You've struck on something here. I've often wondered how Honeycomb actually, you know, works. The business model as I've seen it described--as you just describe it--is unsustainable. Honeycomb as a front company for a money laundering operation is the best explanation I've seen so far.
No, it is not money laundering. It is just riding the venture capital wave. Up until recently you could get virtually unlimited investments via venture capital because every startup was automatically a unicorn valued at a billion dollars before you even sold the first license. This is what happens when you have infinite money at zero cost (no interest).
That is no longer the case and the vc spigot is now not just turned off but welded shut and buried beneath an 18 feet thick layer of reinforced concrete.
If they can cut costs and slim down the organization then they might be able to survive the next 2 years or so until vc funding will become available again (at best).
That is assuming they do have a lot of money still in the bank. I kind of doubt is since with that many highly compensated employees and no real customers they would be burning through cash like cash is going out of fashion.
They will not survive until 2024 and Elliots bullshit covering the company with radioactive shit is not going to make it easier for them to get funding, customers or survive.
EDIT: I would guess they have a burn rate of ~50M$ a year or slightly more. Someone with autism just need to check how much funding they got in the last few rounds and guestimate how much revenue they get per anum and you should have a fairly good estimate on when things will start to get dicey.
The revenue they have to date is nowhere near what you need to stay afloat. Small companies with small cloud systems like the customers they brag about are not really bringing in the money.
I mean, look at their shopwindow list of customers?
How much do you think these companies will be spending on licensing third party software not to run the business-critical part of their business but just to monitor the system in case issues arise?
Unless you are google/amazon/microsoft/apple, monitoring logging and alerting is a cost-centre item, not a profit-and-loss item.
Small companies just do not invest all that much in cost-centre stuff, because they can not afford it.
Most likely a few of them are 'at-cost' customers just to have something to brag about. I.e. these customers are not a revenue stream but a marketing cost. That is not unique to honeycomb.io though, all startups do that.