sales force is supported by sales engineers with deep technical expertise and responsibility for pre‑sales technical support, solutions engineering for our end‑customers, and technical training for our channel and strategic partners.

We generate customer leads, accelerate sales opportunities, and build brand awareness through our marketing programs and through our strategic partner relationships. Our marketing programs target both the C‑suite and the line of business owners, technology professionals and risk professionals, as well as software developers and data scientists. Our principal marketing programs include:

Partners and Strategic Alliances

We believe that strong engagement with our partner ecosystem affords us increased reach and greater distribution of our software, enhancing our field organization’s efforts. We have developed a large partner network in order to facilitate the establishment of industry standards, ensure an open ecosystem for our customers, accelerate the adoption of our platform and extend our sales capabilities and coverage. Over 3,000 vendors – a variety of systems integrators, resellers, software and OEM partners, data systems vendors, and cloud and platform vendors – have registered under our Cloudera Connect partner program to gain access to marketing, sales, training and support resources.

Our partners and strategic alliances include:

Intel Strategic Partnership

In 2014, in connection with an equity investment in the company, we entered into a strategic collaboration and optimization agreement with Intel. This agreement was renewed and expanded in February 2018. Consistent with Intel’s data center, IoT, machine learning and artificial intelligence technology initiatives, the primary objective of the partnership is to ensure that our solutions deliver optimal performance and security with Intel processors and platform technology today and in the future.

Research and Development 

Our research and development organization is responsible for the design and development of our solutions. We focus on developing new services and technologies and further enhancing the functionality, reliability and performance of our existing solutions. Total research and development expense for fiscal 2018, 2017 and 2016 was  $215.7 million , $102.3 million  and  $99.3 million , respectively.

Competition

We operate in an intensely competitive data management, analytics and machine learning market that is characterized by the constant development of new products and continued innovation, particularly in the open source community and among the major public cloud infrastructure providers. Our main sources of current and potential competition fall into four categories:

As the market for data management, analytics and machine learning platforms continues to grow and offerings based on the open source data management ecosystem continue to gain traction, we expect more highly specialized vendors will enter the market or larger competitors will bundle solutions with their products more effectively.

The principal competitive factors in our market include:

We believe that we compete favorably on the basis of these factors. Our ability to remain competitive will largely depend on our ongoing performance in the areas of cloud and integration of open source and advanced technologies.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is an important aspect of our business, and we seek protection for our intellectual property as appropriate. To establish and protect our proprietary rights, we rely upon a combination of patent, copyright, trade secret and trademark laws and contractual restrictions such as confidentiality agreements, licenses and intellectual property assignment agreements. We maintain a policy requiring our employees, contractors, consultants and other third parties to enter into confidentiality and proprietary rights agreements to control access to our proprietary information. These laws, procedures and restrictions provide only limited protection, and any of our intellectual property rights may be challenged, invalidated, circumvented, infringed or misappropriated. Furthermore, the laws of certain countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States, and we therefore may be unable to protect our proprietary technology in certain jurisdictions. Moreover, our platform incorporates software components licensed to the general public under open source software licenses such as the Apache 2.0 Software License. We obtain many components from software developed and released by contributors to independent open source components of our platform. Open source licenses grant licensees broad permissions to use, copy, modify and redistribute our platform. As a result, open source development and licensing practices can limit the value of our software copyright assets.

As of January 31, 2018, we had been granted 27 U.S. patents and had 15 U.S. patent applications pending. Our patents expire between 2030 and 2035. We also had nine issued patents and four patent applications pending in foreign jurisdictions. We continually review our development efforts to assess the existence and patentability of new intellectual property. We pursue the registration of our domain names, trademarks and service marks in the United States and in certain locations outside the United States. To protect our brand, we file trademark registrations in some jurisdictions

Employees

As of January 31, 2018 , we had 1,648 full‑time employees. Of these employees, 1,134 are in the United States and 514 are in our international locations. None of our employees is represented by a labor union or covered by collective bargaining agreements. We have not experienced any work stoppages. We consider our relationship with our employees to be good.

Cloudera Foundation

In January 2017, we established the Cloudera Foundation as an independent non‑profit organization and issued 1,175,063 shares of our common stock to it. In conjunction with the initial public offering, we contributed 1% of the net proceeds of our initial public offering, or $2.4 million, to fund the Cloudera Foundation. The Cloudera Foundation was created to use the power of data to improve the lives of people around the world by providing our products, skills and people. We believe that the Cloudera Foundation fosters employee morale, strengthens our community presence and provides increased brand visibility.

Information about Geographic Revenue

Information about geographic revenue is described in Note 11, “Segment Information” in the notes to our consolidated financial statements.

Corporate Information

We were incorporated in the state of Delaware in June 2008. Our principal executive offices are located at 395 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, California 94306 and our telephone number is (650) 362‑0488. Our website address is www.cloudera.com. The information on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not part of this Annual Report.

Unless the context indicates otherwise, the terms “Cloudera,” “the Company,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to Cloudera, Inc., a Delaware corporation, together with its consolidated subsidiaries, unless otherwise noted.

Cloudera, the Cloudera logo, and other registered or common law trade names, trademarks, or service marks of Cloudera appearing in this Annual Report are the property of Cloudera. This Annual Report contains additional trade names, trademarks, and service marks of other companies that are the property of their respective owners. We do not intend our use or display of other companies’ trade names, trademarks or service marks to imply a relationship with, or endorsement or sponsorship of us, by these other companies. Solely for convenience, our trademarks and tradenames referred to in this Annual Report appear without the ® and ™ symbols, but those references are not intended to indicate, in any way, that we will not assert, to the fullest extent under applicable law, our rights, or the right of the applicable licensor, to these trademarks and tradenames.

Available Information

We file annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a), 14 and 15(d) of the Exchange Act. The public may obtain these filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, Public Reference Room at 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549 or by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. The SEC also maintains a website at http://www.sec.gov that contains reports, and other information regarding us and other companies that file materials with the SEC electronically. Copies of our reports on Forms 10-K, Forms 10-Q, and Forms 8-K, may be obtained, free of charge, electronically through our corporate website at www.cloudera.com as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material electronically with, or furnish to, the SEC.

ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS

Investing in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks described below, as well as the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, including our consolidated financial statements and the related notes and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” before deciding whether to invest in our common stock. The occurrence of any of the events or developments described below could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects. In such an event, the market price of our common stock could decline, and you may lose all or part of your investment. Additional risks and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe are not material may also impair our business, financial condition, results of operations and growth prospects .

Risks Related to our Business

We have a history of losses, and we may not become profitable in the future.

We have incurred net losses since our founding in 2008, including net losses of $385.8 million , $187.3 million and $203.1 million and for the years ended January 31, 2018 , 2017 , and 2016 respectively, and expect to continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future. As a result, we had an accumulated deficit of $1,061.8 million at January 31, 2018 . These losses and accumulated deficit reflect the substantial investments we made to acquire new customers, commercialize our platform, participate in the open source development community and develop our proprietary software components under our hybrid open source software (HOSS) model, and continue to develop

our platform. Furthermore, to the extent we are successful in increasing our customer base, we may also incur increased losses because customer acquisition costs and upfront costs associated with new customers are higher in the first year than the aggregate revenue we recognize from those new customers in the first year.

We expect to continue to make significant future expenditures related to the development and expansion of our business, including:

As a result of these increased expenses, we will have to generate and sustain increased revenue to be profitable in future periods. Further, in future periods, our revenue growth rate could decline, and we may not be able to generate sufficient revenue to offset higher costs and achieve or sustain profitability. If we fail to achieve, sustain or increase profitability, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.

We have a short operating history, which makes it difficult to predict our future results of operations.

We have a short operating history, which limits our ability to forecast our future results of operations and subjects us to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to plan for and anticipate future growth. Our historical revenue growth should not be considered indicative of our future performance. Further, in future periods, our revenue growth could slow or our revenue could decline for a number of reasons, including slowing demand for our solutions, increasing competition, a decrease in the growth of our overall market, or our failure, for any reason, to continue to capitalize on growth opportunities. We have also encountered and will encounter risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, such as determining appropriate investments of our limited resources, market reception of our platform and HOSS model, competition from other companies, attracting and retaining customers, hiring, integrating, training and retaining skilled personnel, developing new solutions and unforeseen expenses. If our assumptions regarding these risks and uncertainties, which we use to plan our business, are incorrect or change, or if we do not address these risks successfully, our operating and financial results could be adversely affected.

If the market for our data management, machine learning and analytics platform develops more slowly than we expect, our growth may slow or stall, and our operating results could be harmed.

The market for a data management, machine learning and analytics platform is relatively new, rapidly evolving and unproven. Our future success will depend in large part on our ability to penetrate the existing market for data management, machine learning and analytics platforms, as well as the continued growth and expansion of that market. It is difficult to predict customer adoption and renewals of our subscriptions, customer demand for our platform, the size, growth rate and expansion of this market, the entry of competitive products or the success of existing competitive products. For example, our revenue net expansion rate is 136% , as compared to 142% in the same period a year ago. Our ability to penetrate the existing market for data management, machine learning and analytics platforms and any expansion of that market depends on a number of factors, including the cost, performance and perceived value associated with our platform, as well as potential customers’ willingness to adopt an alternative approach to data collection, storage and processing. If we or other data management providers experience security incidents, loss of customer data, disruptions in delivery or other problems, the market for data management, machine learning and analytics platforms as a whole, including our solutions, may be negatively affected. Furthermore, many potential customers have made significant investments in legacy data collection, storage and processing software and may be unwilling to invest in new solutions. If data management, machine

learning and analytics platforms do not achieve widespread adoption, or there is a reduction in demand caused by a lack of customer acceptance, technological challenges, weakening economic conditions, security or privacy concerns, competing technologies and products, decreases in corporate spending or otherwise, it could result in decreased revenue and our business could be adversely affected.

We face intense competition and could lose market share to our competitors, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

The market for data management, machine learning and analytics platforms is intensely competitive and characterized by rapid changes in technology, customer requirements, industry standards and frequent new product introductions and improvements. We anticipate continued challenges from current competitors, which in many cases are more established and enjoy greater resources than us, as well as by new entrants into the industry. If we are unable to anticipate or effectively react to these competitive challenges, our competitive position could weaken, and we could experience a decline in our growth rate or revenue that could adversely affect our business and results of operations.

Our main sources of current and potential competition fall into four categories:

Many of our existing competitors have, and some of our potential competitors could have, substantial competitive advantages such as:

In addition, some of our larger competitors have substantially broader and more diverse product and service offerings and may be able to leverage their relationships with distribution partners and customers based on other products or incorporate functionality into existing products to gain business in a manner that discourages users from purchasing our platform, including by selling at zero or negative margins, product bundling or offering closed technology platforms such as IBM Watson. Potential customers may also prefer to purchase from their existing

suppliers rather than a new supplier regardless of platform performance or features. As a result, even if the features of our platform are superior, customers may not purchase our solutions. These larger competitors often have broader product lines and market focus or greater resources and may therefore not be as susceptible to economic downturns or other significant reductions in capital spending by customers. If we are unable to sufficiently differentiate our solutions from the integrated or bundled products of our competitors, such as by offering enhanced functionality, performance or value, we may see a decrease in demand for those solutions, which could adversely affect our business, operating results and financial condition.

In addition, new innovative start‑up companies, and larger companies that are making significant investments in research and development, may introduce products that have greater performance or functionality, are easier to implement or use, or incorporate technological advances that we have not yet developed or implemented or may invent similar or superior products and technologies that compete with our platform. Our current and potential competitors may also establish cooperative relationships among themselves or with third parties that may further enhance their resources.

Some of our competitors have made or could make acquisitions of businesses or enter into partnerships that allow them to offer more competitive and comprehensive solutions. As a result of such arrangements, our current or potential competitors may be able to accelerate the adoption of new technologies that better address customer needs, devote greater resources to bring these products and services to market, initiate or withstand substantial price competition, or develop and expand their product and service offerings more quickly than we do. These competitive pressures in our market or our failure to compete effectively may result in fewer orders, reduced revenue and gross margins and loss of market share. In addition, it is possible that industry consolidation may impact customers’ perceptions of the viability of smaller or even mid‑size software firms and consequently customers’ willingness to purchase from such firms.

We may not compete successfully against our current or potential competitors. If we are unable to compete successfully, or if competing successfully requires us to take costly actions in response to the actions of our competitors, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected. In addition, companies competing with us may have an entirely different pricing or distribution model. Increased competition could result in fewer customer orders, price reductions, reduced operating margins and loss of market share. Further, we may be required to make substantial additional investments in research, development, marketing and sales in order to respond to such competitive threats, and we cannot assure you that we will be able to compete successfully in the future.

Because of the characteristics of open source software, there may be fewer technology barriers to entry in the hybrid open source market by new competitors and it may be relatively easy for new and existing competitors with greater resources than we have to compete with us.

One of the characteristics of open source software is that the governing license terms generally allow liberal modifications of the code and distribution thereof to a wide group of companies and/or individuals. As a result, others could easily develop new software products based upon those open source programs that compete with existing open source software that we support and incorporate into our platform. Such competition with use of the open source projects that we utilize can materialize without the same degree of overhead and lead time required by us, particularly if the customers do not value the differentiation of our proprietary components. It is possible for new and existing competitors with greater resources than ours to develop their own open source software or hybrid proprietary and open source software offerings, potentially reducing the demand for, and putting price pressure on, our platform. In addition, some competitors make open source software available for free download and use or may position competing open source software as a loss leader. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to compete successfully against current and future competitors or that competitive pressure and/or the availability of open source software will not result in price reductions, reduced operating margins and loss of market share, any one of which could seriously harm our business.

If our customers do not renew or expand their subscriptions, or if they renew on less favorable terms, our future revenue and operating results will be harmed.

Our future success depends, in part, on our ability to sell renewals of subscriptions and expand the deployment of our platform with existing customers. While we generally offer subscriptions of up to three years in length, our customers typically purchase one-year subscriptions which generally do not provide for automatic renewal or a right to terminate the subscription early. Our customers may not renew or expand the use of their subscriptions after the expiration of their current subscription agreements. In addition, our customers may opt for a lower‑priced edition of our platform or decrease their usage of our platform. Our existing customers generally have no contractual obligation to expand or renew their subscriptions after the expiration of the committed subscription period and given our limited operating history, we may not be able to accurately predict customer renewal rates. Our customers’ renewal and/or expansion pricing rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of factors, including, but not limited to, their satisfaction with our platform and our customer support, the frequency and severity of software and implementation errors, our platform’s reliability, the pricing of our subscriptions and services, or competing solutions or services, the effects of global economic conditions and their ability to continue their operations and spending levels. If our customers renew their subscriptions, they may renew for shorter contract lengths, less usage or on other terms that are less economically beneficial to us. We have limited historical data with respect to rates of customer subscription renewals, so we may not accurately predict future renewal trends. We cannot assure you that our customers will renew or expand their subscriptions, and if our customers do not renew their agreements or renew on less favorable terms or for less usage, our revenue may grow more slowly than expected or decline and our business could suffer.

Achieving renewal or expansion of subscriptions may require us to increasingly engage in sophisticated and costly sales efforts that may not result in additional sales. In addition, the rate at which our customers expand the deployment of our platform depends on a number of factors, including general economic conditions, the functioning of our solutions, the ability of our field organization, together with our partner ecosystem, to assist our customers in identifying new use cases, modernizing their data architectures, and achieving success with data‑driven initiatives and our customers’ satisfaction with our customer support. If our efforts to expand penetration within our customers are not successful, our business may suffer.

Our sales cycles can be long, unpredictable and vary seasonally, particularly with respect to large subscriptions, and our sales efforts require considerable time and expense.

Our results of operations may fluctuate, in part, because of the resource‑intensive nature of our sales efforts, the length and variability of the sales cycle for our platform and the difficulty in making short‑term adjustments to our operating expenses. The timing of our sales is difficult to predict. The length of our sales cycle, from initial evaluation to payment for our subscriptions is generally four to nine months, but can vary substantially from customer to customer. Our sales cycle can extend to more than 18 months for some customers. Our sales efforts involve educating our customers about the use, technical capabilities and benefits of our platform, solutions and HOSS model. Customers often undertake a prolonged evaluation process, which frequently involves not only our platform but also those of other companies. Some of our customers initially deploy our platform on a limited basis, with no guarantee that these customers will deploy our platform widely enough across their organization to justify our substantial pre‑sales investment. As a result, it is difficult to predict exactly when, or even if, we will make a sale to a potential customer or if we can increase sales to our existing customers. Large individual sales have, in some cases, occurred in quarters subsequent to those we anticipated, or have not occurred at all. If our sales cycle lengthens or our substantial upfront investments do not result in sufficient revenue to justify our investments, our operating results could be adversely affected.

We have seasonal and end-of-quarter concentration of our sales, which impacts our ability to plan and manage cash flows and margins. Our sales vary by season with the fourth quarter typically being our largest. In addition, within each quarter, most sales occur in the last month of that quarter. Therefore, it is difficult to determine whether we are achieving our quarterly expectations until near the end of the quarter, with seasonality magnifying the difficulty for determining whether we will achieve annual expectations. Most of our expenses are relatively fixed or require time to adjust. Therefore, if expectations for our business are not accurate, we may not be able to adjust our cost structure on a timely basis and margins and cash flows may differ from expectations.

We do not have an adequate history with our subscription or pricing models to accurately predict the long-term rate of customer adoption or renewal, or the impact these will have on our revenue or operating results.

We have limited experience with respect to determining the optimal prices and pricing models for our solutions. As the markets for our solutions mature, or as new competitors introduce new products or services that compete with ours, we may be unable to attract new customers at the same price or based on the same pricing model as we have used historically. Moreover, large customers, which are the focus of our sales efforts, may demand greater price concessions. Additionally, the renewal rate of our large customers may have more significant impact period to period on our revenue and operating results. As a result, in the future we may be required to reduce our prices, which could adversely affect our revenue, gross margin, profitability, financial position and cash flow. In addition, as an increasing amount of our business may move to our cloud‑based solutions for transient workloads and the use of our consumption‑based pricing model may represent a greater share of our revenue, our revenue may be less predictable or more variable than our historical revenue from a time period‑based subscription pricing model. Moreover, a consumption‑based subscription pricing model may ultimately result in lower total cost to our customers over time, or may cause our customers to limit usage in order to stay within the limits of their existing subscriptions, reducing overall revenue or making it more difficult for us to compete in our markets.

Our results may fluctuate significantly from period to period, which could adversely impact the value of our common stock.

Our results of operations, including our revenue, net revenue expansion rate, gross margin, profitability and cash flows, may vary significantly in the future, and period‑to‑period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. Accordingly, our results for any particular period should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. Our financial results may fluctuate from period to period as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. Fluctuation in periodic results may adversely impact the value of our common stock. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our periodic financial results include, without limitation, those listed elsewhere in this “Risk Factors” section and those listed below:

Any one of the factors above or the cumulative effect of some of the factors above may result in significant fluctuations in our operating results. This variability and unpredictability could result in our failure to meet our revenue or other operating result expectations or those of investors for a particular period. The failure to meet or exceed such expectations could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition that could ultimately adversely affect our stock price.

Because we derive substantially all of our revenue from a single software platform, failure of this platform to satisfy customer demands or to achieve increased market acceptance could adversely affect our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects.

We derive and expect to continue to derive substantially all of our revenue from our data management, machine learning and analytics platform. As such, the market acceptance of our platform is critical to our continued success. Demand for our platform is affected by a number of factors beyond our control, including continued market acceptance, the timing of development and release of new products by our competitors, technological change, any developments or disagreements with the open source community and growth or contraction in our market. We expect the growth and proliferation of data to lead to an increase in the data analyses demands of our customers, and our platform may not be able to scale and perform to meet those demands or may not be chosen by users for those needs. If we are unable to continue to meet customer demands or to achieve more widespread market acceptance of our platform and solutions, our business operations, financial results and growth prospects will be materially and adversely affected.

We have been, and may in the future be, subject to intellectual property rights claims by third parties, which are extremely costly to defend, could require us to pay significant damages and could limit our ability to use certain technologies.

Companies in the software and technology industries, including some of our current and potential competitors, own large numbers of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets and frequently enter into litigation based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. In addition, many of these companies have the capability to dedicate substantially greater resources to enforce their intellectual property rights and to defend claims that may be brought against them. The litigation may involve patent holding companies or other adverse patent owners that have no relevant product revenue and against which our patents may therefore provide little or no deterrence. From time‑to‑time, third parties, including certain other companies, have asserted and may assert patent, copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights against us, our partners or our customers. We or our customers have received, and may in the future receive, notices that claim we have misappropriated, misused or infringed other parties’ intellectual property rights, and, to the extent we gain greater market visibility, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims, which is not uncommon with respect to the enterprise software market.

There may be third‑party intellectual property rights, including issued or pending patents, that cover significant aspects of our technologies, the technologies in our platform or business methods. We may be exposed to increased risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims as a result of acquisitions and our incorporation of open source software into our platform, as, among other things, we have a lower level of visibility into the development process with respect to such technology or the care taken to safeguard against infringement risks. Any intellectual property claims, with or without merit, could be very time‑consuming, could be expensive to settle or litigate and could divert our management’s attention and other resources. These claims could also subject us to

significant liability for damages, potentially including treble damages if we are found to have willfully infringed patents or copyrights. These claims could also result in our having to stop using, distributing or supporting technology found to be in violation of a third party’s rights. We might be required to seek a license for the intellectual property, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all. Even if a license were available, we could be required to pay significant royalties, which would increase our operating expenses. As a result, we may be required to develop alternative non‑infringing technology, which could require significant effort and expense. If we cannot license or develop technology for any infringing aspect of our business, we could be forced to limit or stop sales of our offerings and may be unable to compete effectively. Any of these results could adversely affect our business operations and financial results.

Third parties may also assert such claims against our customers or partners whom we typically indemnify against claims that our solutions infringe, misappropriate or otherwise violate the intellectual property rights of third parties, including in the third‑party open source components included in our platform, as well as our own open source and proprietary components. As the numbers of products and competitors in our market increase and overlaps occur, claims of infringement, misappropriation and other violations of intellectual property rights may increase. Also, to the extent we hire personnel from competitors, we may be subject to allegations that they have been improperly solicited or have divulged proprietary or other confidential information.

Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.

Our success depends, in part, on our ability to protect proprietary methods and technologies that we develop under patent and other intellectual property laws of the United States and other jurisdictions outside of the United States so that we can prevent others from using our inventions and proprietary information. If we fail to protect our intellectual property rights adequately, our competitors may gain access to our technology, and our business may be harmed. In addition, defending our intellectual property rights may entail significant expense. Any of our patents, trademarks or other intellectual property rights may be challenged by others or invalidated through administrative process or litigation. While we have patents and patent applications pending, we may be unable to obtain patent protection for the technology covered in our patent applications or the patent protection may not be obtained quickly enough to meet our business needs. In addition, our existing patents and any patents issued in the future may not provide us with competitive advantages, or may be successfully challenged by third parties.

Moreover, despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy aspects of our platform or offerings or obtain and use information that we regard as proprietary. We generally enter into confidentiality or license agreements with our employees, consultants, vendors and customers, and generally limit access to and distribution of our proprietary information. However, we cannot be certain that we have entered into such agreements with all parties who may have or have had access to our confidential information or that the agreements we have entered into will not be breached. We cannot guarantee that any of the measures we have taken will prevent misappropriation of our technology. Because we may be an attractive target for cybersecurity attacks, we may have a greater risk of unauthorized access to, and misappropriation of, our proprietary information.

Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain, and we also may face proposals to change the scope of protection for some intellectual property right. Effective patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret protection may not be available to us in every country in which our products or services are available. The laws of some countries may not be as protective of intellectual property rights as those in the United States, and mechanisms for enforcement of intellectual property rights may be inadequate. Also, our involvement in standard setting activity or the need to obtain licenses from others may require us to license our intellectual property. Accordingly, despite our efforts, we may be unable to prevent third parties from using our intellectual property.

We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights and we may conclude that in at least some instances the benefits of protecting our intellectual property rights may be outweighed by the expense. We may initiate claims or litigation against third parties for infringement of our proprietary rights or to establish the validity of our proprietary rights. Any litigation, whether or not it is resolved in our favor, could result in significant expense to us and divert the efforts of our technical and management personnel.

We do not control and may be unable to predict the future course of open source technology development, including the ongoing development of open source components used in our platform, which could reduce the market appeal of our platform and damage our reputation.

We do not control many aspects of the development of the open source technology in our platform. Different groups of open source software programmers collaborate with one another to develop the software projects in our platform. Given the disparate inputs from various developers, we cannot control entirely how an open source project develops and matures. Also, different open source projects may overlap or compete with the ones that we incorporate into our platform. The technology developed by one group for one project may become more widely used than that developed by others. If we acquire or adopt a new technology and incorporate it into our platform but a competing technology becomes more widely used or accepted, the market appeal of our platform may be reduced and that could harm our reputation, diminish our brand and result in decreased revenue.

If open source software programmers, many of whom we do not employ, or our own internal programmers do not continue to develop and enhance open source technologies, we may be unable to develop new technologies, adequately enhance our existing technologies or meet customer requirements for innovation, quality and price.

We rely to a significant degree on a number of open source software programmers, or committers and contributors, to develop and enhance components of our platform. Additionally, members of the corresponding Apache Software Foundation Project Management Committees (PMCs) many of whom are not employed by us, are primarily responsible for the oversight and evolution of the codebases of important components of the open source data management ecosystem. If the open source data management committers and contributors fail to adequately further develop and enhance open source technologies, or if the PMCs fail to oversee and guide the evolution of open source data management technologies in the manner that we believe is appropriate to maximize the market potential of our solutions, then we would have to rely on other parties, or we would need to expend additional resources, to develop and enhance our platform. We also must devote adequate resources to our own internal programmers to support their continued development and enhancement of open source technologies, and if we do not do so, we may have to turn to third parties or experience delays in developing or enhancing open source technologies. We cannot predict whether further developments and enhancements to these technologies would be available from reliable alternative sources. In either event, our development expenses could be increased and our technology release and upgrade schedules could be delayed. Delays in developing, completing or delivering new or enhanced components to our platform could cause our offerings to be less competitive, impair customer acceptance of our solutions and result in delayed or reduced revenue for our solutions.

Our software development and licensing model could be negatively impacted if the Apache License, Version 2.0 is not enforceable or is modified so as to become incompatible with other open source licenses.

Important components of our platform have been provided under the Apache License 2.0. This license states that any work of authorship licensed under it, and any derivative work thereof, may be reproduced and distributed provided that certain conditions are met. It is possible that a court would hold this license to be unenforceable or that someone could assert a claim for proprietary rights in a program developed and distributed under it. Any ruling by a court that this license is not enforceable, or that open source components of our platform may not be reproduced or distributed, may negatively impact our distribution or development of all or a portion of our solutions. In addition, at some time in the future it is possible that important components of the open source projects in our platform may be distributed under a different license or the Apache License 2.0, which governs Hadoop, Spark and other current elements of our platform, may be modified, which could, among other consequences, negatively impact our continuing development or distribution of the software code subject to the new or modified license.

Further, full utilization of our platform may depend on software, applications, hardware and services from various third parties, and these items may not be compatible with our platform and its development or available to us or our customers on commercially reasonable terms, or at all, which could harm our business.

Our use of open source software in our solutions could negatively affect our ability to sell our platform and subject us to possible litigation.

Our solutions include software covered by open source licenses, which may include, by way of example, GNU General Public License and the Apache License. We do not own all of the open source technology in our platform and the ownership of the open source technology in our platform may not be easily determinable by us. Rather, we rely on the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) as well as certain other third party open source contributors to ensure that the open source contributions to our platform are properly owned by the committers and contributors who contribute the open source technology and that such contributions do not infringe on other parties’ intellectual property rights. Moreover, the terms of certain of the open source licenses have not been interpreted by United States or other courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that is incompatible with our current business model, imposing unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market our solutions. We, our customers and the ASF may have received or may in the future receive, notices that claim we have misappropriated, misused or infringed other parties’ intellectual property rights, and, to the extent products based on the open source data management ecosystem gain greater market visibility, we, our customers, and the ASF, face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims. In addition, we or our customers could be subject to lawsuits by parties claiming ownership of (or that different license terms apply to) what we believe to be open source software, or seeking to enforce the terms of an open source license. By the terms of certain open source licenses, we could be required to release the source code of our proprietary software, and to make our proprietary software available under open source licenses, if we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner. In the event that portions of our proprietary software are determined to be impacted by an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code, re‑engineer all or a portion of our technologies, or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our technologies and services, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and cause us to have to significantly alter our current business model. These claims could also result in litigation (including litigation against our customers or partners, which could result in us being obligated to indemnify our customers or partners against such litigation), require us to purchase a costly license or require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our solutions, any of which could have a negative effect on our business and operating results. In addition, if the license terms for the open source code change, we may be forced to re‑engineer our solutions or incur additional costs to find alternative tools.

In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third‑party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties, support, indemnity or assurance of title or controls on origin of the software. Further, some open source projects have known vulnerabilities and architectural instabilities and are provided on an “as‑is” basis. Many of these risks associated with usage of open source software, such as the lack of warranties or assurances of title, cannot be eliminated, and could, if not properly addressed, negatively affect the performance of our platform and our business. In addition, we are often required to absorb these risks in our customer and partner relationships by agreeing to provide warranties, support and indemnification with respect to such third party open source software. While we have established processes intended to alleviate these risks, we cannot assure that these measures will reduce these risks.

Because our business relies on the Apache Software Foundation, our business could be harmed by the decisions made by the ASF or claims or disputes directed at or reputational harm otherwise suffered by the ASF.

Our business relies on the ASF, a non‑profit corporation that supports Apache open source software projects. We do not control nor can we predict the decisions the ASF will make with respect to the further development and enhancement of open source technologies which may impact our business. For example, the reduction or elimination of support of Hadoop, Spark or other technologies by the ASF, the migration of Hadoop, Spark and other open source data management technology to an organization other than the ASF, or any other actions taken by the ASF or the Hadoop project may impact our business model. Moreover, if the ASF is subject to claims, disputes or otherwise suffers reputational harm, our business, results of operations, financial condition and growth prospects could be harmed if customers perceive our solutions to be risky or inferior to data management solutions which do not rely on the ASF for continued development and enhancement of open source technologies.

Security and privacy breaches may hurt our business.

Any security breach, including those resulting from a cybersecurity attack, or any unauthorized access, unauthorized usage, virus or similar breach or disruption could result in the loss of confidential information, damage to our reputation, early termination of our contracts, litigation, regulatory investigations or other liabilities. If our security measures or the security measures we have provided to customers are breached as a result of third‑party action, employee error, malfeasance or otherwise and, as a result, someone obtains unauthorized access to our customers’ confidential information, our reputation may be damaged, our business may suffer and we could incur significant liability.

Techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or to sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not recognized until launched against a target. As a result, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. If an actual or perceived security breach occurs, the market perception of our security measures could be harmed and we could lose sales and customers.

In addition, many of our customers use our platform to store and process vast quantities of private and otherwise sensitive data that are critical to their businesses. They may have a greater sensitivity to security defects in our products than to defects in other, less critical, software products. An actual or perceived security breach or theft of the business‑critical data of one of our customers, regardless of whether the breach is attributable to the failure of our products or services, could adversely affect the market’s perception of our security products. Moreover, if a high‑profile security breach occurs with respect to another data management, machine learning and analytics platform provider, our customers and potential customers may lose trust in the security of data management, machine learning and analytics platforms generally, which could adversely impact our ability to retain existing customers or attract new ones.

Real or perceived errors, failures, bugs or disruptions in our platform and solutions could adversely affect our reputation and business could be harmed.

Our platform and solutions are very complex and have contained and may contain undetected defects or errors, especially when solutions are first introduced or enhanced. In addition, our platform employs open source software and to the extent that our solutions depend upon the successful operation of open source software in conjunction with our solutions, any undetected errors or defects in this open source software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our solutions, delay new solutions introductions, result in a failure of our solutions, result in liability to our customers, and injure our reputation.

If our platform is not implemented or used correctly or as intended, inadequate performance and disruption in service may result. Moreover, as we acquire companies and integrate new open source data management projects, we may encounter difficulty in incorporating the newly‑obtained technologies into our platform and maintaining the quality standards that are consistent with our reputation.

Since our customers use our platform and solutions for important aspects of their business, any errors, defects, disruptions in service or other performance problems could hurt our reputation and may damage our customers’ businesses. Furthermore, defects in our platform and solutions may require us to implement design changes or software updates. Any defects or errors in our platform and solutions, or the perception of such defects or errors, could result in:

Although we have contractual protections, such as warranty disclaimers and limitation of liability provisions, in our standard terms and conditions of sale, they may not fully or effectively protect us from claims by customers, partners or other third parties. Any insurance coverage we may have may not adequately cover all claims asserted against us, or cover only a portion of such claims. In addition, even claims that ultimately are unsuccessful could result in our expenditure of funds in litigation and divert management’s time and other resources.

If we are unable to hire, retain, train and motivate qualified personnel and senior management, our business could be harmed.

Our future success depends, in part, on our ability to continue to attract, integrate and retain qualified and highly skilled personnel. In particular, we are substantially dependent on the continued service of our existing engineering personnel because of the complexity of our platform and are also highly dependent on the contributions of our executive team. The loss of any key personnel could make it more difficult to manage our operations and research and development activities, reduce our employee retention and revenue and impair our ability to compete. Although we have entered into employment offer letters with our key personnel, these agreements have no specific duration and constitute at‑will employment. We do not maintain key person life insurance policies on any of our employees. The loss of one or more of our key employees could seriously harm our business. If we are unable to attract, integrate, or retain the qualified and highly skilled personnel required to fulfill our current or future needs, our business, financial condition and operating results could be harmed.

Competition for highly skilled personnel is often intense, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area where we have a substantial presence and need for highly skilled personnel. We may not be successful in attracting, integrating or retaining qualified personnel to fulfill our current or future needs. We have from time to time experienced, and we expect to continue to experience, difficulty in hiring and retaining highly skilled employees with appropriate qualifications. In addition, job candidates and existing employees often consider the value of the equity awards they receive in connection with their employment. If the perceived value of our common stock declines, it may adversely affect our ability to hire or retain highly skilled employees. In addition, we may periodically change our equity compensation practices, which may include reducing the number of employees eligible for equity awards or reducing the size of equity awards granted per employee. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our business and future growth prospects could be harmed.

We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods and expect our growth to continue. If we fail to effectively manage our growth, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.

We have experienced and may continue to experience rapid growth in our headcount and operations, which has placed and will continue to place significant demands on our managerial, administrative, operational, financial and other resources. For example, our employee headcount increased from 1,470 employees as of January 31, 2017 to 1,648  employees as of January 31, 2018 . This growth has placed, and any future growth will place, significant demands on our management and our operational and financial infrastructure. To manage this growth effectively, we must continue to improve our operational, financial and management systems and controls by, among other things:

If we fail to manage our growth, or if we fail to implement improvements or maintain effective internal controls, our costs and expenses may increase more than we plan and our ability to expand our customer base, enhance our platform, develop new solutions, expand penetration within existing customers, respond to competitive pressures or otherwise execute our business plan, our business and operating results could be adversely affected.

Because we recognize subscription revenue from our platform over the subscription term, downturns or upturns in new sales and renewals will not be immediately reflected in our operating results.

We generally recognize subscription revenue ratably over the term of the subscription period. As a result, most of the revenue we report in each quarter are derived from the recognition of deferred revenue relating to subscriptions entered into during previous quarters. Consequently, a decline in new or renewed subscriptions, or a reduction in expansion rates, in any single quarter could have only a small impact on our revenue results during that quarter or subsequent period. Such a decline or deceleration, however, will negatively affect our revenue or revenue growth rates in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of these changes or events may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. Given the ratable nature of our revenue recognition, our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our revenue through additional sales in any period. We may be unable to adjust our cost structure to reflect the changes in revenue. In addition, a significant majority of our costs are expensed as incurred, while revenue is generally recognized over the life of the customer agreement. As a result, increased growth in the number of our customers could result in our recognition of more costs than revenue in the earlier periods of the terms of our agreements.

Our revenue growth depends in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties and their continued performance.

We seek to grow our partner ecosystem as a way to grow our business. To grow our business, we anticipate that we will continue to establish and maintain relationships with third parties, such as resellers, OEMs, system integrators, independent software and hardware vendors and platform and cloud service providers. For example, in 2014, we entered into a strategic collaboration and optimization agreement with Intel. In addition, we work closely with select vendors to design solutions to specifically address the needs of certain industry verticals or use cases within those verticals, which we refer to as Partner Solutions. As our agreements with strategic partners terminate or expire, we may be unable to renew or replace these agreements on comparable terms, or at all. Moreover, we cannot guarantee that the companies with which we have strategic relationships will continue to devote the resources necessary to expand our reach, increase our distribution and increase the number of Partner Solutions and associated use cases. In addition, customer satisfaction with Partner Solutions may be less than anticipated, negatively impacting anticipated revenue growth and results of operations. Further, some of our strategic partners offer competing products and services or also work with our competitors. As a result of these factors, many of the companies with which we have strategic alliances may choose to pursue alternative technologies and develop alternative products and services in addition to or in lieu of our platform, either on their own or in collaboration with others, including our competitors. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with third parties, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenue could be impaired and our operating results may suffer. Even if we are successful in establishing and maintaining these relationships with third parties, we cannot assure you that these relationships will result in increased customer usage of our platform or increased revenue.

The sum of our revenue and changes in deferred revenue may not be an accurate indicator of business activity within a period.

Investors or analysts sometimes look to the sum of our revenue and changes in deferred revenue as an indicator of business activity in a period for businesses such as ours, sometimes referred to as “estimated billings.” However, these measures may significantly differ from underlying business activity for a number of reasons including:

Accordingly, we do not believe that estimated billings is an accurate indicator of future revenue for any given period of time. However, many companies that provide subscriptions report changes in estimated billings as a key operating or financial metric, and it is possible that analysts or investors may view this metric as important. Thus, any changes in our estimated billings could adversely affect the market price of our common stock.

If our new components and enhancements to our platform do not achieve sufficient market acceptance, our financial results and competitive position will suffer.

We spend substantial amounts of time and money to research and develop new components and enhancements of our platforms to incorporate additional features, improve functionality or other enhancements in order to meet our customers’ rapidly evolving demands. When we develop a new component or enhancement to our platform, whether open source or proprietary, we typically incur expenses and expend resources upfront to develop, market and promote the new component. Therefore, when we develop and introduce new components or enhancements to our platform, they must achieve high levels of market acceptance in order to justify the amount of our investment in developing and bringing them to market. For example, if our new file system based on the open source Kudu project does not garner widespread market adoption and implementation, our growth prospects, future financial results and competitive position could suffer.

Our new components or enhancements to our platform and changes to our platform could fail to attain sufficient market acceptance for many reasons, including:

If our new components or enhancements and changes do not achieve adequate acceptance in the market, our competitive position will be impaired, and our revenue will be diminished. The adverse effect on our financial results may be particularly acute because of the significant research, development, marketing, sales and other expenses we will have incurred in connection with the new solutions or enhancements.

If we do not effectively hire, retain, train and oversee our direct sales force, we may be unable to add new customers or increase sales to our existing customers, and our business may be adversely affected.

We continue to be substantially dependent on our direct sales force to obtain new customers and increase sales with existing customers. There is significant competition for sales personnel with the skills and technical knowledge that we require. Our ability to achieve significant revenue growth will depend, in large part, on our success in recruiting, training and retaining sufficient numbers of sales personnel to support our growth, particularly in international markets. In addition, a large percentage of our sales force is new to our company. New hires require significant training and may take significant time before they achieve full productivity. Our recent hires and planned hires may not become productive as quickly as we expect, and we may be unable to hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the markets where we do business or plan to do business. In addition, growth of our direct sales force leads to increasing difficulty and complexity in its organization, management and leadership, at which we may prove unsuccessful. If we are unable to hire and train a sufficient number of effective sales personnel, we are ineffective at overseeing a growing sales force, or the sales personnel we hire are otherwise unsuccessful in obtaining new customers or increasing sales to our existing customer base, our business will be adversely affected.

We may acquire or invest in companies and technologies, which may divert our management’s attention, and result in additional dilution to our stockholders. We may be unable to integrate acquired businesses and technologies successfully or achieve the expected benefits of such acquisitions or investments.

As part of our business strategy, we have acquired companies in the past and may evaluate and consider potential strategic transactions, including acquisitions of, or investments in, businesses, technologies, services, products and other assets in the future. For example, we acquired Gazzang, Inc. in June 2014, Xplain.io, Inc. in February 2015, and Fast Forward Labs in September 2017. We also may enter into relationships with other businesses to expand our solutions or our ability to provide services. An acquisition, investment or business relationship may result in unforeseen operating difficulties and expenditures. In particular, we may encounter difficulties assimilating or integrating the businesses, technologies, products, personnel or operations of the acquired companies, particularly if the key personnel of the acquired company choose not to work for us, their technology is not easily adapted to work with ours, or we have difficulty retaining the customers of any acquired business due to changes in ownership, management or otherwise. Negotiating these transactions can be time‑consuming, difficult and expensive, and our ability to close these transactions may often be subject to conditions or approvals that are beyond our control. Consequently, these transactions, even if undertaken and announced, may not close.

Even if we are able to complete acquisitions or enter into alliances and joint ventures that we believe will be successful, such transactions are inherently risky. Acquisitions involve many risks, including the following:

If we are unable to address these difficulties and challenges or other problems encountered in connection with any future acquisition or investment, we might not realize the anticipated benefits of that acquisition or investment, we might incur unanticipated liabilities or we might otherwise suffer harm to our business generally.

To the extent we pay the consideration for any future acquisitions or investments in cash, the payment would reduce the amount of cash available to us for other purposes. Future acquisitions or investments could also result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities or the incurrence of debt, contingent liabilities, amortization expenses, or impairment charges against goodwill on our balance sheet, any of which could harm our financial condition and negatively impact our stockholders.

As we expand internationally, our business will become more susceptible to risks associated with international operations.

We have recently expanded internationally, and intend to continue such international expansion. For example, we sell the various editions of our platform through our direct sales force, which is comprised of inside sales and field sales personnel, and is located in a variety of geographic regions, including the United States, Europe and Asia, and have customers located in over 80 countries as of January 31, 2018 . We intend to continue to expand internationally.

Conducting international operations subjects us to risks that we have not generally faced in the United States. These risks include:

The occurrence of any one of these risks could harm our international business and, consequently, our results of operations. Additionally, operating in international markets requires significant management attention and financial resources. We cannot be certain that the investment and additional resources required to operate in other countries will produce desired levels of revenue or profitability.

Some of our business partners also have international operations and are subject to the risks described above. Even if we are able to successfully manage the risks of international operations, our business may be adversely affected if our business partners are not able to successfully manage these risks.

Our business in countries with a history of corruption and transactions with foreign governments increase the risks associated with our international activities.

As we operate and sell internationally, we are subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), the United Kingdom Bribery Act of 2010, or the UK Bribery Act, and other laws that prohibit improper payments or offers of payments to foreign governments and their officials and political parties for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. We have operations, deal with and make sales to governmental customers in countries known to experience corruption, particularly certain emerging countries in Africa, East Asia, Eastern Europe, South America and the Middle East. Our activities in these countries create the risk of unauthorized payments or offers of payments by one of our employees, consultants, sales agents or channel partners that could be in violation of various anti‑corruption laws, even though these parties may not be under our control. While we have implemented policies and controls intended to prevent these practices by our employees, consultants, sales agents and channel partners, our existing safeguards and any future improvements may prove to be less than effective, and our employees, consultants, sales agents or channel partners may engage in conduct for which we might be held responsible. Violations of the FCPA, the UK Bribery Act and other laws may result in severe criminal or civil sanctions, including suspension or debarment from U.S. government contracting, and we may be subject to other liabilities, which could negatively affect our business, operating results and financial condition.

We are subject to governmental export control, sanctions and import laws and regulations that could subject us to liability or impair our ability to compete in international markets.

Because we incorporate encryption functionality into our platform (including any products comprising the platform), we are subject to certain U.S. export control laws that apply to encryption items. As such, our platform may be exported outside the United States through an export license exception; an export license is required to certain countries, end‑users and end‑uses. If we were to fail to comply with such U.S. export controls laws, U.S. customs regulations, U.S. economic sanctions, or other similar laws, we could be subject to both civil and criminal penalties, including substantial fines, possible incarceration for employees and managers for willful violations, and the possible loss of our export or import privileges. Obtaining the necessary export license for a particular sale or offering may not be possible and may be time‑consuming and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities. Furthermore, U.S. export control laws and economic sanctions prohibit the export of products to certain U.S. embargoed or sanctioned countries, governments and persons, as well as for prohibited end‑uses. Monitoring and ensuring compliance with these complex U.S. export control laws is particularly challenging because our platform and related services are widely distributed throughout the world and are available for download without registration. Even though we take precautions to ensure that we and our reseller partners comply with all relevant export control laws and regulations, any failure by us or our reseller partners to comply with such laws and regulations could have negative consequences for us, including reputational harm, government investigations and penalties.

In addition, various countries regulate the import of certain encryption technology, including through import permit and license requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to distribute our platform or could limit our end‑customers’ ability to implement our products in those countries. Changes in our products or changes in export and import regulations in such countries may create delays in the introduction of our platform into international markets, prevent our end‑customers with international operations from deploying our products globally or, in some cases, prevent or delay the export or import of our platform to certain countries, governments or persons altogether. Any change in export or import laws or regulations, economic sanctions or related legislation, shift in the enforcement or scope of existing export, import or sanctions laws or regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons, or technologies targeted by such export, import or sanctions laws or regulations, could result in decreased use of our platform by, or in our decreased ability to export or sell our platform to, existing or potential end‑customers with international operations. Any decreased use of our platform or limitation on our ability to export to or sell our platform in international markets could adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results.

We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates, which could negatively affect our operating results.

Our sales contracts are primarily denominated in U.S. dollars, and therefore substantially all of our revenue is not subject to foreign currency risk. However, a strengthening of the U.S. dollar could increase the real cost of our platform to our customers outside of the United States, which could adversely affect our operating results. In addition, an increasing portion of our operating expenses is incurred and an increasing portion of our assets is held outside the United States. These operating expenses and assets are denominated in foreign currencies and are subject to fluctuations due to changes in foreign currency exchange rates. If we are not able to successfully hedge against the risks associated with currency fluctuations, our operating results could be adversely affected.

Our failure to raise additional capital could reduce our ability to compete and could harm our business.

We expect that our existing cash and cash equivalents will be sufficient to meet our anticipated cash needs for the foreseeable future. However if we change our business strategy, we may need to raise additional funds in the future, and we may not be able to obtain additional debt or equity financing on favorable terms, if at all. If we raise additional equity financing, our stockholders may experience significant dilution of their ownership interests and the per share value of our common stock could decline. Furthermore, if we engage in debt financing, the holders of debt would have priority over the holders of common stock, and we may be required to accept terms that restrict our ability to incur additional indebtedness. We may also be required to take other actions that would otherwise be in the interests of the debt holders and force us to maintain specified liquidity or other ratios, any of which could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

We are exposed to the credit risk of some of our resellers and customers and to credit exposure in weakened markets, which could result in material losses.

Most of our sales are on an unsecured basis. Although we seek to mitigate these risks, we cannot be certain that these efforts will be effective in reducing our credit risks, especially as we expand our business internationally. If we are unable to adequately control these risks, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be harmed.

Federal, state, foreign government and industry regulations, as well as self‑regulation related to privacy and data security concerns, pose the threat of lawsuits and other liability.

We collect and utilize demographic and other information, including personally identifiable information, from and about our employees and our existing and potential customers and partners. Such information may be collected from our customers and partners when they visit our website or through their use of our products and interactions with our company and employees such as when signing up for certain services, registering for training seminars, participating in a survey, participating in polls or signing up to receive e‑mail newsletters.

A wide variety of domestic and international laws and regulations (e.g., the General Data Protection Regulation) apply to the collection, use, retention, protection, disclosure, transfer and other processing of personal data. These data protection and privacy‑related laws and regulations are evolving and may result in regulatory and public scrutiny and escalating levels of enforcement and sanctions. Our failure to comply with applicable laws and regulations, or to protect such data, could result in enforcement action against us, including fines, claims for damages by customers and other affected individuals, damage to our reputation and loss of goodwill (both in relation to existing customers and prospective customers), any of which could have a material adverse effect on our operations, financial performance and business. Evolving and changing definitions of personal data and personal information within the European Union, the United States, and elsewhere may limit or inhibit our ability to operate or expand our business. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may harm our reputation, inhibit adoption of our products by current and future customers or adversely impact our ability to attract and retain workforce talent.

Loss, retention or misuse of certain information and alleged violations of laws and regulations relating to privacy and data security, and any relevant claims, may expose us to potential liability and may require us to expend significant resources on data security and in responding to and defending such allegations and claims. In addition, future laws, regulations, standards and other obligations, and changes in the interpretation of existing laws, regulations, standards and other obligations could impair our customers’ ability to collect, use or disclose data relating to individuals, which could decrease demand for our platform, increase our costs and impair our ability to maintain and grow our customer base and increase our revenue.

A portion of our revenue is generated by sales to government entities and heavily regulated organizations, which are subject to a number of challenges and risks.

A portion of our sales are to governmental entities. Additionally, many of our current and prospective customers, such as those in the financial services and health care industries, are highly regulated and may be required to comply with more stringent regulations in connection with subscribing to and deploying our platform. Selling to these entities can be highly competitive, expensive and time consuming, often requiring significant upfront time and expense without any assurance that these efforts will result in a sale. Government and highly regulated entities often require contract terms that differ from our standard arrangements and impose compliance requirements that are complicated, require preferential pricing or “most favored nation” terms and conditions, or are otherwise time consuming and expensive to satisfy. If we undertake to meet special standards or requirements and do not meet them, we could be subject to increased liability from our customers or regulators. Even if we do meet them, the additional costs associated with providing our services to government and highly regulated customers could harm our margins. Moreover, changes in the underlying regulatory conditions that affect these types of customers could harm our ability to efficiently provide our services to them and to grow or maintain our customer base.

Additionally, government certification requirements for platforms like ours may change and in doing so restrict our ability to sell into certain government sectors until we have attained the revised certification. Government demand and payment for our solutions may be impacted by public sector budgetary cycles and funding authorizations, with funding reductions or delays adversely affecting public sector demand for our solutions. Additionally, government entities routinely investigate and audit government contractors’ administrative processes, and any unfavorable audit could result in the government entity refusing to continue buying our solutions, a reduction of revenue, fines or civil or criminal liability if the audit uncovers improper or illegal activities, which could adversely impact our operating results. Furthermore, engaging in sales activities to foreign governments introduces additional compliance risks specific to the FCPA, the UK Bribery Act and other similar statutory requirements prohibiting bribery and corruption in the jurisdictions in which we operate.

The requirements of being a public company may strain our resources, divert management’s attention and affect our ability to attract and retain executive management and qualified board members.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, or the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act of 2002, or the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act, the Dodd‑Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, or the Dodd‑Frank Act, the rules and regulations of the listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange and other applicable securities rules and regulations. Compliance with these rules and regulations increases our legal and financial compliance costs, makes some activities more difficult, time‑consuming or costly and increases demand on our systems and resources, particularly after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” The Exchange Act requires, among other things, that we file annual, quarterly and current reports with respect to our business and operating results. The Sarbanes‑Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and, if required, improve our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting to meet this standard, significant resources and management oversight may be required. As a result, management's attention may be diverted from other business concerns, which could adversely affect our business and operating results. Although we have already hired additional employees to comply with these requirements, we may need to hire more employees in the future or engage outside consultants, which will increase our costs and expenses.

In addition, changing laws, regulations and standards relating to corporate governance and public disclosure are creating uncertainty for public companies, increasing legal and financial compliance costs and making some activities more time consuming. These laws, regulations and standards are subject to varying interpretations, in many cases due to their lack of specificity, and, as a result, their application in practice may evolve over time as new guidance is provided by regulatory and governing bodies. This could result in continuing uncertainty regarding compliance matters and higher costs necessitated by ongoing revisions to disclosure and governance practices. We intend to invest resources to comply with evolving laws, regulations and standards, and this investment may result in increased general and administrative expenses and a diversion of management's time and attention from revenue‑generating activities to compliance activities. If our efforts to comply with new laws, regulations and standards differ from the activities intended by regulatory or governing bodies due to ambiguities related to their application and practice, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us and our business may be adversely affected.

However, for as long as we remain an “emerging growth company” as defined in the Jumpstart our Business Startups Act of 2012, or the JOBS Act, we may take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies” including, but not limited to, not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements and exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved. We may take advantage of these reporting exemptions until we are no longer an “emerging growth company.”

Further, the JOBS Act exempts emerging growth companies from being required to comply with new or revised financial accounting standards until private companies (that is, those that have not had a Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or Securities Act, registration statement declared effective or do not have a class of securities registered

under the Exchange Act) are required to comply with the new or revised financial accounting standards. The JOBS Act provides that a company can elect to opt out of the extended transition period and comply with the requirements that apply to non‑emerging growth companies but any such election to opt out is irrevocable. We have elected not to opt out of such extended transition period which means that when a standard is issued or revised and it has different application dates for public or private companies, we, as an emerging growth company, can adopt the new or revised standard at the time private companies adopt the new or revised standard. This may make comparison of our financial statements with another public company which is neither an emerging growth company nor an emerging growth company which has opted out of using the extended transition period difficult because of the potential differences in accounting standards used.

We will remain an “emerging growth company” for up to five years. However, among other factors, if the market value of our common stock that is held by non‑affiliates exceeds $700 million as of any July 31 after our first annual report, we would cease to be an “emerging growth company” as of the following January 31.

These new rules and regulations will make it more expensive for us, as a public company, to obtain director and officer liability insurance, and we may be required to accept reduced coverage or incur substantially higher costs to obtain coverage. These factors could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified members of our board of directors, particularly to serve on our audit committee and compensation committee, and qualified executive officers.

As a result of disclosure of information in this Annual Report and in filings required of a public company, our business and financial condition are more visible, which we believe may result in threatened or actual litigation, including by competitors and other third parties. If such claims are successful, our business and operating results could be adversely affected, and even if the claims do not result in litigation or are resolved in our favor, these claims, and the time and resources necessary to resolve them, could divert the resources of our management and adversely affect our business and operating results.

If we fail to maintain an effective system of internal controls, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable regulations could be impaired.

As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act, and the rules and regulations of the listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange. We expect that the requirements of these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting, and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time‑consuming, and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems, and resources.

The Sarbanes‑Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we maintain effective disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting. We are continuing to develop and refine our disclosure controls and other procedures that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is recorded, processed, summarized, and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms and that information required to be disclosed in reports under the Exchange Act is accumulated and communicated to our principal executive and financial officers. We are also continuing to improve our internal control over financial reporting. In order to maintain and improve the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting, we have expended, and anticipate that we will continue to expend, significant resources, including accounting‑related costs and significant management oversight.

Our current controls and any new controls that we develop may become inadequate because of changes in conditions in our business. Further, weaknesses in our disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting may be discovered in the future. Any failure to develop or maintain effective controls or any difficulties encountered in their implementation or improvement could harm our operating results or cause us to fail to meet our reporting obligations and may result in a restatement of our financial statements for prior periods. Any failure to implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting also could adversely affect the results of periodic management evaluations and annual independent registered public accounting firm attestation reports regarding the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting that we will eventually be required to include in our periodic reports that will be filed with the SEC. Ineffective disclosure controls and procedures and

internal control over financial reporting could also cause investors to lose confidence in our reported financial and other information, which could have a negative effect on the trading price of our common stock. In addition, if we are unable to continue to meet these requirements, we may not be able to remain listed on the applicable stock exchange. We are not currently required to comply with the SEC rules that implement Section 404 of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act and are therefore not required to make a formal assessment of the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting for that purpose. As a public company, we are required to provide an annual management report on the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting commencing with our second annual report on Form 10‑K.

Our independent registered public accounting firm is not required to formally attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting until after we are no longer an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act. At such time, our independent registered public accounting firm may issue a report that is adverse in the event it is not satisfied with the level at which our internal control over financial reporting is documented, designed, or operating. Any failure to maintain effective disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting could have a material and adverse effect on our business and operating results and could cause a decline in the price of our common stock.

We are an “emerging growth company” and we cannot be certain if the reduced disclosure requirements applicable to emerging growth companies will make our common stock less attractive to investors.

We are an “emerging growth company,” as defined in the JOBS Act, and we intend to take advantage of certain exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not “emerging growth companies,” including not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes‑Oxley Act, reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements, exemptions from the requirements of holding a nonbinding advisory vote on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not previously approved and exemptions from complying with new or revised financial accounting standards until private companies are required to comply with the new or revised accounting standards. We may take advantage of these exemptions for so long as we are an “emerging growth company,” which could be as long as five years following the effectiveness of our initial public offering but we expect to not be an “emerging growth company” sooner. We cannot predict if investors will find our common stock less attractive because we will rely on these exemptions. If some investors find our common stock less attractive as a result, there may be a less active trading market for our common stock and the price of our common stock may be more volatile.

Our financial results may be adversely affected by changes in accounting principles applicable to us.

Generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP) are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the SEC, and other various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. For example, in May 2014, the FASB issued accounting standards update No. 2014‑09 (Topic 606), Revenue from Contracts with Customers, which supersedes nearly all existing revenue recognition guidance under GAAP. We will be required to implement this guidance in fiscal 2020. We have not selected a transition method and continue to evaluate what effect, if any, the amendments and transition alternatives could have on our financial position and results of operations. Regardless of the transition method selected, application of Topic 606 may significantly impact the amount and timing of revenue recognition, such as recognizing revenue from existing contracts in periods other than when historically reported under existing GAAP or the revenue recognized under existing GAAP could be eliminated as part of the effect of adoption. Further, adoption of Topic 606 could result in changes to the periods when revenue is recognized in the future compared with management’s current expectations under existing GAAP. In addition, Topic 606 may significantly change the timing of when expense recognition will occur related to costs to obtain and fulfill customer contracts. While the adoption of Topic 606 does not change the cash flows received from our contracts with customers, the adoption of Topic 606 could have a material adverse effect on our financial position or results of operations.

Changes in our provision for income taxes or adverse outcomes resulting from examination of our income tax returns could adversely affect our results.

We are subject to income taxation in the United States and numerous foreign jurisdictions. Determining our provision for income taxes requires significant management judgment. In addition, our provision for income taxes is subject to volatility and could be adversely affected by many factors, including, among other things, changes to our operating or holding structure, changes in the amounts of earnings in jurisdictions with differing statutory tax rates, changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities and changes in tax laws. We could be subject to tax examinations in various jurisdictions. Tax authorities may disagree with our use of research and development tax credits, intercompany charges, cross‑jurisdictional transfer pricing or other matters and assess additional taxes. While we regularly assess the likely outcomes of these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes, there can be no assurance that the outcomes of such examinations will not have a material impact on our operating results and cash flows.

In addition, we may be subject to the examination of our income tax returns by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and other tax authorities. We regularly assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes resulting from these examinations to determine the adequacy of our provision for income taxes. There can be no assurance that the outcomes from these continuous examinations will not have an adverse effect on our results of operations.

The enactment of legislation implementing changes in the United States of taxation of international business activities or the adoption of other tax reform policies could materially impact our financial position and results of operations.

Recent changes to United States tax laws, including limitations on the ability of taxpayers to claim and utilize foreign tax credits and the deferral of certain tax deductions until earnings outside of the United States are repatriated to the United States, as well as changes to United States tax laws that may be enacted in the future, could impact the tax treatment of our foreign earnings. Due to expansion of our international business activities, any changes in the United States taxation of such activities may increase our worldwide effective tax rate and adversely affect our financial position and results of operations.

Uncertainties in the interpretation and application of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act could materially affect our tax obligations and effective tax rate.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the Tax Act) was enacted on December 22, 2017, and significantly changes how the U.S. imposes income tax on multinational corporations. The U.S. Department of Treasury has broad authority to issue regulations and interpretative guidance that may significantly impact how we will apply the law and affect our results of operations in the period issued.

The Tax Act requires complex computations not previously provided in U.S. tax law. As such, the application of accounting guidance for such items is currently uncertain. Further, compliance with the Tax Act and the accounting for such provisions require accumulation of information not previously required or regularly produced. As a result, we have provided a provisional estimate of the effect of the Tax Act in our financial statements. As additional regulatory guidance is issued by the applicable taxing authorities, accounting treatment is clarified, we perform additional analysis on the application of the law, and we refine estimates in calculating the impact, our final analysis, which will be recorded in the period completed, may be different from our current provisional amounts, which could materially affect our tax obligations and effective tax rate.

Our ability to use our net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations.

In general, under Section 382 of the United States Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, or the Code, a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” is subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its pre‑change net operating losses (NOLs) to offset future taxable income. If our existing NOLs are subject to limitations arising from previous ownership changes, our ability to utilize NOLs could be limited by Section 382 of the Code. For example, we recently performed an analysis to determine whether an ownership change had occurred since our inception which identified two historical ownership changes. While these limitations did not result in a material restriction on the use of our NOLs, future changes in our stock ownership, some of which are outside of our control, could result

in an ownership change under Section 382 of the Code. Furthermore, our ability to utilize NOLs of companies that we may acquire in the future may be subject to limitations. There is also a risk that due to regulatory changes, such as suspensions on the use of NOLs, or other unforeseen reasons, our existing NOLs could expire or otherwise be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities. For these reasons, we may not be able to utilize a portion of the NOLs reflected on our balance sheet, even if we attain profitability.

We have business and customer relationships with certain entities who are stockholders or are affiliated with our directors, or both, and conflicts of interest may arise because of such relationships.

Some of our customers and other business partners are affiliated with certain of our directors or hold shares of our capital stock, or both. For example, we have entered into strategic relationships and/or customer relationships with Intel Corporation, or Intel. Our director, Rose Schooler, is an employee of Intel, and Intel is a stockholder. We believe that the transactions and agreements that we have entered into with related parties are on terms that are at least as favorable as could reasonably have been obtained at such time from third parties. However, these relationships could create, or appear to create, potential conflicts of interest when our board of directors is faced with decisions that could have different implications for us and these other parties or their affiliates. In addition, conflicts of interest may arise between us and these other parties and their affiliates. The appearance of conflicts, even if such conflicts do not materialize, might adversely affect the public’s perception of us, as well as our relationship with other companies and our ability to enter into new relationships in the future, including with competitors of such related parties, which could harm our business and results of operations.

Adverse economic conditions may negatively impact our business.

Our business depends on the overall demand for information technology and on the economic health of our current and prospective customers. Any significant weakening of the economy in the United States or Europe and of the global economy, more limited availability of credit, a reduction in business confidence and activity, decreased government spending, economic uncertainty and other difficulties may affect one or more of the sectors or countries in which we sell our applications. Global economic and political uncertainty may cause some of our customers or potential customers to curtail spending, and may ultimately result in new regulatory and cost challenges to our international operations. In addition, a strong dollar could reduce demand for our products in countries with relatively weaker currencies. These adverse conditions could result in reductions in sales of our applications, longer sales cycles, reductions in subscription duration and value, slower adoption of new technologies and increased price competition. Any of these events could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial position.

Our business is subject to the risks of earthquakes, fire, power outages, floods and other catastrophic events, and to interruption by man‑made problems such as terrorism.

A significant natural disaster, such as an earthquake, fire or a flood, or a significant power outage could have a material adverse impact on our business, financial condition and results of operations. Our corporate headquarters are located in Palo Alto, California, in a region known for seismic activity, and we have significant offices in San Francisco, New York City and Austin in the United States and internationally in Budapest, London and Singapore. Further, if a natural disaster or terrorist event occurs in a region from which we derive a significant portion of our revenue, customers in that region may delay or forego purchases of our products, which may materially and adversely impact our results of operations for a particular period. For example, the west coast of the United States contains active earthquake zones and the eastern seaboard is subject to seasonal hurricanes while New York and the United Kingdom have suffered significant terrorist attacks. Additionally, we rely on our network and third‑party infrastructure and enterprise applications, internal technology systems and our website for our development, marketing, finance, customer support, operational support, hosted services and sales activities. In the event of a major earthquake, hurricane or catastrophic event such as fire, power loss, floods, telecommunications failure, cyber‑attack, war or terrorist attack, we may be unable to continue our operations and may endure system interruptions, reputational harm, delays in our development of solutions, lengthy interruptions in our services, breaches of data security and loss of critical data, all of which could have an adverse effect on our operating results. All of the aforementioned risks may be augmented if the business continuity plans for us and our service providers prove to be inadequate. To the extent that any of the above results in delays or cancellations of customer orders, or

the delay in the deployment of our products, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected.

Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock

The stock price of our common stock has been, and may continue to be, volatile or may decline regardless of our operating performance.

The market price for our common stock has been, and may continue to be, volatile. Since shares of our common stock were sold in our initial public offering in April 2017 at a price of $15.00 per share, our stock price has ranged from $14.50 to $23.35, through January 31, 2018 . The market price of our common stock may continue to fluctuate significantly in response to numerous factors, many of which are beyond our control, including the factors included in this Risk Factors section as well as:

In addition, the stock markets have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies. Stock prices of many companies have

fluctuated in a manner unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. In the past, stockholders have instituted securities class action litigation following periods of market volatility. If we were to become involved in securities litigation, it could subject us to substantial costs, divert resources and the attention of management from our business, and adversely affect our business.

If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.

The trading market for our common stock depends in part on the research and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us or our business. We do not have any control over these analysts. If one or more of the analysts initiate research with an unfavorable rating or downgrade our common stock, provide a more favorable recommendation about our competitors, publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business or cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our common stock could decrease, which might cause our common stock price and trading volume to decline.

Our directors, executive officers and principal stockholders continue to have substantial control over us, which could limit your ability to influence the outcome of key transactions, including a change of control.

Our directors, executive officers and our stockholders who own greater than 5% of our outstanding common stock, together with their affiliates, beneficially own, in the aggregate, approximately 57.8% of our outstanding common stock, based on the number shares outstanding as of March 31, 2018 As a result, these stockholders, if acting together, have the ability to influence or control matters requiring approval by our stockholders, including the election of directors and the approval of mergers, acquisitions or other extraordinary transactions. In addition, these stockholders, acting together, have the ability to control the management and affairs of our company. They may also have interests that differ from yours and may vote in a way with which you disagree and which may be adverse to your interests. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of delaying, preventing or deterring a change of control of our company, could deprive our stockholders of an opportunity to receive a premium for their common stock as part of a sale of our company and might ultimately affect the market price of our common stock.

Intel holds approximately 17.7% of our outstanding common stock, based on the number shares outstanding as of March 31, 2018. As such, Intel could have considerable influence over matters such as approving a potential acquisition of us. Intel’s investment in and position in our company could also discourage others from pursuing any potential acquisition of us, which could have the effect of depriving the holders of our common stock of the opportunity to sell their shares at a premium over the prevailing market price.

We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our common stock and do not intend to pay any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. We anticipate that we will retain all of our future earnings for use in the development of our business and for general corporate purposes. Any determination to pay dividends in the future will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Accordingly, investors must rely on sales of their common stock after price appreciation, which may never occur, as the only way to realize any future gains on their investments.

Defensive measures in our charter documents and under Delaware law could make an acquisition of us, which may be beneficial to our stockholders, more difficult and may prevent attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws contain provisions that could delay or prevent a change in control of our company. These provisions could also make it difficult for stockholders to elect directors who are not nominated by the current members of our board of directors or take other corporate actions, including effecting changes in our management. These provisions include:

In addition, our restated certificate of incorporation provides that the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware is the exclusive forum for: any derivative action or proceeding brought on our behalf; any action asserting a breach of fiduciary duty; any action asserting a claim against us arising pursuant to the Delaware General Corporation Law, our restated certificate of incorporation, or our restated bylaws; or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine. This choice of forum provision may limit a stockholder’s ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum that it finds favorable for disputes with us or any of our directors, officers, or other employees, which may discourage lawsuits with respect to such claims. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our restated certificate of incorporation to be inapplicable or unenforceable in an action, we may incur additional costs associated with resolving such action in other jurisdictions, which could harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

In addition, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of the anti‑takeover provisions of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which may discourage, delay or prevent a change in control by prohibiting us from engaging in a business combination with an interested stockholder for a period of three years after the person becomes an interested stockholder, even if a change of control would be beneficial to our existing stockholders. Although we believe these provisions collectively provide for an opportunity to obtain greater value for stockholders by requiring potential acquirers to negotiate with our board of directors, they would apply even if an offer rejected by our board was considered beneficial by some stockholders. In addition, these provisions may frustrate or prevent any attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management by making it more difficult for stockholders to replace members of our board of directors, which is responsible for appointing the members of our management.