Dean Stoecker officially joined the billionaire ranks earlier this month.
There wasn’t a celebration—publicly, at least.
“You start a business because you love what you do,” Stoecker said of his data analytics heavyweight Alteryx Inc. (NYSE: AYX), whose stock has been on a tear the past two years as it grabs more customers and revenue (see an overview of its technology, page 112).
“You want to change the world the best way you can.”
Stoecker’s idea for world change includes philanthropy programs ranging from giving away free software to nonprofits, seeking an end to malaria in Zambia, and providing food to people in Southeast Asia.
He’s even pitched his company’s product to help improve relations in the Middle East, too.
Closer to home, he remains focused on steering Alteryx’s phenomenal business growth that’s pushed its market cap to $7.6 billion, quickly making it Orange County’s sixth-largest public company.
“It’s an awesome gig” and one that he has no interest in stepping away from.
“I’m 62 years old. I get up in the morning, I read the obituaries and if I don’t see my name, I come to the office.”
In the Weeds
Alteryx growth—by stock price, employee count, and sales—has been one of OC’s big success stories in the tech industry this decade.
“We’ve been just growing like a weed,” Stoecker said in an interview on July 8 with the Business Journal.
The company currently has more than 1,000 employees across the globe, with about 260 of them in Irvine’s Park Place headquarters.
Dozens more newcomers are scheduled to join the local operations this year, expanding the reach of the firm that started in 1997 with three employees.
If Stoecker is not overtly celebrating the stock increases—his 9.1 million shares were worth about $1.06 billion as of last week, as the company’s stock was trading near its all-time high—the new hires and other employees with stakes in the company likely have popped a few bottles of champagne.
Other investors certainly are celebrating.
Alteryx counts media conglomerate Thomson Reuters among its largest and longest investors. Local entrepreneur Vinny Smith—another billionaire member of this week’s OC’s Wealthiest—saw an early $6 million or so investment in the company return well in excess of many times that amount.
IPO Surge
Alteryx went public in March 2017 at $14 per share, soaring to above $120 earlier this month.
The annual growth rate has been 50% and doesn’t show signs of slowing. Second-quarter earnings are due on July 31.
Speeding up traditional analytics and making the process simpler are the keys.
“If it took 100 hours without Alteryx, it takes 20 minutes with Alteryx,” said Stoecker, a recent addition to the Business Journal’s OC 50 listing of most influential businesspeople.
If younger colleagues need any reminder the company is aiming for the long haul, it’s right there on the main floor of the office: a brightly painted vintage VW Microbus, snappily fitted out as a mini-conference room.
It’s a “symbol of the long journey,” Stoecker said, with a laugh as he recounts the mechanical contortions needed to get the vehicle through the office’s huge plate glass windows along Michelson Drive.
Asked whether he thought 22 years ago that the company would get this big, he said with a laugh: “Yes, I just didn’t think it would take this long.”
On Buying, Being Bought
The company has 18 offices around the world, including Dubai, Singapore and Paris with a steady growth pace seen “pretty much everywhere.”
It had about 5,000 customers at the end of the first quarter.
Alteryx in April said it paid $20 million for Menlo Park-based ClearStory Data, which provides analytics software for complex and unstructured data.
Stoecker said he is still looking around for more possible acquisitions, seeking “anything that’s in and around data science and machine learning.”
There’s a polite “no” when asked whether any company has approached him about acquiring Alteryx.
“We’re fine with that. We’re in the early stages of a very long game,” the Colorado native said.
Stoecker said his company can keep growing with little direct competition, acknowledging that his rival is SAS Institute Inc. of Cary, N.C.—said to do about $3.2 billion in sales—and that potentially “everyone’s a competitor.”
Rishi Jaluria, a senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson & Co., said competition and cloud computing are two “looming dangers” for Alteryx.
Jaluria told the Business Journal that if Alteryx can maintain momentum, “investors would receive that positively and it could be reflected in the share price.”
Another $1B Goal
For now, the company’s progress continues unbridled. Asked whether he thinks Alteryx could become a company with a billion dollars in annual sales within three years, Stoecker issues the classic expression of hope and trust: “From your mouth to God’s ears.”
Philanthropic efforts include the Alteryx for Good program started last year and his educational foundation i-Rise, which he established with his wife, Angie.
Stoecker said he took part in White House adviser Jared Kushner’s Middle East investment and development conference in Bahrain in June.
“I said to Kushner, you guys fund Alteryx software for the Palestinians, we’ll build a training center in Gaza. And we’ll make a whole bunch of Udacity scholarships available for free. And we’ll help train the Palestinians,” according to Stoecker.
Udacity is an educational organization that offers various programs online.
OC’s Appeal
For the future of technology, he sees a shift away from overpriced Silicon Valley.
“The tech companies are realizing that Silicon Valley is at risk. Exodus. It’s too expensive. Housing is ridiculous in the valley. So you see a lot of them moving over the last decade to Austin, Texas and North Carolina,” Stoecker said.
And he remains bullish on Orange County.
“We did this outside of Silicon Valley,” he said of Alteryx.
“There’s just something about Orange County. There’s not a lot of hubris here. It’s still relatively inexpensive compared to Silicon Valley.”
The chief executive also maintains a place in Colorado, though he spends plenty of time traveling.
“I live in 7C on American Airlines. Seven is right behind first class because I usually don’t get upgraded,” said Stoecker.
A Need to Adapt
“Data is the new oil,” Dean Stoecker likes to quote from an expression he learned in the Middle East, though many U.S. companies failed to get the message.
Stoecker offers a sobering view of missed opportunities in American business because corporate leaders failed to pay attention to the data around them.
“Don’t you think that Blockbuster should have been Netflix? They had all the customers,” he asks rhetorically. “Sears Roebuck should have been Amazon—they got focused on the wrong things. Polaroid, Kodak—they should have been Apple. This list goes on and on and on.”
The Alteryx platform can help data users peer into the future, he said.
“Anything that can be predictable will be predictable,” Stoecker said. “And in order to have that happen, you have to empower the masses with this ability” to use data to reach an analytic outcome.
Stoecker is scheduled to be the Business Journal’s Innovator of the Year awards keynote speaker on Sept. 25 at Hotel Irvine.
Explaining Alteryx
The Alteryx analytics platform allows data workers to turn huge amounts of data into actionable business solutions, providing one analytic process and enabling users to share insights, apps, and models across their organizations.
For instance, banks use it for derivatives modeling and equity price models.
Retailers use the company’s product for merchandising and supply chain analysis, while airliners use it for fuel hedging and insurance companies use it to mitigate underwriting risks.
McDonald’s has used Alteryx to find potential store locations, and AT&T has implemented the software for deeper insights into text messaging.
The Alteryx client roster also includes Audi, Cisco, Coca Cola and Southwest Airlines among many others.
Even the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys use it to manage activities in the stadiums and gauge crowd reaction to specific players during games. No teams are using it for figuring out the best plays to call in a game—yet.
Alteryx runs its own business with its platform, right down to choosing the site of new offices.
