How Rubrik fails
Data security is a tough business
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer or any other entities with which I am affiliated.
Rubrik recently filed for IPO and released its S-1. Bertrand’s Substack, How They Make Money, and its breakdown of Rubrik’s S-1 inspired me to give my take on Rubrik’s business and some failure modes. He writes a lot of great content on various public companies, so if you want to keep up with his insights, I suggest you subscribe!
I’ve written about various businesses in the past, and why they might fail. Here are some examples:
However, given the talk around Rubrik’s S-1 filing, I thought it was timely to give my thoughts. I used Bertrand’s breakdown of the Rubrik S-1 as a guideline. If you’re interested in more of an investment-focused perspective, I encourage you to read his article.
What is Rubrik?
Rubrik started in 2013 as a next-gen cloud data management company. That’s a fancy way of saying they are a backup company. They make it easy for you to recover from data loss regardless of whether your company uses on-prem, public cloud, or hybrid cloud. However, in recent years, the company has pivoted toward cybersecurity.
They currently have 6100 customers and $784M in subscription ARR of which $525M is cloud ARR.
This rise of Rubrik
Rubrik started as a data resiliency company. Legacy backup companies weren’t adapting well to cloud and hybrid environments. The cloud increased both the amount of data and deployment speeds. Moreover, more businesses are online, and being online is critical to their continued success. As a result, having business continuity is a necessity.
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