When cloud computing company Nutanix Inc. went public on Sept. 30 and its shares shot up 131 percent the first day, it helped ignite hopes that the long drought of technology initial public offerings could be ending.

That showing also gave the maker of hyperconverged systems that combine computing and storage into one software-driven appliance a market value of $5 billion, way higher than its $2 billion private valuation. That’s despite a long delay between filing late last year and completing the IPO that necessitated a $75 million loan in the spring from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. — and despite the company’s never having turned a profit.

Stu Miniman, senior analyst with Wikibon, the research firm owned by the same company as SiliconANGLE, cited a “strong future for a new generation of simpler and easier-to-use data center infrastructure.” He said Nutanix has “clear differentiation in a market that is now getting the attention of the largest IT players.”

Still, Dave Vellante, co-Chief Executive of SiliconANGLE Media and co-founder of Wikibon, said that like many companies, Nutanix ultimately is competing with Amazon Web Services’ public cloud. So a key question will be whether it can sustain an advantage in the face of a quickening move of workloads to public clouds. Investors seem to be betting that it already can, but the reality will be more challenging.

Miniman and theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s video operation, visited Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey (above) at Nutanix’s San Jose, Calif., headquarters this week to talk about the IPO and where the company is headed next. Here’s an edited version of their conversation:

The IPO

Q: You brought a lot of employees and your family to the opening. What were you going through?

Pandey: It was an extremely poignant moment for the company. Typically IPOs are elitist events where only a few execs show up. We were able to fit everybody–board members, advisers–into the photograph. It says, look, this company was built on the shoulders of these people and this is the least we can do to thanks them.

Q: What was the IPO process like?

Pandey: The two weeks before that was extremely hectic, getting on a private jet to 12 cities to talk to a ton of investors. It was a lot of extremely pugilistic meetings, questions about where we are headed. It was great to enunciate who the company is and what we do. A lot of times, you get boxed in. Many companies do what you do today, but how you do it and why you exist and where you’re headed was extremely revealing for a lot of these people.

Q: Did anything surprise you?

Pandey: I didn’t lose my voice, which is what everybody predicted would happen. It was really a lot of fun. You come out of these [investor] meetings and you think they really didn’t get it, but then the orders [for shares] come and you think, “Wow.” There’s a whole bell curve of investors, including naysayers and fence-sitters, but we got a lot of believers.

Q: Nutanix is now sitting on a market cap of $4 billion to $5 billion, when most people thought it was be $2 billion to $2.5 billion. What was the pull between the banks and the board on that?

Pandey: First, it’s apples and oranges numbers because as a private company, you look at fully diluted shares and as a public company you look at basic shares. There’s enough shares that are not vested or exercised, so the total number of shares look different.

We still went out with a great number. We said, look, we want a win-win with our investors too. Sometimes companies try to squeeze too much and try to act a little cute, and you miss out on happy investors.

What’s next

Q: I don’t see a [stock] ticker, but I’m sure there’s a whole new line of Tesla owners here.

Pandey: We don’t even talk about the ticker. We’re telling people, look, today when the paint is still new on the wall, look at the price once a day, that’s a win. In a few weeks, look at it once a week, in a few months look at it once a month. This is the way you slowly wean people away from looking at the numbers. We want to banish the ticker and focus on things that matter.

After you buy a home and a car, what are you going to do with all the money? Leave it where it is and focus on really building the company. We’ve barely begun.

Q: Where do you see yourself on the journey now?

Pandey: Think of companies that have changed their identities. [Amazon.com Inc. went] from selling books to selling retail e-commerce to selling computing. It’s a massive journey. Going from what Microsoft was in ‘92, an office productivity tools company to operating systems to personal computers to the data center to the cloud today.

This is the journey that we are on. The market is big. It’s about computing. “Hyperconverged” is an ephemeral word that will fade away just like with smartphones, the word “smart” faded away. So the idea of bringing together everything in pure software, the idea of doing more automation, machine learning, more one-click, that stuff is what computing is all about.

Q: Coming off the IPO, what’s next for Nutanix?

Pandey: There’s so much more to do. The world doesn’t know who we are yet. We’re just cracking the surface. Eventually, what could emerge from this company is way different from what it is today.

Here’s the full video of Miniman’s and Pandey’s conversation on theCUBE:

Image via SiliconANGLE