While IPOs are back and TechCrunch+’s eyes are peeled for new S-1 filings and early indications of how much public-market demand there will be for upcoming debuts, we’d be remiss to forget companies that made the opposite journey in recent years.
Case in point is SailPoint, a cybersecurity and identity management company that was taken private by Thoma Bravo in April 2022. The deal closed in mid-August of the same year.
The final earnings report that SailPoint disclosed before it was taken private detailed its Q2 2022 results, including revenue of $134.3 million (+31% year-over-year), annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $429.5 million (+47% year-over-year), and net loss of $29.4 million, up from a net loss of $16.7 million in the year-ago quarter. On an adjusted basis, the company’s net loss was a far smaller $2.2 million.
In the year since we last looked at the company, SailPoint told TechCrunch+ that it crossed the $600 million ARR milestone in the third quarter of 2023; the company is seeing its ARR grow more than 50% on a year-over-year basis.
On the one-year anniversary of that deal, TechCrunch+ caught up with founder and CEO Mark McClain; Matt Mills, its president of worldwide field operations; and Andrew Almeida from Thoma Bravo, to dig a bit into how things have gone since SailPoint was purchased.
Since the deal to take SailPoint private was announced, tech valuations have softened. Double-digit revenue multiples for software companies are now rare, instead of the norm. For SailPoint, which sold for $6.9 billion, what it may be worth today is an interesting question if it does intend to relist in the future. We also wanted to know how the company had performed since going private, what it had hoped to unlock while taking a break from the public markets, and whether Thoma Bravo is hoping for an exit.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
TC: Companies that are taken private often tout the ability to build away from the quarterly earnings cycle and the ability to invest on a longer timeframe. What has going private unlocked for SailPoint?
Mark McClain: We saw plenty of great market opportunity in front of us. Given how the market had not yet fully cooled off when we first started talking [with Thoma Bravo], I think we thought we would probably do a few more aggressive, larger-scale M&A types of moves.
