Item 1A. Risk Factors
Our operations and financial results are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to those described below, which could harm our business, financial condition, operating results and reputation, and affect the trading price of our common stock. The risks and uncertainties described below are not the only ones we face. Additional risks and uncertainties that we are unaware of or that we deem immaterial may also become important factors that adversely affect our business.
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Summary of Risk Factors
Some of the more material risks that we face include:
• We have a history of losses, anticipate increasing our operating expenses in the future, and may not achieve or sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and sustain profitability, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
• The market in which we participate is new and rapidly evolving, fragmented, and highly competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
• If we are unable to attract new customers and renew and expand sales to existing customers, our revenue growth could be slower than we expect, and our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
• If we are not able to effectively introduce enhancements to our platform, including new products, services, features, and functionality, that achieve market acceptance, or keep pace with technological developments, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
• Our operating results may fluctuate from quarter to quarter, which makes our future results difficult to predict.
• Because we recognize revenue from our subscriptions over the subscription term, downturns or upturns in new sales and renewals may not be immediately reflected in our operating results and may be difficult to discern.
• If our or our third-party service providers’ security measures are breached, if unauthorized access to customer or contributor data, our data, or our platform is otherwise obtained, or if our platform is perceived as not being secure, customers may reduce the use of or stop using our platform, and we may incur significant liabilities.
• We have a limited operating history which makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects and increases the risks associated with your investment.
• We have experienced rapid growth and expect to invest in our growth for the foreseeable future. If we fail to manage our growth effectively, then our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
• Our subscription or pricing models may not accurately reflect the optimal pricing necessary to attract new customers and retain existing customers as the market matures.
• Any disruption of services of Amazon Web Services, our data hosting service, could interrupt or delay our ability to deliver our services to our customers.
• We process, store, and use personal information and other data, which subjects us to governmental regulation and other legal obligations related to privacy, and violation of these privacy obligations could result in a claim for damages, regulatory action, loss of business, or unfavorable publicity.
Risks Related to Our Business and Industry
We have a history of losses, anticipate increasing our operating expenses in the future, and may not achieve or sustain profitability. If we cannot achieve and sustain profitability, our business, operating results, and financial condition will be adversely affected.
We have incurred net losses in each fiscal year since inception, we expect to incur net losses for the foreseeable future, and we may not achieve or sustain profitability in the future. For the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, we incurred net losses of $50.7 million, $34.0 million and $19.6 million, respectively. As of December 31, 2021 and 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $203.2 million and $152.5 million, respectively. We expect to make significant future expenditures related to the development and expansion of our business, including acquiring new customers, expanding relationships with existing customers across core and new departments, expanding our global footprint, innovating and expanding our platform, growing our sales and marketing investments, expanding our operations and infrastructure both domestically and internationally, attracting and retaining our community of contributors, and in connection with legal, tax, accounting, and other administrative and compliance expenses related to operating as a public company. These efforts may prove more expensive than we currently anticipate, and we may not succeed in increasing our revenue sufficiently, or at all, to offset these higher expenses. While our revenue has grown in recent years, if our revenue or to grow at a
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rate faster than these increases in our operating expenses, we may not be able to achieve or sustain profitability in future periods. As a result, we may continue to generate losses. We cannot assure you that we will achieve profitability in the future or that, if we do become profitable, we will be able to sustain profitability in any given period, or at all.
The market in which we participate is new and rapidly evolving, fragmented, and highly competitive, and if we do not compete effectively, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
The market for customer experience software solutions is new and rapidly evolving, fragmented, and highly competitive. Our competitors vary in size and in the breadth and scope of the products and services they offer. Our primary competition are manual internal processes that companies use to get customer feedback, which frequently involve using a variety of different tools. Certain features of our platform compete with existing products and services within the overall customer experience market. Providers of those products and services fall within the following categories: online sentiment and survey companies; product analytics companies; marketing analytics companies; point solution vendors offering usability research tools; research services firms; and panel aggregators. Further, because our market is new and rapidly developing, it is possible that new entrants, especially those with substantial resources, more efficient operating models, more rapid technology and content development cycles or lower marketing costs, could introduce new products and services that disrupt our market and better address the needs of our customers and potential customers. While we have reasons to believe we compete favorably against these competitors, some of our existing competitors and potential future competitors are larger and have greater brand-name recognition, longer operating histories, larger marketing budgets, established marketing relationships, access to larger customer bases, and significantly resources for the development of their offerings and solutions. Our competitors may be to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing , technologies, or enterprise requirements. Moreover, we expect that an increasing focus on customer and the growth of various communications channels and new technologies will have a significant impact on the customer experience software solutions market and will likely result in the emergence of new competitors. Pricing pressures and increased competition generally could result in reduced revenue, reduced margins, , or the of our platform to or maintain more widespread market acceptance, any of which could impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Many of our current and potential competitors benefit from competitive advantages over us, including:
• greater name and brand recognition;
• longer operating histories;
• deeper product development expertise;
• greater market penetration;
• larger and more established customer bases and relationships;
• larger sales forces and more established distribution channels;
• larger marketing budgets; and
• access to significantly greater financial, human, technical, and other resources.
Some of our current or potential competitors may be able to offer products or services or functionality similar to ours at a more attractive price than we can, including by integrating or bundling such products and services with their other offerings. Acquisitions, partnerships, and consolidation in our industry may provide our competitors even more resources or may increase the likelihood of our competitors offering bundled or integrated products and services that we may not be able to effectively compete against. Furthermore, we are also subject to the risk of future disruptive technologies. If new technologies emerge that are able to collect and process experience tests, or competitors are otherwise able to develop customer experience offerings at lower prices, more efficiently, more conveniently or with greater functionality and features than ours, our ability to compete may be adversely impacted. If we are not able to compete our current and future competitors, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be affected.
If we are unable to attract new customers and renew and expand sales to existing customers, our revenue growth could be slower than we expect, and our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
Our ability to achieve significant growth in revenue in the future will depend, in large part, upon our ability to attract new customers. We may not be able to attract new organizations to our platform for a variety of reasons, including as a result of their use of traditional approaches to improving customer experience, their budgets, or the pricing and features of
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our platform compared to competitive products and services. If we fail to attract new customers and fail to maintain and expand new customer relationships, our revenue may grow more slowly than we expect and our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
Our future revenue growth also depends upon expanding revenue from existing customers. If our existing customers do not renew their subscriptions, our revenue may grow slower than expected, may not grow at all, or may decline.
During the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, sales and marketing expenses represented approximately 62%, 58% and 49% of our total revenue, respectively. We plan to continue expanding our sales efforts, both domestically and internationally, but we may be unable to hire qualified sales personnel, may be unable to successfully train those sales personnel that we are able to hire, and sales personnel may not become fully productive on the timelines that we have projected or at all. Additionally, although we dedicate significant resources to sales and marketing programs, these sales and marketing programs may not have the desired effect and may not expand sales. We cannot assure you that our efforts would result in attracting new customers, increased sales to existing customers, and additional revenue. If our efforts to attract new customers or expand within existing customers are not successful, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
The vast majority of our subscription arrangements typically have a one-year, non-cancelable term but may be longer or shorter in limited circumstances, with some large, multi-year contracts ranging up to three years. Our customers generally have no obligation to renew their subscriptions after the expiration of their initial subscription period. Moreover, our customers that do renew their subscriptions may renew for less seats or usage amounts or for shorter subscription periods. Customer renewals may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including the reductions in our customers’ spending levels, higher volumes of usage purchased upfront relative to actual usage during the subscription term, changes in customers’ business models and use cases, our customers’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction with our platform, the value that our customers derive from our platform and the CxNs they collect, our pricing or pricing structure, the pricing or capabilities of competitive products or services, or the effects of global economic conditions, including weakened economic conditions as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. If our customers do not renew their agreements with us, or renew on terms less favorable to us, our revenue may decline.
If we are not able to effectively introduce enhancements to our platform, including new products, services, features, and functionality, that achieve market acceptance, or keep pace with technological developments, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Our future success and demand for our platform will depend on several factors, including our ability to adapt and innovate and deliver high-quality CxNs and insights to our customers, competitive pricing, integration with other technologies and our platform, our ability to maintain a high-quality network of contributors, and overall market acceptance. To attract new customers and increase revenue from our existing customers, we will need to enhance and improve our existing platform, including introducing new products, services, features, and functionality, and extending our platform for new use cases. Enhancements to our platform may not be introduced in a timely or cost-effective manner, may contain errors or defects, and may have interoperability difficulties with aspects of our platform, or may not achieve the market acceptance necessary to generate significant revenue. If our customers believe that deploying our enhancements would be overly time-consuming, , or technically , then our ability to grow our business would be substantially . We have in the past experienced in our internally planned release dates of new products, services, features, and functionality, and there can be no assurance that new developments will be released according to schedule. We have also invested, and may continue to invest, in the acquisition of complementary businesses and technologies that we believe will our platform. However, we may not be to integrate these acquisitions or the expected benefits of such acquisitions. If we are to develop, acquire, or integrate new products, features, and functionality or our existing platform to meet the needs of our existing or potential customers in a timely and manner, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
In addition, because our platform is designed to operate on a variety of applications, systems, and devices, we will need to continually modify and enhance our platform to keep pace with technological advancements in such applications, systems, and devices. If we are unable to respond in a timely, customer-friendly, and cost-effective manner to these rapid technological developments, our platform may become less marketable and less competitive or obsolete, and our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely affected.
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Our operating results may fluctuate from quarter to quarter, which makes our future results difficult to predict.
Our quarterly operating results have fluctuated in the past and may fluctuate in the future. Additionally, we have a limited operating history with the current scale of our business, which makes it difficult to forecast our future results and subjects us to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to plan for and anticipate future growth. As a result, you should not rely upon our past quarterly operating results as indicators of future performance. We have encountered, and will continue to encounter, risks and uncertainties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly evolving markets, such as the risks and uncertainties described herein. Our operating results in any given quarter can be influenced by numerous factors, many of which are unpredictable or are outside of our control, including:
• our ability to maintain and grow our customer base;
• our ability to retain and increase revenue from existing customers;
• our ability to attract, engage, and retain our network of high-quality contributors;
• our ability to introduce new features and functionalities and enhance existing features and functionalities;
• changes to our pricing model, including adoption by customers of our flex-based subscription pricing plan;
• our ability to respond to competitive developments, including pricing changes and the introduction of new products and services by our competitors, or the emergence of new competitors;
• the productivity of our sales force;
• changes in the UserTesting Contributor Network costs, which costs are significant and are not directly passed through to our customers;
• changes in the use cases of our customers;
• the length and complexity of our sales cycles;
• cost to develop and upgrade our platform to incorporate new technologies;
• seasonal purchasing patterns of our customers;
• impact of outages of our platform and reputational harm;
• costs related to the acquisition of businesses, talent, technologies, or intellectual property, including potentially significant amortization costs and possible write-downs;
• changes in the security or privacy laws or demands of our customers;
• failures or breaches of security or privacy, and the costs associated with responding to and addressing any such failures or breaches;
• foreign exchange fluctuations;
• changes to financial accounting standards and the interpretation of those standards that may affect the way we recognize and report our financial results, including changes in accounting rules governing recognition of revenue;
• general economic and political conditions and government regulations in the countries where we currently operate or plan to expand;
• decisions by us to incur additional expenses, such as increases in sales and marketing or research and development;
• the timing of stock-based compensation expense; and
• potential costs to attract, onboard, retain, and motivate qualified personnel.
The impact of one or more of the foregoing and other factors may cause our operating results to vary significantly. As such, we believe that quarter-to-quarter comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful and should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. The variability and unpredictability of our operating results could result
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in our failure to meet our expectations or those of analysts that cover us or investors with respect to revenue or other operating results for a particular period. If we fail to meet or exceed such expectations, then the trading price of our common stock could fall substantially, and we could face costly lawsuits, including securities class action suits.
Because we recognize revenue from our subscriptions over the subscription term, downturns or upturns in new sales and renewals may not be immediately reflected in our operating results and may be difficult to discern. In addition, we recently added pricing options which may reduce visibility into our financial position and operating results.
Currently, a substantial majority of our revenue is earned under a subscription pricing model, and we generally recognize revenue ratably over the term of a subscription. As a result, a significant portion of the revenue we report in each quarter is derived from the recognition of revenue relating to subscriptions entered into during previous quarters. Consequently, a decline in new or renewed subscriptions in any single quarter may have a minimal impact on our revenue for that quarter. However, such a decline would negatively affect our revenue in future quarters. Accordingly, the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our platform, and potential changes in our rate of renewals, may not be fully reflected in our operating results until future periods. In addition, we have elected to expense renewal commissions in the period of booking if the period of amortization is one year or less, while revenue is recognized over the life of the agreement with our customer. As a result, a high level of renewals could continue to result in our recognition of more costs than revenue in the earlier periods of the terms of our agreements. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates” for additional information.
Moreover, a substantial majority of our customers pay for our platform under a seat-based subscription plan. However, to provide our customers additional flexibility, in the fourth quarter of 2020, we introduced a flex-based subscription pricing plan to both new and existing customers as an additional pricing option. Due to the relatively recent introduction of this pricing plan, we are unable to fully predict at this time the impacts it may have on our business, and, to the extent that our flex-based subscription plan represents a greater share of our revenue over time, we may have reduced visibility into our operating results. There is a risk that a flex-based subscription pricing plan may ultimately result in lower total cost to our customers over time or may cause our customers to limit utilization in order to stay within the limits of their existing flex-based subscription pricing plan, reducing overall revenue. Moreover, the flex-based subscription pricing plan may impact annual renewal rates in a manner that we are unable to predict at this time. In addition, if we are unable to effectively implement information technology systems critical to managing our flex-based subscription pricing plan, we may be unable to accurately forecast our business and operating results under that pricing model.
Our subscription or pricing models may not accurately reflect the optimal pricing necessary to attract new customers and retain existing customers as the market matures. As the market for our platform matures, or as competitors introduce new products and services that compete with ours, we may be unable to attract new customers and retain existing customers at the same price or based on the same pricing models as we have used historically. Within each of our two primary subscription pricing plans, we offer specific editions based on varying levels of tools, features, and functionality. Therefore, pricing decisions may impact the mix of adoption among our subscription pricing plans and negatively impact our overall revenue. In addition, we are unable to predict at this time whether our flex-based subscription pricing plan option is optimally priced. Moreover, we may from time to time decide to make further changes to our pricing model due to a variety of reasons, including changes to the market for our products and services, pricing pressures, and the introduction of new products and services by competitors. Changes to any components of our pricing model may, among other things, result in customer dissatisfaction and could lead to a loss of customers and could negatively impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
If our or our third-party service providers’ security measures are breached, if unauthorized access to customer or contributor data, our data, or our platform is otherwise obtained, or if our platform is perceived as not being secure, customers may reduce the use of or stop using our platform, and we may incur significant liabilities.
Our platform processes, stores, and transmits certain customer and contributor data, including personally identifiable information or personal information. Our platform is built to be available on the infrastructure of third-party public cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). We also use third-party service providers and sub-processors to help us deliver services and tests to our customers and contributors. These vendors may store or process personal information or other confidential information of our employees, partners, customers, or contributors. We collect such information from individuals located both in the United States and abroad and may store or process such information outside the country in which it was collected. While we, our third-party cloud providers, and our third-party processors have implemented security measures designed to protect against security breaches, these measures could fail or be insufficient to protect against unauthorized disclosures or loss of data.
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Unauthorized access to, or other security breaches of, our platform or the other systems or networks used in our business, including our own systems as well as those of our vendors, contractors, partners, or those with which we have strategic relationships, could result in the unauthorized disclosure, loss, compromise, exfiltration, destruction, or corruption of customer, contributor, or other personal data, including sensitive data, loss of business, reputational damage adversely affecting customer, contributor, or investor confidence, regulatory investigations and orders, class action or other litigation, indemnity obligations, damages for contract breach, penalties for violation of applicable laws or regulations, notification obligations, significant costs for remediation, and other liabilities. If our security measures or those of our service providers are , or are perceived to have been , as a result of third-party action, including cyber-attacks or other by computer hackers, employee , , or otherwise, and someone obtains access to our data or other data we or our service providers maintain, including sensitive customer and contributor data, personal information, intellectual property, and other confidential financial or business information, we could face of business, regulatory , or orders, and our reputation could be . We could be required to expend significant capital and other resources to alleviate the , as well as incur significant costs and liabilities, including due to , indemnity obligations, for contract , for of applicable laws or regulations, and costs for remediation and other incentives offered to customers, contributors, or other business partners in an effort to maintain business relationships after a or other . Moreover, if our platform is perceived as not being secure, regardless of whether our or our service providers’ security measures are actually , we could to our reputation, and our business, operating results, and financial condition would be impacted.
We cannot ensure that our or our service providers’ measures to prevent security breaches or other security incidents will not result in the loss of information, litigation, indemnity obligations, penalties, and other liability. Similarly, we cannot ensure that any limitations of liability provisions in our contracts would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim relating to a security breach or other security-related matters. Certain of our customer contracts do not limit our liability with respect to security breaches and other security-related matters. We also cannot be sure that our existing insurance coverage will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more large claims related to a security incident or breach, or that the insurer will not coverage as to any future claim. The assertion of one or more large us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Moreover, cyber-attacks and other malicious Internet-based activities continue to increase generally. Further, we may experience increased cyber-attacks and security challenges as our employee base works remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the techniques used to obtain unauthorized access to or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not identified until they are launched against a target, we and our service providers may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures. In addition, third parties may attempt to fraudulently induce employees, contractors, or contributors to disclose information to gain access to our data, our customers’ data, or our contributors’ data. We could suffer significant damage to our brand and reputation if a cyber-attack or other security incident were to result in access to or modification of any of our customer’s data, contributor’s data, other external data, or our own data or our IT systems or if the services we provide to our customers were , or if our platform is perceived as having security . Customers and contributors could confidence in the security and reliability of our platform and perceive them to be not secure. This could lead to fewer customers and contributors using our platform and result in reduced revenue and earnings. The costs we would incur to address and respond to these security , and to prevent them thereafter, would increase our expenses. Therefore, these types of security could also lead to lawsuits, regulatory and , and increased legal liability.
We have a limited operating history which makes it difficult to evaluate our business and prospects and increases the risks associated with your investment.
Although we were founded in 2007, we have changed our business model significantly over time. For example, while we first launched our platform for enterprise customers in 2012, we did not invest significantly in our enterprise solution until we hired our enterprise sales force in 2016. In addition, in the fourth quarter of 2020, we launched a flex-based subscription pricing plan and began a roll out to both new and existing customers as an additional pricing option. As a result, our business and pricing models have not been fully proven, and we have only a limited operating history with our current business and pricing models to evaluate our business and future prospects, which subjects us to a number of uncertainties, including our ability to plan for and model future growth. Therefore, our historical revenue growth should not be considered indicative of our future performance.
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We have experienced rapid growth and expect to invest in our growth for the foreseeable future. If we fail to manage our growth effectively, then our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely affected.
We have experienced rapid growth in recent periods, and we expect to continue to invest broadly across our organization to support our growth. Our total revenue has grown from $102.2 million for the year ended December 31, 2020 to $147.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2021. During this period, the number of our employees has grown from 560 as of December 31, 2020 to 783 as of December 31, 2021. Although we have experienced rapid growth historically, we may not sustain our current growth rates, nor can we assure you that our investments to support our growth will be successful. The growth and expansion of our business will require us to invest significant financial and operational resources and the continuous dedication of our management team.
We plan to continue to expand our international operations into more countries in the future, which will place additional demands on our resources and operations. The growth and expansion of our business has placed and continues to place a significant strain on our management, operations, financial infrastructure, and corporate culture. In the event of further growth of our business, our information technology systems and our internal controls and procedures may not be adequate to support our operations. We have also experienced significant growth in the number of customers, transactions, and amount of data that our platform and our associated hosting infrastructure support. For example, we had 305 customers with at least $100,000 of ARR as of December 31, 2021, reflecting growth of 61% from December 31, 2020.
We have encountered, and will continue to encounter, risks and difficulties frequently experienced by growing companies in rapidly changing industries, including our ability to achieve market acceptance of our platform and attract and retain customers, as well as increasing competition and increasing expenses as we continue to grow our business. To manage any future growth effectively, we must continue to improve and expand our information technology and financial infrastructure, our operating and administrative systems and controls, our corporate governance systems, and our ability to manage headcount, capital, and processes in an efficient manner. We may not be able to successfully implement or scale improvements to our systems, processes, and controls in an efficient or timely manner.
We are in the early stages of implementing new information technology systems, including reporting tools and processes, critical to support and manage our expanded pricing plan options and the overall growth of our business, and, as a result, we have incurred and will continue to incur additional costs in connection with implementing these systems. If we are unable to effectively implement these systems, or if we experience disruption during the system implementation process, our ability to manage our business and forecast our operating results will be adversely affected. In addition, our existing and newly implemented systems, processes, and controls may not prevent or detect all errors, omissions, or fraud. We may also experience difficulties in managing improvements to our systems, processes, and controls or in connection with third-party software licensed to help us with such improvements. Any future growth will continue to add complexity to our organization and require effective coordination throughout our organization.
Failure to manage growth effectively could result in difficulty or delays in attracting new customers, declines in quality or customer satisfaction and demand for our platform, increases in costs, difficulties in introducing new products and services or enhancing our platform, loss of customers and contributors, difficulties in attracting or retaining talent, or other operational difficulties, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Effectively managing our growth may also be more difficult to accomplish the longer that our employees, our customers, and the overall economy is impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our growth depends on our ability to attract and engage our network of contributors, and the failure to attract and engage our contributors could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our network of contributors is an important element of our business model. Our ability to attract and maintain customers in the future may be affected by our ability to attract and engage high-quality contributors to provide their perspectives through our platform. Achieving engagement by a network of contributors may require us to increasingly engage in sophisticated, costly, and lengthy marketing efforts that may not result in the additional engagement we seek, or may not do so in a cost-effective manner. If we are unable to engage high-quality contributors, our reputation could be harmed, our existing customers may choose not to renew their subscriptions, and our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely impacted.
Real or perceived defects or errors on our platform could harm our reputation, result in significant costs to us, and impair our ability to sell subscriptions to our platform and related services.
The software technology underlying our platform is inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors, particularly when first introduced or when new features or capabilities are released. In addition, our platform depends on
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the ability of our software to store, retrieve, process, and manage immense amounts of data. Although we continually test our platform for defects and work with customers through our customer support organization to identify and correct errors, we have from time to time found defects or errors on our platform, and new defects or errors in our existing platform or new software may be detected in the future by us or our users. There can be no assurance that our existing platform and new software will not contain defects. Any real or perceived defects, errors, failures, bugs, or vulnerabilities on our platform could result in negative publicity, data security, access, retention, or other performance issues and customer terminations and impair our ability to sell subscriptions to our platform and related services in the future, all of which could our business. The costs incurred in such or in our platform may be substantial and could affect our business, operating results, and financial condition. Moreover, the to our reputation and legal liability related to such or may be substantial and impact our business, operating results, and financial condition. We are also reliant on third-party software and infrastructure, including the infrastructure of the Internet, to provide our platform. Any , or to our platform or this infrastructure that cause to the availability of our platform, of data, or other performance issues could result in, among other things:
• lost revenue or delayed market acceptance and sales of our platform;
• loss of competitive position;
• early termination of customer agreements or loss of customers;
• credits or refunds to customers;
• lawsuits and other claims against us;
• diversion of development resources;
• increased expenses associated with remedying any defect, including increased technical support costs;
• injury to our brand and reputation; and
• increased maintenance and warranty costs.
While our customer agreements may contain limitations and disclaimers that purport to limit our liability for damages related to defects in our platform, such limitations and disclaimers may not be enforced by a court or other tribunal or otherwise effectively protect us from such claims. Accordingly, any errors, defects, or disruptions to our platform could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We invest significantly in research and development, and to the extent our research and development investments do not translate into enhancements to our platform, or if we do not make those investments efficiently, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
A key element of our strategy is to invest significantly in our research and development efforts to improve and develop new solutions and rapidly introduce new technologies, features, and functionality of our platform. Our research and development expenses were 27%, 27%, and 27% of our total revenue for the years ended December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, respectively. If we do not spend our research and development budget efficiently or effectively on compelling innovation and technologies, our business may be harmed and we may not realize the expected benefits of our strategy. Moreover, research and development projects can be technically challenging, time-consuming, and expensive. The nature of these research and development cycles may cause us to experience delays between the time we incur expenses associated with research and development and the time we are able to offer compelling platform updates and generate revenue, if any, from such investment. Additionally, anticipated demand for an enhancement to our platform could fail to materialize after the development cycle has commenced, and we would nonetheless be to avoid substantial costs associated with the development of any such platform . If we expend a significant amount of resources on research and development and our efforts do not lead to the of our platform that is competitive in our current or future markets, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be affected.
Our long-term success depends, in part, on our ability to expand the sales of our platform to customers located outside of the United States and our current, and any further, expansion of our international operations exposes us to risks that could have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We have been recognizing increased revenue from international sales, and we conduct our business activities in various foreign countries. We currently have operations in North America, Europe, and Asia. In the years ended
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December 31, 2021, 2020 and 2019, we derived approximately 18%, 15% and 9% of our total revenue, respectively, from customers located outside the United States. Our ability to manage our business and conduct our operations internationally requires considerable management attention and resources and is subject to the particular challenges of supporting a rapidly growing business in an environment of multiple cultures, customs, legal systems, regulatory systems, and commercial infrastructures. International expansion will require us to invest significant funds and other resources. Our operations in international markets may not develop at a rate that supports our level of investment. Expanding internationally may subject us to new risks that we have not faced before or increase risks that we currently face, including risks associated with:
• recruiting and retaining talented and capable employees and contributors in foreign countries;
• increased exposure to public health issues, such as the COVID-19 pandemic;
• providing our platform to customers and contributors from different cultures, which may require us to adapt to sales practices, modify our platform, and provide features necessary to effectively serve the local market;
• the burden of complying with a wide variety of laws, including those relating to labor matters, permanent establishment, payroll tax and other tax considerations;
• compliance with privacy, data protection, encryption, biometric and information security laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), European Union Data Protection Directive and the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Singapore Personal Data Protection Act of 2012;
• longer sales cycles in some countries;
• increased third-party costs relating to data centers outside of the United States;
• generally longer payment cycles and greater difficulty in collecting accounts receivable;
• credit risk and higher levels of payment fraud;
• weaker intellectual property protection in some countries;
• compliance with anti-bribery laws, such as the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, as amended (FCPA), and the UK Bribery Act 2010 (UK Bribery Act);
• currency exchange rate fluctuations;
• tariffs, export, and import restrictions, restrictions on foreign investments, sanctions, and other trade barriers or protection measures;
• foreign exchange controls that might prevent us from repatriating cash earned outside the United States;
• economic or political instability in countries where we may operate, including, for example, the uncertainty associated with a possible Scottish referendum on independence from the United Kingdom;
• corporate espionage;
• compliance with the laws of numerous taxing jurisdictions, both foreign and domestic, in which we conduct business, potential double taxation of our international earnings, and potentially adverse tax consequences due to changes in applicable U.S. and foreign tax laws;
• increased costs to establish and maintain effective controls at foreign locations; and
• overall higher costs of doing business internationally.
Our international sales and operations may be subject to foreign governmental laws and regulations, which vary substantially from country to country. Further, we may be unable to keep up to date with changes in government laws and regulations as they change over time. Failure to comply with these laws and regulations could result in adverse effects to our business. In many foreign countries, it is common for others to engage in business practices that are prohibited by our internal policies and procedures or U.S. and foreign laws and regulations applicable to us. Although we have implemented policies and procedures designed to ensure compliance with these laws and regulations and our internal policies, there can be no assurance that all of our employees, contractors, partners, and agents will comply with these laws and regulations or
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our internal policies. Violations of laws or regulations by our employees, contractors, partners, or agents could result in litigation, regulatory action, costs of investigation, delays in revenue recognition, delays in financial reporting, financial reporting misstatements, fines, penalties, or a prohibition on selling our platform, any of which could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
If we fail to offer high-quality customer support, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted and our reputation will suffer.
Once our platform is deployed to our customers, our customers rely on our support services to resolve any related issues. High-quality customer education and customer support is important for the successful marketing and sale of our products and for the increase within existing customers. The importance of high-quality customer support will increase as we expand our business and pursue new organizations. If we do not help our customers quickly resolve post-deployment issues and provide effective ongoing customer support, our ability to maintain and increase within existing customers could suffer and our reputation with existing or potential customers could be harmed.
The majority of our customer base consists of large and mid-sized organizations, and we currently generate a significant portion of our revenue from a relatively small number of organizations, the loss of any of which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
The majority of our customer base consists of large and mid-sized organizations, and we currently generate a significant portion of our revenue from a relatively small number of organizations. Accordingly, the loss of any one of our larger customers could have a material adverse impact on our revenue. While we expect that the revenue from our largest customers will decrease over time as a percentage of our revenue as we generate more revenue from other customers, we also believe that revenue from our largest customers may continue to account for a significant portion of our revenue, at least in the near term. In the event that these large customers discontinue the use of our platform or uses our platform in a more limited capacity, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
As a substantial portion of our sales efforts are increasingly targeted at large enterprise customers, our sales cycle may become increasingly lengthy and more expensive and we may encounter greater pricing pressure, all of which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
As a substantial portion of our sales efforts are increasingly targeted at large enterprise customers, we face greater costs, longer sales cycles, and less predictability in the completion of some of our sales. Larger organizations typically have longer decision-making cycles, require greater functionality and scalability, expect a broader range of services, demand that vendors take on a larger share of risks, demand higher levels of customer service and support, and expect greater payment flexibility from vendors. We are often required to spend time and resources to better familiarize potential customers with the value proposition of our platform. As a result of these factors, sales opportunities with large organizations may require us to devote greater sales and administrative support and professional services resources to individual customers, which could increase our costs, lengthen our sales cycle, and divert our own sales and professional services resources to a smaller number of larger customers. We may spend substantial time, effort, and money in our sales efforts without being successful in producing any sales. All these factors can add further risk to business conducted with these customers. In addition, if sales expected from a large customer for a particular quarter are not realized in that quarter or at all, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be materially and affected.
Our revenue growth and ability to achieve and sustain profitability will depend, in part on being able to expand our direct sales force and increase the productivity of our sales force.
To date, most of our revenue has been attributable to the efforts of our direct sales force. In order to increase our revenue and achieve and sustain profitability, we must increase the size of our direct sales force, both in the United States and internationally, to generate additional revenue from new and existing customers.
We believe that there is significant competition for sales personnel with the skills and technical knowledge that we require. Because our platform is often sold to large organizations and involves a long sales cycle, it is more difficult to find sales personnel with the specific skills and technical knowledge needed to sell subscriptions to our platform and, even if we are able to hire qualified personnel, doing so may be expensive. Our ability to achieve significant revenue growth will depend, in large part, on our success in recruiting, training, and retaining sufficient numbers of direct sales personnel to support our growth. New sales personnel require significant training and can take a number of months to achieve full productivity. Our recent hires and planned hires may not become productive as quickly as we expect and if our new sales employees do not become fully productive on the timelines that we have projected or at all, our revenue will not increase at anticipated levels and our ability to achieve long-term projections may be negatively impacted. We may also be unable to
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hire or retain sufficient numbers of qualified individuals in the markets where we do business or plan to do business. Furthermore, hiring sales personnel in new countries requires additional set up and upfront costs that we may not recover if the sales personnel fail to achieve full productivity. In addition, as we continue to grow, a larger percentage of our sales force will be new to our company and our platform, which may adversely affect our sales if we cannot train our sales force quickly or effectively. Attrition rates may increase, and we may face integration challenges as we continue to seek to expand our sales force. Because we do not have a long history of expanding our sales force or managing a sales force at the scale that we intend to operate, we cannot accurately predict whether, or to what extent, our sales will increase as we expand our sales force or how long it will take for sales personnel to become productive. If we are to hire and train sufficient numbers of sales personnel, or if the sales personnel are not in obtaining new customers or increasing sales to our existing customer base, our business will be affected.
We periodically change and make adjustments to our sales organization in response to market opportunities, competitive threats, management changes, product and service introductions or enhancements, acquisitions, sales performance, increases in sales headcount, cost levels, and other internal and external considerations. Any future sales organization changes may result in a temporary reduction of productivity, which could negatively affect our rate of growth. In addition, any significant change to the way we structure our compensation of our sales organization may be disruptive and may affect our revenue growth.
Our business and growth depend in part on the success of our strategic relationships with third parties.
We depend on, and anticipate that we will continue to depend on, various third-party relationships in order to sustain and grow our business, including technology companies whose products integrate with ours. Failure of any of these technology companies to maintain, support, or secure their technology platforms in general, and our integrations in particular, or errors or defects in their technologies or products, could adversely affect our relationships with our customers, damage our brand and reputation, and result in delays or difficulties in our ability to provide our platform. Identifying, negotiating, and documenting relationships with strategic third parties requires significant time and resources. Our agreements with these third parties are typically limited in duration, non-exclusive, and do not prohibit our partners from working with our competitors or from offering competing services.
If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with these strategic third parties, or realizing the anticipated benefits from such partnerships, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenue could be impaired and our operating results may suffer.
If we fail to integrate our platform with a variety of software applications, operating systems, and platforms that are developed by others, our platform may become less marketable, less competitive or obsolete, and our business, operating results, and financial condition would be adversely impacted.
Our customers and prospective customers expect our platform to integrate with a variety of software systems, and we need to continuously modify and enhance our platform to adapt to changes in software, browser, and database technologies. In general, we rely on the fact that the providers of such software systems continue to allow us access to their application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable these customer integrations. In the future we expect to integrate our platform with additional third-party APIs and we anticipate that we will be unable to rely on long-term written contracts to govern our relationships with these providers and instead will be subject to the standard terms and conditions for application developers of such providers, which govern the distribution, operation, and fees of such software systems, and which are subject to change by such providers from time to time. As such, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
Unfavorable conditions in our industry or the economy more generally or reductions in information technology spending could limit our ability to grow our business and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our operating results may vary based on the impact of changes in our industry or the economy more generally on us or our customers. Our business and operating results depend on demand for information technology generally and for customer experience software solutions platforms in particular, which in turn is influenced by the scale of business that our customers are conducting. Weak economic conditions, either in the U.S. or internationally, including as a result of changes in gross domestic product growth, financial and credit market fluctuations, political turmoil, natural catastrophes, domestic or geopolitical crises, such as terrorism, military conflict, including escalating military tension between Russia and Ukraine, war or the perception that hostilities may be imminent, and public health crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and related public health measures, could cause a decrease in business investments, including spending on information technology generally. To the extent that weak economic conditions cause our existing customers or potential customers to
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reduce their budget for customer experience solutions platforms or to perceive spending on such systems as discretionary, demand for our platform may be adversely affected. Moreover, customers and potential customers may require extended billing terms and other financial concessions, which would limit our ability to grow our business and adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Any disruption of service of Amazon Web Services, our data hosting service, could interrupt or delay our ability to deliver our services to our customers.
We currently host our platform, serve our customers, and support our operations worldwide primarily using AWS. Despite precautions, we may also experience planned and unplanned costs, interruptions, delays, and outages in service or other performance problems in connection with such cloud infrastructure services. We do not have control over the operations of the AWS facilities. These facilities are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires, cyber security attacks, terrorist attacks, power losses, telecommunications failures, and similar events. The occurrence of a natural disaster or an act of terrorism, a decision to close the facilities without adequate notice, or other unanticipated problems could result in lengthy in the performance of our platform and services. In particular, the California-based data facilities are located in an area known for seismic activity, increasing our to the risk that an earthquake could significantly the operations of these facilities. The facilities also could be subject to -ins, computer viruses, , acts of , and other . Our platform’s continuing and uninterrupted performance is to our . As such, it is for our business that our platform be accessible without or of performance, and we typically provide our customers with service level commitments with respect to annual uptime. Customers may become by any system that the availability or functionality of our platform or services. could lead to the triggering of our service level agreements and the issuance of credits to our customers, in which case, we may not be fully indemnified for such pursuant to our agreement with AWS. We may not be to convert our AWS operations to another cloud provider if there are or with our use of AWS. Sustained or repeated system would reduce the of our platform to customers and result in contract , thereby reducing revenue. Moreover, publicity arising from these types of could our reputation and may impact use of our platform. We may not carry sufficient business insurance to compensate us for that may occur as a result of any events that cause in our service.
In addition, AWS does not have an obligation to renew its agreements with us on commercially reasonable terms, or at all. If we are unable to renew our agreements with AWS or enter into a cloud services agreement on commercially reasonable terms with another service provider, if our agreements with our service providers are terminated, or, if in the future, we add additional data center providers, we may experience costs or downtime in connection with the transfer to, or the addition of, new data center providers. If these providers were to increase the cost of their services, we may have to increase the price of our platform, and our operating results may be adversely impacted.
Errors, defects, or disruptions in our platform could diminish demand, harm our financial results, and subject us to liability.
Our customers use our platform for important aspects of their businesses, and any errors, defects, or disruptions to our platform, or other performance problems with our platform could harm our brand and reputation and may damage our customers’ businesses. We are also reliant on third-party software and infrastructure, including the infrastructure of the Internet, to provide our platform. Any failure of or disruption to this software and infrastructure could also make our platform unavailable to our customers. Our platform is constantly changing with new software releases, which may contain undetected errors when first introduced or released. Any errors, defects, disruptions in service, or other performance problems with our platform could result in publicity, of or in market acceptance of our products, of competitive position, of payment to us, lower consumption rates, or by customers for sustained by them. In such an event, we may be required, or may choose, for customer relations or other reasons, to expend additional resources in order to help correct the . Accordingly, any , , or to our platform could impact our brand and reputation, revenue, and operating results.
From time to time we provide service level commitments under our customer contracts. If we fail to meet these contractual commitments, we could be obligated to provide credits or refunds for prepaid amounts related to unused subscription services or face contract terminations, which could adversely affect our operating results.
Our customer contracts typically provide for service level commitments, which relate to annual uptime and, for premiere support, certain response times. If we are unable to meet the stated service level commitments or suffer extended periods of unavailability for our platform, we may be contractually obligated to provide these customers with service credits, refunds for prepaid amounts related to unused subscription services, or other remedies, or we could face contract
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terminations. In addition, we could face legal claims for breach of contract, tort, or breach of warranty. Although we typically have contractual protections, such as warranty disclaimers and limitation of liability provisions, in our customer agreements, they may not fully or effectively protect us from claims by customers, commercial relationships, or other third parties. We may not be fully indemnified by our vendors for service interruptions that are beyond our control, and 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 and management’s time and other resources. As such, our revenue could be impacted if we to meet our service level commitments under our agreements with our customers, including, but not limited to, support response times and service . Thus, we have not been required to provide customers with service credits that have been material to our operating results, but we cannot you that we will not incur material costs associated with providing service credits to our customers in the future.
Therefore, any failure to meet our service level commitments could adversely impact our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our business depends on a strong and trusted brand, and any failure to maintain, protect, and enhance our brand would hurt our ability to retain or expand our customer and contributor base, our market share, and our ability to attract and retain employees and contributors.
We have developed a strong and trusted brand identity that we believe has contributed significantly to the success of our business. We believe that continuing to develop, enhance and maintain our brand and reputation in a cost-effective manner are important to achieving widespread acceptance of our platform and are important elements in attracting new customers and contributors and maintaining existing customers and contributors. We believe that the importance of our brand and reputation will increase as competition in our market further intensifies. Successful promotion of our brand will depend on the effectiveness of our marketing efforts, our ability to provide a reliable and useful platform at competitive prices, the perceived value of our platform, and our ability to provide quality customer support. In addition, the promotion of our brand requires us to make substantial expenditures, and we anticipate that the expenditures will increase as our market becomes more competitive, as we expand into new markets, and as more sales are generated through our strategic partners. Brand promotion activities may not yield increased revenue, and even if they do, the increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incur in building and maintaining our brand and reputation. If we to promote and maintain our brand or to maintain loyalty among our customers, or if we incur substantial expenses in an attempt to promote and maintain our brand, we may to attract new customers, contributors and partners or retain our existing customers, contributors and partners and our business and financial condition may be affected. Our brand may also be affected by the actions of contributors that are deemed to be by our customers, by the actions of contributors acting under or inauthentic identities, by the use of our platform for or ends, or by our decisions to remove content or participation on our platform by persons who our content policy or terms of service. Any publicity relating to our employees, customers, contributors, partners, or others associated with these parties, may also tarnish our own reputation simply by association and may reduce the value of our brand. to our brand and reputation may result in reduced demand for our platform and increased risk of market share to our competitors. Any efforts to restore the value of our brand and rebuild our reputation may be and may not be .
Our customers may fail to pay us in accordance with the terms of their agreements, necessitating action by us to compel payment.
We typically enter into non-cancelable agreements with a term of one year with our customers, but which may be longer or shorter in limited circumstances, with some large, multi-year contracts ranging up to three years. If customers fail to pay us under the terms of our agreements, we may be adversely affected both from the inability to collect amounts due and the cost of enforcing the terms of our contracts, including litigation. The risk of such negative effects increases with the term length of our customer arrangements. Furthermore, some of our customers may seek bankruptcy protection or other similar relief and fail to pay amounts due to us, or pay those amounts in an untimely manner, either of which could adversely affect our operating results, financial position, and cash flow. Moreover, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, some existing customers have negotiated, and others may attempt to renegotiate, contracts and obtain concessions, including, among other things, longer payment terms or modified subscription dates, or may to make payments on their existing contracts, which may materially and impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
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Risks Related to Our People
Our business depends largely on our ability to attract and retain talented employees, including senior management. If we lose the services of the members of our senior management team, we may not be able to execute on our business strategy.
Our future success depends on our continuing ability to attract, train, assimilate, and retain highly skilled personnel, including software engineers and sales personnel. We face intense competition for qualified individuals from numerous software and other technology companies. In addition, competition for qualified personnel, particularly software engineers, is particularly intense in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters are located. Moreover, due to recent labor shortages in the United States, particularly for highly skilled personnel in the technology sector, it is currently extremely difficult and expensive to attract and retain qualified individuals. We may not be able to retain our current key employees or attract, train, assimilate, or retain other highly skilled personnel in the future. We may incur significant costs to attract and retain highly skilled personnel, and we may lose new employees to our competitors or other technology companies before we realize the benefit of our investment in recruiting and training them. As we move into new geographies, we will need to attract and recruit skilled personnel in those areas. If we are unable to attract and retain suitably qualified individuals who are capable of meeting our growing technical, operational, and managerial requirements, on a timely basis or at all, our business, operating results, and financial condition may be affected.
Our future success also depends in large part on the continued services of senior management and other key personnel. We rely on our leadership team in the areas of operations, strategy, security, marketing, sales, support, and general and administrative functions, and on individual contributors on our research and development team. Our senior management and other key personnel are all employed on an at-will basis, which means that they could terminate their employment with us at any time, for any reason, and without notice. We do not currently maintain key-person life insurance policies on any of our officers or employees. If we lose the services of senior management or other key personnel, or if we are unable to attract, train, assimilate, and retain the highly skilled personnel we need, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Volatility or lack of appreciation in our stock price may also affect our ability to attract and retain our key employees. Many of our senior personnel and other key employees have become, or will soon become, vested in a substantial amount of stock or stock options. Employees may be more likely to leave us if the shares they own or the shares underlying their vested options have significantly appreciated in value relative to the original purchase price of the shares or the exercise price of the options, or conversely, if the exercise price of the options that they hold are significantly above the market price of our common stock. If we are unable to retain our employees, or if we need to increase our compensation expenses to retain our employees, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely affected.
Our corporate culture has contributed to our success, and if we cannot maintain this culture as we grow, we could lose the innovation, creativity, and teamwork fostered by our culture, and our business may be harmed.
We believe that our corporate culture has been a key contributor to our success. We have worked to develop our culture, and we strive to empower our employees to continuously learn, evolve, and grow, and treat each other with respect. If we do not continue to develop our corporate culture as we grow and evolve, including maintaining a culture that encourages a sense of ownership by our employees, it could harm our ability to foster the innovation, creativity, and teamwork we believe that we need to support our growth. We expect to continue to hire as we expand. As our organization grows and we are required to implement more complex organizational structures, we may find it increasingly difficult to maintain the beneficial aspects of our corporate culture, which could negatively impact our future success. In addition, potential liquidity events could create disparities of wealth among our employees, which could impact relations among employees and our corporate culture in general. Our anticipated headcount growth and our recent transition from a private company to a public company may result in a change to our corporate culture, which could impact our business.
Our management team has limited experience managing a public company.
Most members of our management team have limited experience managing a publicly traded company, interacting with public company investors and regulators, and complying with the increasingly complex laws pertaining to public companies. Our management team may not successfully or efficiently manage our recent transition to being a public company subject to significant regulatory oversight and reporting obligations under the federal securities laws and the continuous scrutiny of securities analysts and investors. These new obligations and constituents require significant attention from our senior management and could divert their attention away from the day-to-day management of our business, which could adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
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Risks Related to Our Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property rights are valuable, and failure to protect them could reduce the value of our products, services, and brand.
Our success and ability to compete depends in part upon our intellectual property and other proprietary rights. We rely on a combination of copyright protection, trade secret protection, rights in our trademarks, patent rights, and contractual agreements with our employees, contractors, customers, partners, and others to protect our intellectual property rights. Our intellectual property is an important asset, and litigation to defend intellectual property can be expensive and lengthy. Various factors outside of our control also pose a threat to our intellectual property rights, as well as to our products, services, and technologies. However, we may fail to obtain effective intellectual property protection, or effective intellectual property protection may not be available in every country in which our products and services are available. We may fail to effectively enforce all our rights in every jurisdiction. Also, the efforts we have taken to protect our intellectual property rights may not be sufficient or effective, and any of our intellectual property rights may be , which could result in them being narrowed in scope or declared or unenforceable. our efforts to protect and enforce our proprietary rights, there can be no assurance our intellectual property rights will be sufficient to protect others offering products or services that are substantially similar to ours and compete with our business or that parties may attempt to copy aspects of our technology or our proprietary information.
In addition to registered intellectual property rights such as trademark registrations and patents, we rely on non-registered proprietary information and technology, such as trade secrets, confidential information, know-how, copyrights, and technical information. In order to protect our proprietary information and technology, we rely in part on agreements with our employees, investors, independent contractors and other third parties that place restrictions on the use and disclosure of this intellectual property. These agreements may be breached, or this intellectual property, including trade secrets, may otherwise be disclosed or become known to our competitors, which could cause us to lose any competitive advantage resulting from this intellectual property. To the extent that our employees, independent contractors or other third parties with whom we do business use intellectual property owned by others in their work for us, disputes may arise as to the rights in related or resulting know-how and inventions. The loss of trade secret protection could make it easier for third parties to compete with our products and services by copying functionality. In addition, any changes in, or interpretations of, intellectual property laws may compromise our ability to enforce our trade secrets and other intellectual property rights. We may pursue registration of trademarks and domain names in the United States and in certain jurisdictions outside of the United States. protection of trademarks and domain names is expensive and to maintain, both in terms of application and registration costs as well as the costs of and enforcing those rights. We may be required to protect our rights in an increasing number of countries, a process that is expensive and may not be or which we may not pursue in every country in which our products and services are distributed or made available. Foreign countries have different laws and regulations regarding protection of intellectual property, and the protection available in other jurisdictions may not be as as that provided in the United States.
We may be unable to obtain trademark protection for our technologies and brands, and our existing trademark registrations and applications, and any trademarks that may be used in the future, may not provide us with competitive advantages or distinguish our products and services from those of our competitors. In addition, our trademarks may be contested, circumvented, or found to be unenforceable, weak, or invalid, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing or otherwise violating them. To counter infringement, misappropriation or unauthorized use of our trademarks, we may deem it necessary to file infringement claims, which can be expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, because of the substantial amount of discovery required in connection with intellectual property , there is a risk that some of our confidential information could be compromised by disclosure during this type of . An outcome in such or proceedings may us to a of our competitive position, us to significant liabilities, or require us to seek licenses that may not be available on commercially acceptable terms, if at all.
Litigation or proceedings before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office or other governmental authorities and administrative bodies in the United States and abroad may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights and to determine the validity and scope of the proprietary rights of others. Efforts to enforce or protect proprietary rights may be ineffective and could result in substantial costs and diversion of resources, which could harm our business and operating results.
We may become subject to intellectual property infringement claims brought against us by others.
From time to time, our competitors or other third parties may claim that we are infringing upon or misappropriating their intellectual property rights, and we may be found to be infringing upon or misappropriating such rights. While we
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would zealously and appropriately defend against any wrongful claim, we may not be successful in defending against any such challenges, securing settlements, or obtaining licenses to avoid or resolve any intellectual property disputes.
Accordingly, successful intellectual property infringement claims against us could result in monetary liability or a material disruption in the conduct of our business. We cannot be certain that our products and services, platform, and brand names do not or will not infringe valid patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights held by third parties. We may be subject to legal proceedings and claims from time to time relating to the intellectual property of others in the ordinary course of our business. Any intellectual property litigation to which we might become a party, or for which we are required to provide indemnification, may require us to cease selling our platform or using products and services that incorporate the intellectual property that we allegedly infringe, make substantial payments for legal fees, settlement payments, or other costs or damages, obtain a license, which may not be available on reasonable terms or at all, to sell or use the relevant technology, or redesign the feature to avoid , which could be , time-consuming, or . Any or , regardless of merit, could cause us to incur significant expenses and, if asserted us, could require that we pay substantial or ongoing royalty payments, prevent us from offering our products and services, or require that we comply with other terms. We do not have a significant patent portfolio, which could prevent us from patent through our own patent portfolio, and our competitors and others may now and in the future have significantly larger and more mature patent portfolios than we have. We may also be obligated to obtain licenses from third parties or modify our platform, and each such obligation could further exhaust our resources.
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, our reputation, and operating results. We expect that the occurrence of infringement claims is likely to grow as the market for customer experience software solutions grows. Accordingly, our exposure to damages resulting from infringement claims could increase and this could further impact our financial and management resources.
Adverse litigation judgments or settlements resulting from legal proceedings in which we may be involved could expose us to monetary damages or limit our ability to operate our business.
We may become involved in private actions, collective actions, investigations, and various other legal proceedings by customers, employees, competitors, government agencies, or others. The results of any such litigation, investigations, and other legal proceedings are inherently unpredictable and expensive. Any claims against us, whether or not meritorious, could be time consuming, result in costly litigation, damage our reputation, require significant amounts of management time, and divert significant resources. If any of these legal proceedings were to be determined adversely to us, or we were to enter into a settlement arrangement, we could be exposed to monetary damages or limits on our ability to operate our business, which could have an effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We employ third-party licensed software for use in or with our software, and the inability to maintain these licenses or errors in the software we license could result in increased costs or reduced service levels, which could adversely affect our business.
Our software utilizes certain third-party software obtained under licenses. We anticipate that we will continue to rely on such software and development tools licensed from third parties in the future. Although we believe that there are commercially reasonable alternatives to the third-party software we currently license, this may not always be the case, or it may be difficult or costly to migrate to alternative solutions. Also, any undetected errors or defects in third-party software could prevent the deployment or impair the functionality of our platform, delay new updates or enhancements to our platform, result in a failure of our platform, and injure our reputation.
Our platform contains open source software components, and failure to comply with the terms of the underlying licenses could restrict our ability to sell our platform.
Our platform incorporates certain open source software and we may continue to use open source software in our platform in the future. An open source license typically permits the use, modification, and distribution of software in source code form subject to certain conditions. There are uncertainties regarding the proper interpretation of and compliance with open source software licenses. Certain open source software licenses require a user who intends to distribute the open source software as a component of the user’s software to disclose publicly part or all of the source code to the user’s software. The use and distribution of open source software may entail greater risks than the use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or other contractual protections regarding infringement claims or the quality of the code. Some of these licenses (often called “copyleft” or “viral” licenses) contain requirements that we offer our products that incorporate the open source software for no cost, that could cause us to make
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available the source code of the modifications or derivative works that we create based upon the licensed open source software, and that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of a particular open source license granting third parties certain rights of further use. By the terms of such open source licenses, we could also be required to release the source code of our proprietary platform technology, and to make our proprietary platform technology available under open source licenses, if we combine and/or distribute our proprietary software with such open source software in a manner that triggers the obligation of the license. Although we do not believe that we have used open source software in a manner that might condition its use on our distribution of any portion of our platform in source code form, the interpretation of open source licenses is legally complex, and, despite our efforts, it is possible that we may be liable for copyright infringement, breach of contract, or other claims if our use of open source software is adjudged to not comply with the applicable open source licenses.
Moreover, we cannot assure you that our processes for controlling our use of open source software in our platform will be effective. If we have not complied with the terms of an applicable open source software license, we may need to seek licenses from third parties to continue offering our platform on terms that are not economically feasible, to re-engineer our platform to remove or replace the open source software, to discontinue the sale of our platform if re-engineering could not be accomplished on a timely basis, to pay monetary damages, or to make available the source code for aspects of our proprietary technology, any of which could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In addition to risks related to license requirements, use of open source software can involve greater risks than those associated with use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties, assurances of title, performance, non-infringement, or controls on the origin of the software. There is typically no support available for open source software, and we cannot ensure that the authors of such open source software will not abandon further development and maintenance of such open source software. Many of the risks associated with the use of open source software, such as the lack of warranties or assurances of title or performance, cannot be eliminated, and could, if not properly addressed, negatively affect our business. We have established processes to help alleviate these risks, including a review process for screening requests from our development organizations for the use of open source software, but we cannot be sure that all open source software is identified or submitted for approval prior to use in our platform.
Indemnity provisions in various agreements potentially expose us to substantial liability for intellectual property infringement and other losses.
Our agreements with customers, partners, and other third parties may include indemnification or other provisions under which we agree to indemnify or otherwise be liable to them for losses suffered or incurred as a result of claims of intellectual property infringement, damages caused by us to property or persons, data and security breaches, and other liabilities relating to or arising from our software, services, acts, or omissions. The term of these contractual provisions often survives termination or expiration of the applicable agreement. Large indemnity payments or damage claims from contractual breach could harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. Although in some cases we contractually limit our liability with respect to such obligations, we do not always do so or our obligations are capped at a high amount, and in the future we may still incur substantial liability related to them. Any with a customer with respect to such obligations could have effects on our relationship with that customer and other current and prospective customers, reduce demand for our solutions, and our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Risks Related to Legal and Regulatory Matters
We process, store, and use personal information and other data, which subjects us to governmental regulation and other legal obligations related to privacy, and violation of these privacy obligations could result in a claim for damages, regulatory action, loss of business, or unfavorable publicity.
We receive, store, and process personal information and other information, including customer, employee, and contributor information and CxNs that include contributor feedback and insight for our customers. There are numerous domestic and international privacy and data protection laws and regulations. These laws and regulations, and the storing, use, processing, and disclosure and protection of personal information, are continually evolving, subject to differing interpretations, and may be inconsistent among jurisdictions or conflict with other laws, regulations, and rules. Additionally, laws, regulations, and standards covering marketing and advertising activities conducted by telephone, email, mobile devices, and the Internet, may be applicable to our business, such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (the TCPA), as implemented by the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the CAN-SPAM Act, and similar state consumer protection laws, as well as Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act and its “Do Not Call” provisions. Our privacy policies and privacy-related obligations to third parties set forth additional standards and obligations related to data protection. We strive to comply with all applicable laws, policies and legal obligations relating to privacy and data security protection to the extent possible. However, it is possible that these obligations may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is
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inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other rules or regulations, making enforcement, and thus compliance requirements, ambiguous, uncertain, and potentially inconsistent. Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with our privacy policies, privacy-related obligations to customers, contributors, or other third parties, or our privacy-related legal obligations, or any compromise of security that results in the unauthorized access to or unintended release of personally identifiable information or other protected data, may result in governmental enforcement actions, civil litigation, or public statements against us by data privacy advocacy groups or others. Any of these events could cause us to incur significant costs in investigating and defending such claims and, if found liable, pay significant damages. Further, these proceedings and any subsequent outcomes may cause our customers and contributors to trust in us, which could have a materially effect on our reputation and business.
Any significant change to applicable laws, regulations or industry practices regarding the use or disclosure of personal information (including what legally defines “personal information”), or regarding the manner in which the express or implied consent of contributors, customers, potential customers or other data subjects for the use and disclosure of personal information is obtained, could require us to modify our platform, possibly in a material manner and subject us to increased compliance costs, which may limit our ability to develop new products and features that make use of the personal information that clients voluntarily share. For example, California enacted legislation, the CCPA, that became operative on January 1, 2020 and became enforceable by the California Attorney General on July 1, 2020, along with related regulations that came into force on August 14, 2020 and were most recently amended on March 15, 2021. Additionally, the California Privacy Rights Act (the CPRA), which expands upon the CCPA and was passed in the November 3, 2020 election, creates obligations relating to consumer data beginning on January 1, 2022, with implementing regulations expected on or before July 1, 2022, and enforcement beginning July 1, 2023. The CCPA requires (and the CPRA will require) covered companies to, among other things, provide new disclosures to California consumers and affords such consumers new privacy rights such as the ability to opt-out of certain sales of personal information, expanded rights to access and require deletion of their personal information, the ability to opt out of certain personal information sharing, and the ability to receive detailed information about how their personal information is collected, used, and shared. The CCPA and the CPRA provide for unlimited civil for , as well as a private right of action for data that is expected to increase data . The CCPA may increase our compliance costs and potential liability, particularly in the event of a data . The effects of the CCPA and CPRA are potentially significant and may require us to modify our data collection or processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply and increase our potential exposure to regulatory enforcement and/or . Any of the foregoing could materially affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Additionally, the CCPA has prompted a number of proposals in the United States for new federal and state-level privacy legislation that, if passed, could increase our potential liability, increase our compliance costs, and adversely affect our business. Two states have recently passed personal information laws: the Colorado Privacy Act, which goes into effect on July 1, 2023; and Virginia’s Consumer Data Protection Act, which goes into effect on January 1, 2023. We cannot yet fully predict the impact of the California or other state/federal legislation or subsequent policy guidance on our business or operations, but it may require us to further modify our data processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply. Decreased availability and increased costs of information could adversely affect our ability to meet our agents’ requirements and could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In Europe, the GDPR took effect on May 25, 2018. As a result of our presence in Europe, our contributors and other data subjects in Europe and our service offering in the European Economic Area (EEA) (which includes the European Union (E.U.) and countries such as Iceland that are not official members of the European Union but due to being closely linked by economic relationship are required to adopt E.U. legislation regarding the single market), we are subject to the GDPR, which imposes stringent E.U. data protection requirements (including compliance burdens such as mandating documentation requirements and granting certain privacy rights to individuals to control how we collect, use, disclose, retain and process information about them), and could increase the risk of non-compliance and the costs of providing our platform in a compliant manner. A breach of the GDPR could result in regulatory investigations, reputational harm, fines of up to the greater of €20 million or 4% of annual global revenue, and sanctions, orders to cease or change our processing of our data, enforcement notices, or assessment notices (for a compulsory audit). We may also face civil including representative actions and other class action type (where individuals have ), potentially amounting to significant compensation or liabilities, as well as associated costs, of internal resources, and reputational .
Additionally, the United Kingdom implemented the Data Protection Act, effective in May 2018 and statutorily amended in 2019, that contains provisions, including its own derogations, for how GDPR is applied in the United Kingdom. From the beginning of 2021 (when the transitional period following Brexit expired), we have to continue to
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comply with the GDPR and also the U.K.’s Data Protection Act, with each regime having the ability to fine up to the greater of €20 million (£17 million) or 4% of global turnover. The relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union remains uncertain, for example how data transfers between the United Kingdom and the European Union and other jurisdictions will be treated and the role of the United Kingdom’s supervisory authority. In February 2021, the European Commission proposed to issue the United Kingdom with an “adequacy” decision to facilitate the continued free flow of personal information from E.U. member states to the United Kingdom; however, this decision is subject to the review and/or approval of the European Data Protection Board and a committee composed of the representatives of the E.U. Member States. In the meantime, the United Kingdom remains a “third country” for the purposes of data transfers from the European Union/EEA to the United Kingdom following the expiration of the four to six-month personal information transfer grace period (from January 1, 2021) set out in the E.U. and U.K. Trade and Cooperation Agreement, unless the adequacy decision is adopted in favor of the United Kingdom. If an adequacy decision is not favorable, the United Kingdom would remain a “third country.” These changes will lead to additional costs as we try to ensure compliance with new privacy legislation and will increase our overall risk exposure.
In addition, the GDPR imposes strict rules on the transfer of personal information out of the European Union to a “third country” including the United States. These obligations may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other requirements or our practices.
In July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the European Union-United States (E.U.-U.S.) Privacy Shield (under which personal information could be transferred from the E.U. to U.S. entities that had self-certified under the Privacy Shield scheme) on the grounds that the Privacy Shield failed to offer adequate protections to E.U. personal information transferred to the United States. As a result, Privacy Shield is no longer a valid mechanism for transferring personal data from the EEA to the United States. In addition, while the CJEU upheld the adequacy of the standard contractual clauses (a standard form of contract approved by the European Commission as an adequate personal information transfer mechanism, and potential alternative to the Privacy Shield), it made clear that reliance on them alone may not necessarily be sufficient in all circumstances. Use of the standard contractual clauses must now be assessed on a case by case basis taking into account the legal regime applicable in the destination country, in particular applicable surveillance laws and rights of individuals. The use of standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal information specifically to the United States remains under review by a number of European data protection supervisory authorities, along with those of some other E.U. member states. German and Irish supervisory authorities have indicated, and enforced in recent rulings, that the standard contractual clauses alone provide inadequate protection for E.U.-U.S. data transfers. In August 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Commission announced new discussions to evaluate the potential for an E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield framework to comply with the July 2020 judgment of the CJEU. Further, on June 4, 2021, the European Commission finalized new versions of the standard contractual clauses, with the Implementing Decision in effect since June 27, 2021. Under the Implementing Decision, we will have until December 27, 2022 to update any existing agreements, or any new agreements executed before September 27, 2021, that rely on standard contractual clauses as the data transfer mechanism. To comply with the Implementing Decision and the new standard contractual clauses, we may need to implement additional safeguards to further the security of data transferred out of the EEA, which could increase our compliance costs, us to further regulatory and liability, and affect our business. The CJEU’s decision, along with the subsequent guidance issued by the European Data Protection Board in November 2020, and recent statements by E.U. supervisory authorities, and the new versions of the standard contractual clauses, have led to uncertainty regarding the legality of E.U.-U.S. data flows in general and those conducted under the Privacy Shield in particular.
While we maintain a Privacy Shield certification, we rely on the standard contractual clauses for intercompany data transfers from the EEA to the United States. As supervisory authorities continue to issue further guidance on personal information transfers out of the EEA, we could suffer additional costs, complaints, or regulatory investigations or fines, and if we are otherwise unable to transfer personal information between and among countries and regions in which we operate, it could affect the manner in which we provide our services, the geographical location or segregation of our relevant systems and operations, and could adversely affect our financial results. Our customers and contributors also request heightened assurances and contractual protection regarding data protection, data processing, data transfers, data segregation, technological safeguards, and the applicability of certain laws on our business. We cannot yet determine the impact that future laws, regulations, contractual obligations, and standards may have on our business. Such laws and regulations are often subject to differing interpretations and may be inconsistent among jurisdictions. Further, the obligations imposed by E.U. data protection and related laws may with the obligations imposed by other legal regimes, such as U.S. laws concerning government access to data. We may certain customers and customer in Europe, incur substantial expense in complying with the new obligations, be to new and liability and we may be required to make significant changes in our business operations and product development, all of which may affect our revenues and our business overall.
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We are also subject to evolving E.U. privacy laws relating to the use of cookies and e-marketing. In the E.U., regulators increasingly focus on compliance with requirements in the online behavioral advertising ecosystem, and a E.U. regulation known as the ePrivacy Regulation, which is still being finalized by E.U. member states, will significantly increase fines for non-compliance once in effect. In the E.U., informed consent, including a prohibition on pre-checked consents and a requirement to ensure separate consents for each cookie, is required for the placement of a cookie or similar tracking technologies on a customer’s device and for direct electronic marketing. As regulators start to enforce the strict approach, this could lead to substantial costs, require significant systems changes, limit the effectiveness of our marketing activities, divert the attention of our technology personnel, negatively impact our efforts to understand customers, adversely affect our margins, increase costs, and subject us to additional liabilities.
As we expand, there is a risk that we may assume liabilities for breaches experienced by the companies we acquire. Despite our efforts to comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other obligations relating to privacy, data protection, and information security, it is possible that our practices, offerings, or platform could fail, or be alleged to fail to meet applicable requirements.
We may be subject to new and existing laws and regulations, both in the United States and internationally.
We are subject to a wide variety of foreign and domestic laws. Laws, regulations, and standards governing issues that may affect us, such as worker classification, employment, worker health, payments, worker confidentiality obligations and whistleblowing, intellectual property, consumer protection, taxation, privacy, and data security are often complex and subject to varying interpretations, in many cases due to their lack of specificity, and, as a result, their enforcement and application in practice may change or develop over time through judicial decisions or as new guidance or interpretations are provided by regulatory and governing bodies, such as federal and state administrative agencies. Many of these laws were adopted prior to the advent of the Internet, mobile, and related technologies and, as a result, do not contemplate or address the unique issues of the Internet, mobile, and related technologies. Other laws and regulations may be adopted in response to Internet, mobile, and related technologies. New and existing laws and regulations (or changes in interpretation of existing laws and regulations), including those concerning worker classification, independent contractors, employment, discrimination and harassment, payments, whistleblowing and worker confidentiality obligations, intellectual property, consumer protection, taxation, privacy, data security, benefits, unionizing and collective action, arbitration agreements and class action waiver provisions, unfair competition, terms of service, website accessibility, background checks (such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681), escheatment, and federal contracting may also be adopted, implemented, or interpreted to apply to us or our contributors. Likewise, these laws may affect our contributors, and uncertainty around their application, may affect demand for our platform.
As our platform’s geographic scope expands, regulatory agencies or courts may claim that we are subject to additional requirements, or are prohibited from conducting our business in or with certain jurisdictions, either generally or with respect to certain services, or that we are otherwise required to change our business practices. It is also possible that certain provisions in agreements with our contributors may be found to be unenforceable or not compliant with applicable law.
The level of regulatory scrutiny on larger companies, technology companies in general, and companies engaged in dealings with independent contractors, payments, or personal information in particular has increased significantly recently and may continue to increase. Legislators have enacted, and may continue to enact, new laws or regulatory agencies may promulgate new rules or regulations that are adverse to our business or the interests of our customers, or they may view matters or interpret or enforce laws and regulations differently than they have in the past or in a manner adverse to our business. Such legislative or regulatory scrutiny or action may create or enhance different or conflicting obligations on us from one jurisdiction to another.
New approaches to policy-making and legislation may also produce unintended harms for our business, which may impact our ability to operate our business in the manner in which we are accustomed. For example, there has been increased focus on worker classification and independent contractor regulations which led in part to the adoption of legislation in certain jurisdictions, and it is possible that other jurisdictions will implement similar laws and regulations. There is often uncertainty in the application of worker classification laws, and consequently there is risk to us that contributors could be deemed to be our employees and therefore are currently misclassified under applicable law. A misclassification determination, allegation, claim, or audit creates potential exposure for contributors and for us, and such claims could result in monetary damages (including wage-based damages or restitution, compensatory damages, liquidated damages, and ), interest, , , costs, fees (including attorneys’ fees), and other liability, assessment, injunctive relief, or settlement. Factors determining whether an individual providing feedback and market research is an employee is a fact intensive and the factors for consideration vary by governing law. Laws and regulations that govern the status and classification of workers are also subject to change as well as to divergent interpretations by various authorities, which can create uncertainty and . For example, in California, we are
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aware of the state supreme court’s 2018 decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles , as well as Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), which went into effect January 1, 2020 and which has the stated purpose of codifying the Dynamex holding. Together, they change the standard in California for determining worker classification and are widely viewed as expanding the scope of the definition of employee for most purposes under California law. Given the enactment of AB 5, there is little guidance from the courts or the regulatory authorities charged with its enforcement and there is a significant degree of uncertainty regarding its application. While we believe that our business and our relationship with our contributors currently fall within an exemption provided by California’s Labor Code Section 2782, which we believe clarifies that AB 5 does not apply to our contributors, if new amendments or legislation alters this exemption, or similar exemptions are not adopted in other jurisdictions, our business could be adversely impacted. Worker classification and independent contractor laws and regulations, and any changes to them, may have a far-reaching impact, including on contributors, and could negatively impact us and our contributors, or adversely impact our business model and ability to operate our platform.
As we look to expand our international footprint over time, we may become obligated to comply with additional laws and regulations of the countries or markets in which we operate or have contributors. We may be harmed if we are found to be subject to new or existing laws and regulations or if those laws are interpreted and applied to us in a manner that harms our business or is inconsistent with the application of U.S. laws, including those concerning worker classification, independent contractors, employment, payments, whistleblowing and worker confidentiality obligations, laws related to the COVID-19 pandemic, intellectual property, consumer protection, taxation, privacy, data security, benefits, unionizing and collective action, arbitration agreements and class action waiver provisions, unfair competition, terms of service, website accessibility, background checks, and escheatment. In addition, contractual provisions that are designed to protect and mitigate against risks, including terms of service, services agreements, arbitration and class action waiver provisions, disclaimers of warranties, limitations of liabilities, releases of claims, and indemnification provisions, could be deemed unenforceable as to the application of these laws and regulations by a court, arbitrator, or other decision-making body. If we are to comply with these laws and regulations or manage the complexity of global operations and supporting an international customer base or in a cost- manner, our business, operating results, and financial condition would be affected.
Our success, or perceived success, and increased visibility may also drive some third parties that view our business model to be a threat, or otherwise problematic, to raise concerns about our business model to local policymakers and regulators. These third parties and their trade association groups or other organizations may take actions and employ significant resources to shape the legal and regulatory regimes in countries where we have, or may seek to have, a significant number of contributors, in an effort to change such legal and regulatory regimes in ways intended to adversely affect or impede our business and the ability of customers to utilize our platform.
Failure to comply with anti-corruption and anti-money laundering laws, including the FCPA and similar laws associated with our activities outside of the United States, could subject us to penalties and other adverse consequences.
We are subject to the FCPA, the UK Bribery Act, and possibly other anti-bribery and anti-money laundering laws in countries in which we conduct activities. We face significant risks if we fail to comply with the FCPA, the UK Bribery Act and other anti-corruption laws that prohibit companies and their employees and third-party intermediaries from promising, authorizing, offering, or providing, directly or indirectly, improper payments or benefits to foreign government officials, political parties, and private-sector recipients for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business, directing business to any person, or securing any advantage. In many foreign countries, particularly in countries with developing economies, it may be a local custom that businesses engage in practices that are prohibited by the FCPA or other applicable laws and regulations. In addition, we increasingly use various third parties to sell our platform and conduct our business abroad. We or our third-party intermediaries may have direct or indirect interactions with officials and employees of government agencies or state-owned or affiliated entities and we can be held liable for the or other activities of these third-party intermediaries, our employees, representatives, contractors, partners, and agents, even if we do not explicitly authorize such activities. While our Code of Business Conduct mandates compliance with anti- laws and regulations, we cannot you that all of our employees and agents, as well as those companies to which we outsource certain of our business operations, will not take actions in of our policies and applicable law, for which we may be ultimately held responsible.
Any violation of the FCPA, the UK Bribery Act, other applicable anti-corruption laws, and anti-money laundering laws could result in whistleblower complaints, adverse media coverage, investigations, loss of export privileges, or severe criminal or civil sanctions, which could have a materially adverse effect on our reputation, business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition, responding to any enforcement action may result in a significant diversion of management’s attention and resources, significant defense costs, and other professional fees.
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We are required to comply with governmental export control and sanctions laws and regulations. Our failure to comply with these laws and regulations would have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our platform is subject to governmental, including United States and European Union, export control laws and regulations, and as a U.S. company we are covered by the U.S. sanctions laws and regulations. U.S. export control and economic sanctions laws and regulations prohibit the shipment of certain products and services to U.S. embargoed or sanctioned countries, governments, and persons, and complying with export control and sanctions regulations for a particular sale may be time-consuming and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities. While we take precautions to prevent our platform from being exported in violation of these laws or engaging in any other activities that are subject to these regulations, from time to time, we may fail to fully comply with these laws and regulations. For example, in mid-2021, we conducted an internal review of our compliance with U.S. export control laws and economic sanctions and in connection with our review, we identified that our platform may have been used by two parties in Iran, which is an embargoed country. Based on our preliminary findings, these parties signed up for a free trial of our platform and did not make payment to us. In addition, as part of our internal review, we identified a limited number of participant accounts that represented themselves as residing in non- countries but may have accessed our platform from countries. Certain of these participants performed tests and received small amounts of payments, in accordance with our standard payment practices, associated with those tests. In July 2021, we submitted a voluntary disclosure to the Office of Foreign Assets Control related to these parties’ use of our platform. Although we have implemented, and are working to implement additional controls and screening tools designed to prevent similar activity from occurring in the future, there is no guarantee that our platform will not be accessed by additional individuals, entities, or governments prohibited by U.S. or foreign sanctions in the future. If we are found to have to comply with U.S. export laws, U.S. Customs regulations and import regulations, U.S. economic sanctions, and other countries’ import and export laws, we could be subject to substantial civil and , including for the company, for responsible employees and managers, and the possible of export or import privileges as well as incur reputational .
We incorporate encryption technology into certain of our products and certain encryption products may be exported outside of the United States only by a license or a license exception. In addition, various countries regulate the import of certain encryption technology, including import permitting and licensing requirements, and have enacted laws that could limit our ability to distribute our products or could limit our customers’ ability to deploy our products in those countries. Although we take precautions to prevent our platform from being provided in violation of such laws, we cannot assure you that inadvertent violations of such laws have not occurred or will not occur in connection with the distribution of our platform despite the precautions we take. Governmental regulation of encryption technology and regulation of imports or exports, or our failure to obtain required import or export approval for our platform, could harm our international sales and adversely affect our operating results.
Further, if our partners fail to obtain required import, export, or re-export licenses or permits, we may also be harmed, become the subject of government investigations or penalties, and incur reputational harm. Changes in our platform or changes in export and import regulations may create delays in the introduction of our platform in international markets, prevent our customers with international operations from deploying our platform globally or, in some cases, prevent 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 laws and regulations, or change in the countries, governments, persons, or technologies targeted by such laws and 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 customers with international operations. Any decreased use of our platform or limitation on our ability to export or sell our platform would likely adversely impact our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Risks Related to Financial and Accounting Matters
We may be unable to integrate acquired businesses and technologies successfully or to achieve the expected benefits of such acquisitions. We may acquire or invest in additional companies, which may divert our management’s attention, result in additional dilution to our stockholders, and consume resources that are necessary to sustain our business.
Our business strategy may, from time to time, include acquiring other complementary products, technologies, or businesses. 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 companies choose not to work for us, if an acquired company’s software is not easily adapted to work with ours, or if we have difficulty retaining the customers of any acquired business due to changes in management or otherwise. Acquisitions may also disrupt our business, divert our resources, and require significant management attention that would otherwise be available for
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development of our business. Moreover, the anticipated benefits of any acquisition, investment, or business relationship may not be realized or we may be exposed to unknown liabilities.
We may in the future seek to acquire or invest in additional businesses, products, technologies, or other assets. We also may enter into relationships with other businesses to expand our products and services or our ability to provide our products and services in foreign jurisdictions, which could involve preferred or exclusive licenses, additional channels of distribution, discount pricing, or investments in other companies. Negotiating these transactions can be time consuming, difficult, and expensive, and our ability to close these transactions may often be subject to approvals that are beyond our control. Consequently, these transactions, even if undertaken and announced, may not close. For one or more of those transactions, we may:
• issue additional equity securities that would dilute our stockholders;
• use cash that we may need in the future to operate our business;
• incur debt on terms unfavorable to us or that we are unable to repay;
• incur large charges or substantial liabilities;
• encounter difficulties retaining key employees of the acquired company or integrating diverse software codes or business cultures; and
• become subject to adverse tax consequences, substantial depreciation, or deferred compensation charges.
Any of these risks could adversely impact our business and operating results.
Changes in our effective tax rate could impact our financial results. Our business and financial condition could be materially affected by the enactment of legislation implementing changes in the U.S. or foreign taxation of international business activities or the adoption of other tax reform policies.
We are subject to income taxes in the United States and certain foreign jurisdictions. We believe that our provision for income taxes is reasonable, but the ultimate tax outcome may differ from the amounts recorded in our consolidated financial statements and may materially affect our financial results in the period or periods in which such outcome is determined. Our effective tax rate could be adversely affected by changes in the mix of earnings and losses in countries with differing statutory tax rates, certain non-deductible expenses, and the valuation of deferred tax assets. Increases in our effective tax rate would reduce profitability or increase losses. As we expand the scale of our domestic and international business activities, any changes in U.S. federal, state, local or foreign tax laws or tax rulings of such activities may increase our worldwide effective tax rate and harm our financial results.
In addition, changes in tax laws and regulations in federal, state, local, and foreign jurisdictions could have material adverse impacts on our business, cash flows, operating results, or financial condition, and could materially affect our tax obligations and effective tax rate. For example, U.S. tax legislation enacted on December 22, 2017, informally titled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act), significantly reformed the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended (the Code). This legislation, among other things, includes changes to U.S. federal tax rates, imposes significant additional limitations on the deductibility of interest and the use of net operating losses (NOLs) generated in tax years beginning after December 31, 2017, allows for the expensing of capital expenditures and puts into effect the migration from a “worldwide” system of taxation to a “territorial system.” The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is unclear in many respects and could be subject to potential amendments and technical corrections, as well as interpretations and implementing regulations by the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, any of which could lessen or increase certain adverse impacts of the legislation. As we maintain a full valuation allowance against our U.S. federal and state NOL carryforwards, these changes did not impact our consolidated balance sheet as of December 31, 2021. However, in future years, if a deferred tax asset is recognized related to our NOL carryforwards, the changes in the carryforward/carryback periods as well as the new on use of NOL carryforwards may significantly impact our valuation allowance assessments for NOL carryforwards generated after December 31, 2017. In addition, it is unclear how these U.S. federal income tax changes will affect state and local taxation, which often uses federal taxable income as a starting point for computing state and local tax liabilities. Also, governments in certain countries where we do business have enacted legislation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act enacted by the United States on March 27, 2020. We are continuing to analyze these legislative developments; however, they did not have a material impact on our provision for income taxes for the years ended December 31, 2021 and 2020.
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Our ability to use our net operating losses to offset future taxable income may be subject to certain limitations which could subject our business to higher tax liability.
As of December 31, 2021, we had U.S. federal NOL carryforwards of approximately $174.5 million and state NOL carryforwards of approximately $102.4 million available to offset future taxable income. Our federal and state NOL carryforwards will begin to expire in 2028 and 2029, respectively, if not utilized. Our federal NOL carryforwards of $104.1 million generated after December 31, 2017 can be carried forward indefinitely, with utilization limited to 80% of our taxable income beginning after January 1, 2021. Realization of these NOL carryforwards depends on future taxable income beginning after December 31, 2021, and there is a risk that our existing carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future taxable income, which could materially and adversely affect our operating results.
Under Sections 382 and 383 of the Code, a corporation that undergoes an “ownership change” is subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its pre-change NOL carryforwards and tax attributes to offset future taxable income or tax liabilities. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. If finalized, Treasury Regulations currently proposed under Section 382 of the Code may impose stricter limitations than would be imposed under current law on our ability to utilize our pre-change NOL carryforwards or credits if we undergo a future ownership change. We have completed an analysis of Section 382 ownership changes in our stock through December 31, 2021 and have concluded that we have experienced ownership changes that have resulted in limitations in our ability to use certain of our NOL carryforwards and tax credit carryforwards. In addition, we may experience ownership changes as a result of future offerings or other changes in the ownership of our stock, some of which are beyond our control. As a result, the amount of the NOL carryforwards and tax credit carryforwards presented in our financial statements could be limited and, in the case of NOL carryforwards generated in 2014 and prior years, may expire unused. Any such material limitation or expiration of our NOL carryforwards may harm our future operating results by effectively increasing our future tax obligations. There is also a risk that due to changes in tax law or regulatory changes, such as on the use of NOL carryforwards or other reasons, our existing NOL carryforwards could expire or otherwise be to offset future U.S. federal and state taxable income. For these reasons, we may not be to utilize some portion of our NOL carryforwards even if we .
The applicability of sales, use, and other tax laws or regulations on our business is uncertain. Adverse tax laws or regulations could be enacted or existing laws could be applied to us or our customers, which could subject us to additional tax liability and related interest and penalties, increase the costs of our services and adversely impact our business.
The application of U.S. federal, state, local, and foreign tax laws to services provided electronically is evolving. New income, sales, use, value-added, or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations, or ordinances could be enacted at any time (possibly with retroactive effect), and could be applied solely or disproportionately to services provided over the Internet or could otherwise materially affect our financial position and operating results. Many countries in the European Union, as well as a number of other countries and organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, have recently proposed or recommended changes to existing tax laws or have enacted new laws that could impact our tax obligations.
After the U.S. Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair Inc. in 2018, many states have enacted laws that would require tax reporting, collection, or tax remittance on items sold online. States, localities, the U.S. federal government or other countries may seek to impose additional reporting, record-keeping and/or indirect tax collection obligations on our businesses. New legislation could require us to incur substantial costs, including costs associated with tax calculation, collection and remittance, and audit requirements, and could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
We also have been and may in the future be subject to additional tax liabilities and related interest and penalties due to changes in indirect and non-income based taxes resulting from changes in U.S. federal, state, local or foreign tax laws, changes in taxing jurisdictions and administrative interpretations, decisions, policies and positions, result of tax examinations, settlements or judicial decisions, changes in accounting principles, changes to the business operations, as well as evaluation of new information that results in a change to a tax position taken in prior periods. It is possible that one or more states could seek to impose sales, use, or other tax collection obligations on us with regard to sales or orders on our business platform. These taxes may be applicable to past sales. A successful assertion by a taxing authority that we should be collecting additional sales, use or other taxes or remitting such taxes directly to states could result in substantial tax liabilities for past sales and additional administrative expenses, which could seriously harm our business, operating results, and financial condition. Although we have reserved for potential payments of possible past tax liabilities in our financial statements, if these liabilities exceed such reserves, our financial condition will be adversely impacted.
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Certain of our operating results and financial metrics may be difficult to predict as a result of seasonality.
Although we have not historically experienced significant seasonality with respect to our revenue throughout the year, we have seen seasonality in our sales cycle and our fourth quarter has historically been our strongest quarter. We believe that this results in part from the procurement, budgeting, and deployment cycles of many of our customers. We generally expect a relative increase in sales in the second half of each year as budgets of our customers for annual capital purchases are being fully utilized. We may be affected by seasonal trends in the future, particularly as our business matures. Such seasonality may result from a number of factors, including a slowdown in our customers’ procurement process during certain times of the year, both domestically and internationally, and customers choosing to spend remaining budgets shortly before the end of their fiscal years. These effects may become more pronounced as we target larger organizations and their larger budgets for sales of subscriptions to our platform. Additionally, this seasonality may be reflected to a much lesser extent, and sometimes may not be immediately apparent, in our revenue, due to the fact that we recognize subscription revenue over the term of the applicable subscription agreement. In addition, our ability to record professional services revenue can potentially vary based on the number of billable days in the given quarter, which is impacted by holidays and vacations. To the extent we experience this seasonality, it may cause fluctuations in our operating results and financial metrics and make forecasting our future operating results and financial metrics more .
We may need to raise additional capital required to grow our business, and we may not be able to raise capital on terms favorable to us or at all.
In order to support our growth and respond to business challenges, such as developing new features or enhancements to our platform to stay competitive, acquiring new technologies, and improving our infrastructure, we have made significant financial investments in our business, and we intend to continue to make such investments. As a result, we may need to engage in equity or debt financings to provide the funds required for these investments and other business endeavors. If we raise additional funds through equity or convertible debt issuances, our existing stockholders may suffer significant dilution, and these securities could have rights, preferences, and privileges that are superior to that of holders of our common stock. If we obtain additional funds through debt financing, we may not be able to obtain such financing on terms favorable to us. Such terms may involve restrictive covenants making it difficult to engage in capital raising activities and pursue business opportunities, including potential acquisitions. If we are unable to obtain adequate financing or financing on terms to us when we require it, our ability to continue to support our business growth and to respond to business could be significantly and our business may be affected, requiring us to , reduce, or eliminate some or all of our operations.
We incur significant costs as a result of operating as a public company, and our management and other personnel devote substantial time to compliance with our public company responsibilities and corporate governance practices.
We incur significant legal, accounting, compliance and other expenses as a public company that we did not incur as a private company and these expenses will increase even more after we are no longer an “emerging growth company.” As a public company, we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as rules adopted, and to be adopted, by the SEC and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Our management and other personnel devote a substantial amount of time to these compliance initiatives and these rules and regulations substantially increase our legal and financial compliance costs and make some activities more time-consuming and costly. We cannot predict or estimate the amount or timing of additional costs we may incur to respond to these requirements. The impact of these requirements could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our board of directors, our board committees, or as executive officers.
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 practice, regulatory authorities may initiate legal proceedings against us, and our business may be harmed. In connection with our IPO, we increased our directors’ and officers’ insurance coverage, which increased our insurance related costs. Moreover, in the future, it may be more difficult and more expensive for us to obtain director and officer liability insurance and we may be forced to accept reduced policy limits or incur substantially higher costs to maintain the same or similar coverage. These factors could also make it more difficult for us to attract and retain qualified persons to serve on our board of directors, our board committees, or as executive officers.
Additionally, as a result of disclosure of information in filings required of a public company, our business and financial condition is 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.
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Further, as a result of our disclosure obligations as a public company, we have reduced flexibility and are under pressure to focus on short-term results, which may adversely affect our ability to achieve long-term profitability.
If we fail to maintain proper and effective internal controls over financial reporting our ability to produce accurate and timely financial statements could be impaired.
Pursuant to Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, our management will be required to report upon the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting beginning with the annual report for our fiscal year ending December 31, 2022. When we lose our status as an “emerging growth company” and become an “accelerated filer” or a “large accelerated filer,” our independent registered public accounting firm will be required to attest to the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. The rules governing the standards that must be met for management to assess our internal control over financial reporting are complex and require significant documentation, testing, and possible remediation. To achieve compliance with Section 404 within the prescribed period, we will be engaged in a process to document and evaluate our internal control over financial reporting, which is both costly and challenging. In this regard, we will need to continue to dedicate internal resources, potentially engage outside consultants and adopt a detailed work plan to assess and document the adequacy of internal control over financial reporting, continue steps to improve control processes as appropriate, validate through testing that controls are functioning as documented and implement a continuous reporting and improvement process for internal control over financial reporting. This process will be time-consuming, , and .
We have experienced control deficiencies and may experience control deficiencies, including material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting, in the future. Any failure to maintain internal control over financial reporting could severely inhibit our ability to accurately report our financial condition, operating results, or cash flows.
If we are unable to conclude that our internal control over financial reporting is effective, or if our independent registered public accounting firm determines we have a material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, investors may lose confidence in the accuracy and completeness of our financial reports, the market price of our common stock could decline, and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the NYSE, the SEC, or other regulatory authorities. Failure to remedy any material weakness in our internal control over financial reporting, or to implement or maintain other effective control systems required of public companies, could also restrict our future access to the capital markets.
We are an “emerging growth company” and the reduced reporting requirements applicable to emerging growth companies may make our common stock less attractive to investors.
We are an “emerging growth company” as defined in the JOBS Act. For as long as we continue to be an emerging growth company, we may take advantage of exemptions from various reporting requirements that are applicable to other public companies that are not emerging growth companies, including (i) not being required to comply with the auditor attestation requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, (ii) reduced disclosure obligations regarding executive compensation in our periodic reports and proxy statements and (iii) exemptions from the requirements of holding nonbinding advisory stockholder votes on executive compensation and stockholder approval of any golden parachute payments not approved previously.
We could be an emerging growth company for up to five fiscal years after our IPO; provided, however, certain circumstances could cause us to lose that status earlier, including if we are deemed to be a “large accelerated filer,” which occurs when the market value of our common stock that is held by non-affiliates equals or exceeds $700 million, if we have total annual gross revenue of $1.07 billion or more, or if we issue more than $1.0 billion in non-convertible debt during any three-year period before that time.
Under the JOBS Act, emerging growth companies can also delay adopting new or revised accounting standards until such time as those standards apply to private companies. We have elected to take advantage of the benefits of this extended transition period. Our financial statements may therefore not be comparable to those of companies that comply with such new or revised accounting standards. Until the date that we are no longer an “emerging growth company” or affirmatively and irrevocably opt out of the exemption provided by Section 7(a)(2)(B) of the Securities Act, upon issuance of a new or revised accounting standard that applies to our financial statements and that has a different effective date for public and private companies, we will disclose the date on which adoption is required for non-emerging growth companies and the date on which we will adopt the recently issued accounting standard.
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If currency exchange rates fluctuate substantially in the future, our operating results, which are reported in U.S. dollars, could be adversely affected.
As we continue to expand our international operations, we become more exposed to the effects of fluctuations in currency exchange rates. Although we expect an increasing number of sales contracts to be denominated in currencies other than the U.S. dollar in the future, the majority of our sales contracts have historically been denominated in U.S. dollars, and therefore, most of our revenue has not been 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 business, operating results, financial condition, and cash flows. In addition, we incur expenses for employee compensation and other operating expenses at our non-U.S. locations in the local currency. Fluctuations in the exchange rates between the U.S. dollar and other currencies could result in the dollar equivalent of such expenses being higher. This could have a negative impact on our operating results. Although we may in the future decide to undertake foreign exchange hedging transactions to cover a portion of our foreign currency exchange exposure, we currently do not hedge our exposure to foreign currency exchange risks.
Our reported financial results may be adversely affected by changes in accounting principles generally accepted in the United States.
GAAP financial measures are subject to interpretation by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the SEC, and various bodies formed to promulgate and interpret appropriate accounting principles. A change in these principles or interpretations could have a significant effect on our reported financial results, and could affect the reporting of transactions completed before the announcement of a change.
Risks Related to Ownership of Our Common Stock
The market price of our common stock could be volatile, and you could lose all or part of your investment.
Technology stocks have historically experienced high levels of volatility. The market price of our common stock may fluctuate substantially depending on a number of factors, including those described in this “Risk Factors” section, many of which are beyond our control and may not be related to our operating performance. These fluctuations could cause you to lose all or part of your investment in our common stock. Factors that could cause fluctuations in the trading price of our common stock include the following:
• price and volume fluctuations in the overall stock market from time to time;
• announcements of new products, platforms or technologies, commercial relationships, acquisitions or other events by us or our competitors;
• failure of securities analysts to initiate or maintain coverage of us, changes in financial estimates by any securities analysts who follow our company, or our failure to meet these estimates or the expectations of investors;
• changes in how organizations perceive the benefits of our platform and products;
• recruitment or departures of key personnel;
• the public’s reaction to our press releases, other public announcements, and filings with the SEC;
• fluctuations in the trading volume of our shares or the size of our public float, including in connection with an acquisition;
• sales of large blocks of our common stock;
• actual or anticipated changes or fluctuations in our operating results;
• whether our operating results meet the expectations of securities analysts or investors;
• changes in actual or future expectations of investors or securities analysts;
• actual or perceived significant data breach involving our platform;
• litigation involving us, our industry or both;
• governmental or regulatory actions or audits;
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• regulatory developments and new laws in the United States, foreign countries, or both;
• general economic conditions and trends;
• public health crises and related measures to protect the public health (such as the COVID-19 pandemic);
• major catastrophic events in our domestic and foreign markets;
• the expiration of contractual lock-up or market stand-off agreements;
• changes in accounting standards, policies, guidelines, interpretations, or principles; and
• “flash crashes,” “freeze flashes,” or other glitches that disrupt trading on the securities exchange on which we are listed.
In addition, if the market for technology stocks or the stock market in general experiences a loss of investor confidence, the trading price of our common stock could decline for reasons unrelated to our business, operating results, or financial condition. The trading price of our common stock might also decline in reaction to events that affect other companies in our industry even if these events do not directly affect us. In the past, following periods of volatility in the trading price of a company’s securities, securities class action litigation has often been brought against that company. If the market price of our common stock is volatile, we may become the target of securities litigation. Securities litigation could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention and resources from our business. This could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market, or the perception that these sales might occur, could cause the market price of our common stock to decline.
Sales of a substantial number of shares of our common stock in the public market or the perception that these sales might occur, could depress the market price of our common stock and could impair our ability to raise capital through the sale of additional equity securities. We are unable to predict the effect that such sales may have on the prevailing market price of our common stock.
All of our directors and officers and the holders of substantially all of our common stock and securities convertible into or exercisable or exchangeable for our common stock are subject to lock-up agreements that restrict their ability to transfer shares of our common stock, subject to specific exceptions, during the period ending on the earlier of (i) the opening of trading on the second trading day immediately following the release of our earnings for the first fiscal quarter of the fiscal year ending December 31, 2022 and (ii) the date that is 180 days after the date of the final prospectus (the lock-up period) relating to our IPO, dated November 16, 2021 and filed pursuant to Rule 424(b) under the Securities Act.
Approximately 2,932,192 million shares of our common stock outstanding and vested and exercisable stock options outstanding as of March 2, 2022 were released from the restrictions under the lock-up agreement on March 2, 2022.
If not earlier released, all of our outstanding shares of common stock, other than those sold in our IPO which are freely tradable, will become eligible for sale upon expiration of the lock-up period, except for any shares held by our affiliates which may only be sold in accordance with Rule 144 under the Securities Act. Furthermore, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC may, in their sole discretion, permit us and our executive officers, directors, and holders of our securities who are subject to these lock-up agreements to sell shares prior to the expiration of the lock-up agreements.
In addition, there were 22,689,570 shares of common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options outstanding and 2,490,942 shares subject to RSUs as of December 31, 2021. We have filed a registration statement to register shares reserved for future issuance under our equity compensation plans. The shares of common stock will become eligible for sale in the public market to the extent such options are exercised, subject to the lock-up agreements described above and compliance with applicable securities laws.
Moreover, certain holders of our common stock have rights, subject to some conditions, to require us to file registration statements covering the sale of their shares or to include their shares in registration statements that we may file for ourselves or other stockholders.
We may also issue our shares of common stock or securities convertible into shares of our common stock from time to time in connection with a financing, acquisition, investments, or otherwise. We also expect to grant equity awards to employees, directors, and consultants under our equity incentive plans. Any such issuances could result in substantial dilution to our existing stockholders and cause the market price of our common stock to decline.
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If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or publish unfavorable or inaccurate research about our business, our stock price and trading volume could decline.
Our stock price and trading volume is heavily influenced by the way analysts and investors interpret our financial information and other disclosures. We do not have control over these analysts. If securities analysts or industry analysts cease coverage of us, our stock price could be negatively affected. If securities or industry analysts do not publish research or reports about our business, downgrade our common stock, or publish negative reports about our business, our stock price would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or fail to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our common stock could decrease, which might cause our stock price to decline and could decrease the trading volume of our common stock.
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 for the foreseeable future 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.
Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and under Delaware law could prevent or delay an acquisition of us, which may be beneficial to our stockholders, and may prevent attempts by our stockholders to replace or remove our current management.
Our restated certificate of incorporation and our 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 current members of our board of directors or take other corporate actions, including effecting changes in our management. These provisions:
• establish a classified board of directors so that not all members of our board are elected at one time;
• permit only the board of directors to establish the number of directors and fill vacancies on the board;
• provide that directors may only be removed “for cause” and only with the approval of two-thirds of our stockholders;
• require super-majority voting to amend some provisions in our restated certificate of incorporation and restated bylaws;
• authorize the issuance of “blank check” preferred stock that our board could use to implement a stockholder rights plan;
• eliminate the ability of our stockholders to call special meetings of stockholders;
• prohibit stockholder action by written consent, which requires all stockholder actions to be taken at a meeting of our stockholders;
• prohibit cumulative voting; and
• establish advance notice requirements for nominations for election to our board or for proposing matters that can be acted upon by stockholders at annual stockholder meetings.
In addition, Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL) may discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control of our company. Section 203 imposes certain restrictions on mergers, business combinations and other transactions between us and holders of 15% or more of our common stock.
Our restated certificate of incorporation contains an exclusive forum provision for certain claims, which could limit our stockholders’ ability to obtain a favorable judicial forum for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees.
Our restated certificate of incorporation provides, to the fullest extent permitted by law, 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 DGCL, our restated
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certificate of incorporation, or our restated bylaws, or any action asserting a claim against us that is governed by the internal affairs doctrine.
Moreover, Section 22 of the Securities Act creates concurrent jurisdiction for federal and state courts over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. Our restated certificate of incorporation provides that the federal district courts of the United States will, to the fullest extent permitted by law, be the exclusive forum for resolving any complaint asserting a cause of action arising under the Securities Act (Federal Forum Provision). Our decision to adopt a Federal Forum Provision followed a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Delaware holding that such provisions are facially valid under Delaware law. While there can be no assurance that federal or state courts will follow the holding of the Delaware Supreme Court or determine that the Federal Forum Provision should be enforced in a particular case, application of the Federal Forum Provision means that suits brought by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Securities Act must be brought in federal court and cannot be brought in state court.
Section 27 of the Exchange Act creates exclusive federal jurisdiction over all claims brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder. In addition, the Federal Forum Provision applies to suits brought to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act. Accordingly, actions by our stockholders to enforce any duty or liability created by the Exchange Act or the rules and regulations thereunder must be brought in federal court.
Our stockholders will not be deemed to have waived our compliance with the federal securities laws and the regulations promulgated thereunder.
Any person or entity purchasing or otherwise acquiring or holding any interest in any of our securities shall be deemed to have notice of and consented to our exclusive forum provisions, including the Federal Forum Provision. These provisions may limit a stockholders’ ability to bring a claim in a judicial forum of their choosing for disputes with us or our directors, officers, or employees, which may discourage lawsuits against us and our directors, officers, and employees. Alternatively, if a court were to find the choice of forum provision contained in our restated certificate of incorporation or restated bylaws 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.
General Risk Factors
The COVID-19 pandemic could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused general business disruption worldwide beginning in January 2020. The full extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic will directly or indirectly impact our business, operating results, cash flows, and financial condition will depend on future developments that are highly uncertain and cannot be accurately predicted.
While we have not experienced a material impact to our business to date as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we do not yet know the full extent of potential impacts on our business, operations, or on the global economy as a whole, particularly if the COVID-19 pandemic continues and persists for an extended period of time. Potential impacts include:
• our customer prospects and our existing customers may experience slowdowns in their businesses, which in turn may result in reduced demand for our platform, lengthening of sales cycles, loss of customers, and difficulties in collections;
• substantially all of our employees are working from home and may continue to do so for several more months, which may result in decreased employee productivity and morale with increased unwanted employee attrition;
• we continue to incur fixed costs, particularly for real estate, and are deriving reduced or no benefit from those costs;
• we may continue to experience disruptions to our growth planning, such as for facilities and international expansion;
• we anticipate incurring costs in returning to work from our facilities around the world, including changes to the workplace, such as space planning, food service, and amenities;
• we may be subject to legal liability for safe workplace claims;
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• we may be subject to tax or other liabilities associated with employees working in jurisdictions other than the locations in which they were hired;
• our critical vendors could go out of business;
• substantially all of our in-person marketing events, including conferences, have been canceled and we may continue to experience prolonged delays in our ability to reschedule or conduct in-person events and other related activities; and
• our marketing, sales, and support organizations are accustomed to extensive face-to-face customer and partner interactions, and our ability to conduct business is largely unproven.
Any of the foregoing could adversely affect our business, operating results, and financial condition.
Our business is subject to the risks of earthquakes, fire, floods, public health crises, and other natural catastrophes and to interruption by man-made problems such as power disruptions, computer viruses, data security breaches, or other incidents or terrorism.
Our corporate headquarters are located in the San Francisco Bay Area and we operate or utilize data centers that are located in North America and Europe. Additionally, we rely on our network and third-party infrastructure, enterprise applications, internal technology systems, and our website for our development, marketing, operational support, hosted services, and sales activities. The west coast of the United States, where our corporate headquarters are located, contains active earthquake zones and have been subject to numerous devastating wildfires and associated electrical blackouts. In the event of a catastrophic event, including a natural disaster such as an earthquake, hurricane, fire, flood, tsunami, or tornado, or other catastrophic event such as power loss, telecommunications failure, software or hardware malfunction, cyber-attack, war, terrorist attack, or incident of mass violence in the San Francisco Bay Area or elsewhere where our operations or data centers are located or where certain other systems and applications that we rely on are hosted, we may be to continue our operations and may endure significant system , reputational , in our application development, lengthy in our platform, of data security, and of data, all of which could have an effect on our future operating results. In addition, natural , cyber-attacks, acts of terrorism, public health , such as pandemics and epidemics, or other events could cause in our or our customers’ businesses, national economies, or the world economy as a whole.
Investors’ expectations of our performance relating to environmental, social, and governance factors may impose additional costs and expose us to new risks.
There is an increasing focus from certain investors, employees, and other stakeholders concerning corporate responsibility, specifically related to environmental, social, and governance factors. Some investors may use these factors to guide their investment strategies and, in some cases, may choose not to invest in us if they believe our policies relating to corporate responsibility are inadequate. Third-party providers of corporate responsibility ratings and reports on companies have increased to meet growing investor demand for measurement of corporate responsibility performance. The criteria by which companies’ corporate responsibility practices are assessed may change, which could result in greater expectations of us and cause us to undertake costly initiatives to satisfy such new criteria. If we elect not to or are unable to satisfy such new criteria, investors may conclude that our policies with respect to corporate responsibility are inadequate. We may face reputational damage in the event that our corporate responsibility procedures or standards do not meet the standards set by various constituencies.
Furthermore, if our competitors’ corporate responsibility performance is perceived to be greater than ours, potential or current investors may elect to invest with our competitors instead. In addition, in the event that we communicate certain initiatives and goals regarding environmental, social and governance matters, we could fail, or be perceived to fail, in our achievement of such initiatives or goals, or we could be criticized for the scope of such initiatives or goals. If we fail to satisfy the expectations of investors, employees, and other stakeholders, or, if our initiatives are not executed as planned, our reputation and business, operating results, and financial condition could be adversely impacted.
