The 1960s-era VW surfer van that’s greeted visitors to the Irvine headquarters of data analytics software firm Alteryx Inc. for years now has some faster competition: a Formula1 racing simulator.
The race car mock-up is among the more notable sights seen within the company’s customer- and partner-oriented experience center, located on the ground floor of the new base for the $4.7 billion valued firm (NYSE: AYX) at the Spectrum Terrace office campus alongside the San Diego (405) Freeway.
The simulator keys off the company’s recent collaboration with the McLaren Formula 1 team.
Next to the video game-like racing console is a video showing how the McLaren team—ranging from driver Daniel Ricciardo to the pit crew to the race team’s back-room operations—use Alteryx’s software, which allows companies and organizations to quickly interpret large batches of data to make better-informed decisions.
While the new headquarters is expected to bring workers back to the office, President and Chief Revenue Officer Paula Hansen says the experience center “is very much meant for customers and partners.”
The first groups of customers and partners started to come into the Alteryx Experience Center on July 19. It can hold about 30 people at any one time.
Revenue Rev Up
The F1 partnership could be seen as a metaphor for the growth plans of Alteryx, the most valuable publicly traded software company in Orange County.
While Alteryx, led by CEO Mark Anderson, is coming off a strong second quarter with a forecast for a hefty boost in annual revenue, more is expected as the company aims to boost its valuation, which a couple years ago topped $10 billion.
Nearly half of Forbes Global 2000 companies are Alteryx customers; Hansen says the company’s goal is to sign up the rest. She is in charge of Alteryx worldwide sales.
Hansen says notable Alteryx customers in the region include Molina Healthcare, Pacific Life Insurance Co., GreatCall, Intuit and Blizzard Entertainment.
Hansen, who joined the company in May 2021, has the pedigree: she previously was the CRO of SAP Customer Experience, where she led the global sales strategy, go-to-market operations and customer success for the division of the nearly $120 billion-valued software giant (NYSE: SAP).
Her team at SAP served more than 10,000 customers across 150 countries and grew the business to $1 billion of annual recurring revenue in 2020, SAP’s fastest-growing cloud portfolio, her bio notes.
Big Company Focus
Hansen spoke to the Business Journal on Aug. 4, following an upbeat earnings report that showed revenue jumped 50% to $180.6 million in the second quarter.
Hansen said Alteryx currently has about 8,200 customers “in every industry you can think of,” including financial services, insurance, public sector, healthcare and manufacturing.
“The value proposition that our software delivers is most relevant to the bigger companies,” Hansen said.
Hansen said she was “thrilled” with the second-quarter results, which included a forecast for 2022 revenue to climb as much as 45% to $780 million, up from a May forecast of 36% to 38% growth.
“I was very satisfied, thrilled with it,” Hansen said of the results.
Bucking market trends, Alteryx shares have risen about 10% this year and were trading at $66.58 apiece as of Aug. 11. That’s still less than half of the stock price the company hit in 2020.
Analytics Awareness
A growing awareness of the value of data analytics is expected to provide wind to Alteryx’s sales going forward, she says.
Hansen says government and business leaders “see data analytics as even more critical capability in a time of uncertainty because things are moving quickly, you need to be able to see around corners, you need to be more efficient.”
“The strategy that we’ve put in place is working—that’s the main message to leave you with.”
For a closer look at Alteryx’s new state-of-the-art base in Irvine, see the Business Journal photo feature beginning on page 18.
