Appian (NASDAQ:APPN)

Appian offers a low code application building platform marketed towards enterprise and government level organizations. Their “Appian Guarantee” promises to deliver your first application in just 8 weeks, and that it will save 50% in costs. Appian operates in the low code space, which means that their platform can be used by someone without advanced IT training.

Positives

- [ ] all four founders are still active at the company (22 years in)
- [ ] very high customer reviews
- [ ] Matt Caulkins owns a controlling stake in the company, about 40% of shares
- [ ] Appian helps organizations with a real problem that almost all legacy groups face, is a patchwork of fixes for problems, none of which compliment eachother
- [ ] Appian combines workflow design with RPA and AI to offer a full complimentary offering - “I will say that whatever size you think process mining is today, it's going up. The reason it's going up is because it has heretofore been an incomplete industry for the fact that what it diagnosed, it could not address. And by combining it with workflow, I think we're taking a major step for the process mining industry.” - matt caulkins
- [ ] one of if not the highest ranked by customers in the field according to Gartner
- [ ] R&D spend increased at 38%, similar to to SaaS topline growth
- [ ] Their solutions will be needed by almost every business of size in the next several years
- [ ] Appian is transitioning to selling through partner channels (consulting type firms), firms do the actual development more and more and Appian simply collects higher margin subscription revenue. Doing in house professional services is resource intensive and detracts talent from R&D, partners also expand the reach of Appian’s brand.
- [ ] Appian is not a standalone app (another band aid to bigger problems), it works with many existing systems and bridges these together
- [ ] Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) certified, allowing Appian to bid on high level government contracts
- [ ] no other competitor doing what Appian is at the scale they are, many players only dipping their toes
- [ ] cashflow positive, sitting on good amounts of cash
- [ ] operating costs should decline with the reduction of professional services
- [ ] managed to create the business without VC funding, showing some grit
- [ ] “And so they're also whetting a lot of appetites that they cannot satiate.” matt on his thoughts of large competition and how their “low code” can’t compete
- [ ] Matt looks at things with a very longterm viewpoint
- [ ] Appian is always much more focused on building new products in house than acquiring, as far as I know they have acquired 2 companies since inception
- [ ] cloud deployed option allows businesses to stay up to date on security and features
- [ ] when cloud options are chosen, Appian has more visibility into their customer’s needs

Negatives

- [ ] stiff competition from microsoft, oracle, and others
- [ ] some negative employee reviews however most seem to be from sales team, not development, sales will be a smaller part of the business in the future
- [ ] may not offer the in depth capabilities and flexibility of some other options, however it will still most likely be more helpful than traditional options for most organizations’ needs, and this is usually the trade off for speed
- [ ] not all people can do low code without an understanding of the interplay in decisions, even if they don’t need coding experience