UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, or a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer”, “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS AND INFORMATION

Certain statements in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (“Exchange Act”) and are subject to the safe harbor created thereby. All statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K other than statements of historical facts, including statements regarding our future results of operations and financial position, our business strategy and plans and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements. The words “believe,” “may,” “will,” “estimate,” “continue,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those described in “Item 1A. Risk Factors.” Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. In light of these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, the future events and trends discussed in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements.

Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, achievements or events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will occur. We are under no duty to update any of these forward-looking statements after completion of this Annual Report on Form 10-K to conform these statements to actual results or revised expectations.

Part I.

Workiva delivers the world’s leading cloud platform for regulatory, financial and environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) reporting. Workiva provides Wdesk, an intuitivemore than 4,300 organizations with software-as-a-service solutions to help solve some of the most complex reporting and disclosure challenges. People all over the world use our connected, cloud platform that modernizes howto seamlessly enable collaboration and deep integration into existing work streams to simplify their most complex reporting challenges.

While our customers work with business data at thousands of organizations. Wdesk is built on a data management engine, offering controlled collaboration, data connections, granular permissions and a full audit trail. Wdesk helps mitigate risk, improves productivity and gives users confidence in their data-driven decisions. As of December 31, 2017, 3,063 enterprises, includinguse our platform for more than 70%100 different use cases, we organize our sales and marketing resources into four solution groups focusing primarily on the office of Fortune 500^® companies, subscribed tothe Chief Financial Officer (“CFO”): regulatory reporting, non-regulatory reporting, financial services and integrated risk. Our platform empowers our platform. 

We have experienced highstrong revenue growth since the release ofwe released our first solution in March 2010. Our revenue increased from $14.9$297.9 million in 20112019 to $207.9$443.3 million in 2017,2021, representing a 55%22% compound annual growth rate. We incurred a net losslosses of $43.4$47.5 million in 2015, $44.02019, $48.4 million in 20162020 and $44.4$37.7 million in 2017.2021. Approximately 81%86% of our revenue in 20172021 was derived from subscription and support fees, with the remainder from professional services.

Industry Trends are Driving a Fundamental Shift in How Enterprises Collect, Manage, ReportWe designed our cloud-based platform to simplify complex work, supporting both remote and Analyze Critical Business Data.hybrid work environments. Six macro trends have been driving demand for Workiva's platform: the shift to the cloud; digital transformation; remote and hybrid work; influx of disparate data sources; increased regulatory environment; and increased investor demands for ESG data.

We also expect the use of machine-readable data to grow outside the United States, as securities regulators, stock exchangesare focusing investment on five major growth opportunities: global expansion, ESG, European Single Electronic Format (“ESEF”), capital markets, and taxing authorities in several countries (such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom) already require the filing of XBRL data. The European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA) announced in December 2016 that, beginning January 1, 2020, issuers in the European Union must report their company information to national securities regulators using Inline XBRL. Starting December 15, 2017, all Foreign Private Issuers (FPIs) that file financial statements with the SEC prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards must submit XBRL financial data for fiscal periods ending on or after December 15, 2017. In comparison, U.S. companies reporting under U.S. GAAP have been required to file XBRL financial data since 2009.our partner ecosystem.

In 2021, we plan to continue to increase our sales and marketing presence in Europe.

We organize our sales and marketing resources oninto four areas:solution groups: Regulatory Reporting, Non-Regulatory Reporting, Integrated Risk and Financial Services.

Changing regulations and Accounting

Public and private companies, stategovernment agencies and local governments and universitieshigher-education institutions must create a vast array of complex financial and managerial reportsreports. Organizations of all sizes typically have to collect, track, manage and report on a wide range of operating metrics to drive better drive real-time business decisions. Wdeskoutcomes. Our customers continuously find new use cases include:across their organizations, including Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A)(“FP&A”), board reporting,board/committee and quarterly reporting, C-Suite reporting, strategic business plans, financial statements, variance reports, monthly operationmanagement reports, managing and flash reports; statutory reporting, Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and budgetingtracking key performance indicators, data collection for state and local governments, financialdomestic sales, performance reporting and planning for universities, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), investment company compliance and capital markets transactions.employee benefit financial statements.

We sell Wdeskour platform to people whoteams that work in Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX)SOX compliance, SOX certifications, internal controls over financial reporting (ICFR), evidence management, testing, Model Audit Rule (MAR-SOX) for insurance companies, audit management, dashboards, auditenterprise risk assessments, planning, legal compliance, policiesmanagement and procedurespolicy and issuesprocedure management.

WdeskThe Workiva platform is single instance, multi-tenant software deployed in the cloud-based, multi-tenant technologycloud. Our platform, upon which all Workiva software solutions run. Wdesk is built on the Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, is composed of both proprietary and open-source technologies. UsersCustomers can access all WdeskWorkiva solutions with any standard web browser, mobile web browsers and iPad and Android applications. browser.

We believe that the following characteristics comprisehighlight our platform’s key competitive advantages:

In January 2021, we completed the migration of all Workiva customers onto our new features are intuitiveplatform, which is faster and efficient, each development team hasmore scalable with dozens of new capabilities, including improved real-time collaboration, new data importers and exporters, multi-monitor support, drag and drop capabilities, better charts, Workspaces for teams, additional languages and currencies, an improved filing wizard and additional ways to link data.

Our research and development organization is responsible for the design, development, testing and validation of our platform and fit-for-purpose solutions. We focus on innovating and developing new solutions and furthering the openness and extensibility of our platform. We believe that delivering new functionality for our customers is an integral part of our product strategy and provides our customers with access to a broad array of options and information critical to enhancing their reporting, disclosure and digital transformation efforts. We have made, and expect that we will continue to make, significant investments in research and development to broaden our platform capabilities, strengthen our existing solutions, enhance our user experience, and our rigorous quality assurance culture are key differentiators that contributedevelop new solutions. We focus on customer engagement to envision the successfuture of our Wdesk platform.platform to bring about new capabilities and versions of existing solutions to market quickly in order to remain competitive in the marketplace.

Thousands of organizations, including global enterprises with hundreds of thousands of employees, trust Workiva. As of December 31, 2017,2021, we had more than 3,000 customers, including more than 70% of Fortune 500 companies. Our Wdesk platform modernizes the way our customers work.4,300 customers. Our customers are passionate, loyal supporters of our solutions, as demonstrated by our subscription and support revenue retention rate of 96.0% (excluding add-on seats)97.0% as of the December 20172021 measurement date. Our subscription and support revenue retention rate including add-on seatssolutions was 107.6%110.0% as of the December 2017 measurement date.31, 2021.

The intensity and nature of our competition variesvary significantly across our different solutions, as changes in regulation and market trends result in evolving customer requirements and demand for enterprise software. Our primary competitors include:

As our market grows,markets expand, we expect it will attractto compete with more highly specialized software vendors, as well as larger vendors that may continue to acquire or bundle their products more effectively.

The principal competitive factors in our market include: product features, reliability, performance and effectiveness; product line breadth, diversity and applicability; product extensibility and ability to integrate with other technology infrastructures; price and total cost of ownership; adherence to industry standards and certifications; strength of sales and marketing efforts; and brand awareness and reputation. We believe that our Wdesk cloud-based platform has the combination of features and value to our customers that will continue to allow us to compete favorably.effectively.

Our “land-and-expand” sales strategy focuses on acquiring new customers and growing ourselling additional solutions to existing customer relationships.customers. We believe that we have penetrated only a small fraction of our market opportunity, and weopportunity. We intend to continue investing in sales and marketing to drive growth.growth in the U.S., Canada, Europe and parts of the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America.

Our sales organization employs a combination of field sales, inside sales and partnership channels. We focus on a “land-and-expand” strategy to acquire new customers and expand our existing customer relationships. We reallocated our sales and marketing resources in 2017 to simplify our account management model and create stronger relationships with our customers through improved coverage.

Our sales organization comprises sales development representatives, pre-solutionspre-sales engineers and account managers. Our sales development representatives qualify sales-accepted opportunities for our account managers. Our pre-solutionspre-sales engineers focus on solutions and custom product demonstrations and consultative sales. Our account managers work to attract new customers as well as expand Wdeskour platform into new use cases and departments across our current customers’ organizations.

Our customer success and professional services teams also help our account managers growbuild our existing customer relationships by providing advice and best practices that enable users to harness the full power of Wdesk.our platform.

We expectplan to continue to strengthenstrengthening our sales coverage in our current markets, as well as expand our sales footprint in locations where we see a demand for our solutions. To achieve this growth, we plan to continue to hire energetic andhiring motivated sales people with experience in large enterprise software sales.sales and in specific geographical regions. We believe that our approach to hiring sales people, along with a progressive training, culture and compensation package will allow us to retain sales talent and continue to drive growth.

Our marketing organization promotes our brand, generates demand for our offerings, and researches and assesses product and market needs. Our advance planning team assesses customer needs, conducts industry-based research and definesidentifies new markets. Our product marketing team develops the go-to-market strategy for WdeskWorkiva solutions and develops industry-level marketing messages.manages pricing and licensing strategies. The product marketing team also supports our sales team with playbooks that include profiles of typical buyers, key messages, value propositions, competitive analysis and sales strategies.

Our demand generation programs are categorized by technology solution and industry and are focused on engaging business leaders, process owners and technology teams. We use a variety of marketing programs across traditional and social channels to target current and prospective customers, including:

Our intellectual property and proprietary rights are important to our business. To safeguard these rights, we rely on a combination of patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret laws and contractual protections in the United States and other jurisdictions.

As of December 31, 2017,2021, we had 3063 issued patents and 1915 patent applications pending in the United States relating to our platform. We cannot assure you that any of our patent applications will result in the issuance of a patent or whether the examination process will require us to narrow or otherwise limit our claims. Any patents issued may be contested, designed around, found unenforceable, or invalidated, and we may not be able to prevent third parties from infringing them. We also license software from third parties for integration into our solutions, including open source software and other software available on commercially reasonable terms. We cannot assure you that such third parties will maintain such software or continue to make it available.

We control access to and use of our proprietary software and other confidential information through the use of internal and external controls, including contractual protections with employees, contractors, end-customers, and partners, and our software is protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. Despite our efforts to protect our trade secrets and proprietary rights through intellectual property rights, licenses, and confidentiality agreements, unauthorized parties may still copy or otherwise obtain and use our software and technology. In addition, we intend to expand our international operations, and effective patent, copyright, trademark, and trade-secret protection may not be available or may be limited in foreign countries.

Our industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents and frequent claims and related litigation regarding patent and other intellectual property rights. In particular, leading companies in the enterprise software industry have extensive patent portfolios and are regularly involved in both offensive and defensive litigation. From time to time, third parties, including certain of these leading companies, may assert claims of infringement, misappropriation or other violations of intellectual property rights against us, and our standard license and other agreements obligate us to indemnify our customers against such claims. Successful claims of infringement by a third party could prevent us from distributing certain solutions or performing certain services, require us to expend time and money to develop non-infringing solutions, or force us to pay substantial damages (including enhanced damages if we are found to have willfully infringed patents or copyrights), royalties or other fees. In addition, to the extent that we gain greater visibility and market exposure as a public company, we face a higher risk of being the subject of intellectual property infringement claims from third parties. We cannot assure you that we do not currently infringe, or that we will not in the future infringe, upon any third-party patents, copyrights or other proprietary rights.    

We have registered a number of trademarks and logos, including "Workiva"“Workiva,” “Wdesk” and "Wdesk,"“Wdata” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in several jurisdictions outside the United States. We have also registered other trademarks in the United States and in other jurisdictions outside the United States. In addition, we intend to expand our international operations, and we cannot assure you that these names will be available for use in all such jurisdictions.

From time to time, we may become involved in legal proceedings or be subject to claims arising in the ordinary course of our business. Although the results of litigation and claims cannot be predicted with certainty, we currently believe that the final outcome of any currently pending legal proceedings to which we are a party will not have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition or cash flows. Regardless of the outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on us because of defense and settlement costs, diversion of management resources and other factors.

By staying true to our company values, we have become a stronger and even more innovative team. As of December 31, 2017, we had 1,3182021, Workiva employed 2,106 full-time employees.people worldwide. Our headcount as of December 31, 20172021 increased 12.5%22.6% from our headcount1,718 full-time employees as of December 31, 2016. 2020.

None of our U.S. employees is represented by a labor organization or is a party to any collective bargaining arrangement. We have never experienced a strike or similar work stoppage, and we consider our relations with our employees to be good. For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, employee compensation and benefits accounted for approximately 83% of our total operating expense.

We were formed in California in August 2008 as WebFilings LLC. In July 2014, we changed our name to Workiva LLC, and we converted into a Delaware limited liability company in September 2014. On December 10, 2014, Workiva LLC was converted intoInc. is a Delaware corporation and renamed Workiva Inc. Ourwith principal executive offices are located at 2900 University Boulevard, Ames, Iowa 50010, and our50010. Our telephone number is (888) 275-3125. Our275-3125 and our website address is www.workiva.com.

Copies of annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to these reports filed or furnished pursuant to Section 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act, of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act), are available, free of charge, on our website as soon as reasonably practicable after we file such material electronically with or furnish it to the SEC. The SEC also maintains a website that contains our SEC filings. The address of the site is www.sec.gov.

We derive a majority of our revenue from customers using our platform for SEC filings.

We derive a majority of our revenue from customers using our platform for SEC filings. We sell a variety of other solutions, including global statutory reporting, SOX, capital markets, enterprise risk management and audit management, but the introduction of new solutions beyond the SEC market may not be successful. Although non-SEC solutions generated 70% of new solution and new customer bookings in 2021, it is uncertain whether they will achieve the level of market acceptance we have achieved in the SEC market. Any factor adversely affecting sales of our platform or solutions, including release cycles, market acceptance, competition, performance and reliability, reputation and regulatory, economic and market conditions, could adversely affect our business and operating results.

Our business depends substantially on customers renewing their subscriptions with us and expanding their use of our services. Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our services after the expiration of their current subscription period. While we have historically maintained a limited operating history, which makes it difficultsubscription and support revenue retention rate of greater than 94%, we may be unable to maintain this historical rate and we may be unable to accurately predict our subscription and support revenue retention rate. In addition, our customers may renew for shorter contract lengths, lower prices or a reduced scope of service. We cannot accurately predict new subscription or expansion rates and the impact these rates may have on our future revenue and operating results.

Since our formation, we use to plan our business) are incorrect or change due to changeshave experienced significant growth in our markets, or ifbusiness, customer base, employee headcount and operations, and we do not address these risks successfully,expect to continue to expand our business over the next several years. This growth places a significant strain on our management team and employees as well as our operating and financial results could differ materially fromsystems. To manage our expectationsfuture growth, we must continue to scale our business functions, improve our financial and management controls and our reporting systems and procedures and expand and train our work force. In particular, we grew from 1,718 employees as of December 31, 2020 to more than 2,100 employees as of December 31, 2021. We anticipate that additional investments in sales personnel, infrastructure and research and development spending will be required to:

We cannot assure you that our controls, systems and procedures will be adequate to support our future operations or that we will be able to manage our growth effectively. We also cannot assure you that we will be able to continue to expand our market presence in the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific region and other current markets or successfully establish our presence in other markets. Failure to effectively manage growth could result in difficulty or delays in deploying customers, declines in quality or customer satisfaction, increases in costs, difficulties in introducing new features or other operational difficulties, and any of these difficulties could adversely impact our business performance and results of operations.

We have not been profitable historically and may not achieve or maintain profitability in the future.

Our quarterly results may fluctuate significantly and may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business.significantly.

Our quarterly results of operations, including the levels of our revenue, gross margin, profitability, cash flow and deferred revenue, may vary significantly in the future due to a variety of factors, including the risks and uncertainties described herein, and period-to-period comparisons of our operating results may not be meaningful. Accordingly, the results of any one quarter should not be relied upon as an indication of future performance. Our quarterly financial results may fluctuate as a result of a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control, and therefore, may not fully reflect the underlying performance of our business. Fluctuations in quarterly results may negatively impactaffect the value of our Class A common stock. Factors that may cause fluctuations in our quarterly financial results include, without limitation, those listed below:

Our solutions face intense competition in the marketplace. If we are unable to compete effectively, our operating results could be adversely affected.

The market for our solutions is increasingly competitive, rapidly evolving and fragmented, and is subject to changing technology and shifting customer needs. Although we believe that our Wdesk platform and the solutions that it offers are unique, many vendors develop and market products and services that compete to varying extents with our offerings, and we expect competition in our market to continue to intensify. Moreover, industry consolidation may increase competition. In addition, many companies have chosen to invest in their own internal reporting solutions and therefore may be reluctant to switch to solutions such as ours.

We compete with many types of companies, including diversified enterprise software providers; providers of professional services, such as consultants and business and financial printers; governance, risk and compliance software providers; and business intelligence/corporate performance management software providers; and business reporting software providers. Many of our existing competitors, as well as a number of potential new competitors, have longer operating histories, greater name recognition, more established customer bases and significantly greater financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we do. As a result, ourOur competitors may be able to respond more quickly and effectively than we can to new or changing opportunities, technologies, standards or customer requirements. We could lose customers if our competitors introduce new competitive products, add new features, acquire competitive products, reduce prices, form strategic alliances with other companies or are acquired by third parties with greater available resources. We also face competition from a variety of vendors of cloud-based and on-premise software applications that address only a portion of one of our solutions. We may also face increasing competition from open source software initiatives, in which competitors may provide software and intellectual property for free. In addition, if a prospective customer is currently using a competing solution, the customer may be unwilling to switch to our solutions without access to setup support services. If we are unable to provide those services on terms attractive to the customer, the prospective customer may be unwilling to utilize our solutions. If our competitors’ products, services or technologies become more accepted than our solutions, if they are successful in bringing their products or services to market earlier than ours, or if their products or services are more technologically capable than ours, then our revenue could be adversely affected. In addition, some of our competitors may offer their products and services at a lower price. If we are unable to achieve our target pricing levels, our operating results would be negatively affected. Pricing pressures and increased competition could result in reduced sales, reduced margins, losses or a failure to maintain or improve our competitive market position, any of which would adversely affect our business.

Our revenue growth will depend in part on the success of our efforts to augment our direct-sales channels by developing relationships with third parties.

PriorWe have established strategic relationships with global advisory firms, regional consulting and implementation firms and technology partners. We expect these parties to 2017, we relied almost exclusively on the direct-sales modelcontribute to market Wdesk. In order to continue to build our business, wegrowth through referrals, influencing purchases and enhancing our value proposition through advisory and implementation services. We plan to continue to develop partnerships to supportexpand our sales efforts through referralspartner ecosystem and co-selling arrangements. Our efforts to developbuild relationships with partners are still at an early stage, we have generated limited revenue through these relationships to date, and we cannot assure you that we will be able to develop and maintain successful partnerships or that these partners will be successful in marketing and selling our platform or solutions based upon our platform.third parties. Identifying partners, negotiating and supporting relationships with them, on-boarding those firms into our ecosystem and maintaining relationships requires a significant commitment of time and resources that may not yield a significant return on our investment. We expect that our partners will have only limited commitments to dedicate resources to marketing and promoting our solutions. In addition, our competitors may be more effective in providing incentives to our partners or prospective partners to favor their products or services over our solutions. If we are unsuccessful in establishing or maintaining our relationships with partners, or if these partners are unsuccessful in marketing or selling our solutions, or are unable or unwilling to devote sufficient resources to these activities, our ability to compete in the marketplace or to grow our revenue could be impaired and our operating results may suffer. Further,Furthermore, our partners rely on highly skilled and trained professionals to position the platform in the market and to provide implementation and consulting services to our customers. We have formal training and enablement programs for our partners; however, our enablement efforts may be ineffective. If we do not adequately develop and maintain a sufficient number of qualified and trained partner professionals with knowledge of our solutions and our platform, we may suffer from services not being delivered correctly, improper expectations being set with our customers and customers therefore choosing not to expand the use of our platform or deciding not to renew their subscriptions. Also, our partners may have relationships with our competitors and experience with other products or services that could be used as substitutes for our platform. These relationships and product experience may result in our partners recommending our competitors’ products or services over our own products or services. In addition, new or emerging technologies and technological trends or changes in customer requirements may result in certain third parties de-emphasizing their dealings with us or becoming potential competitors in the future.

Failure to establish and maintain partnerships that can provide complementary technology offerings and software integrations could limit our ability to grow our business.

Our growth strategy includes expanding the use of Wdeskour platform through complementary technology offerings and software integrations, such as third-party application programming interfaces, or APIs. While we have established relationships with certain providers of complementary technology offerings

If we do not keep pace with technological changes, our solutions may become less competitive and our business may suffer.competitive.

Our market is characterized by rapid technological change, frequent product and service innovation and evolving industry standards. If we are unable to provide enhancements and new features for our existing solutions or new solutions that achieve market acceptance or that keep pace with these technological developments, our business could be adversely affected. For example, we focus on enhancing the features of our Wdesk platform to improve its utility for larger customers with complex, dynamic and global operations. The success of enhancements, new features and solutions depends on several factors, including the timely completion, introduction and market acceptance of the enhancements or new features or solutions. If we fail to successfully complete and introduce platform enhancements, or if our customers experience difficulties using our platform as a result of the transition or of the implementation of these enhancements, our revenue retention and revenue growth may be adversely affected. In addition, because our solutions are designed to operate on a variety of systems, we will need to continuously modify and enhance our solutions to keep pace with changes in internet-related hardware, software, communication, browser and database technologies. We may not be successful in either developing these modifications and enhancements or in bringing them to market in a timely fashion. Furthermore, uncertainties about the timing and nature of new network platforms or technologies, or modifications to existing platforms or technologies, could increase our research and development expenses. Any failure of our solutions to keep pace with technological changes or operate effectively with future network platforms and technologies could reduce the demand for our solutions, result in customer dissatisfaction and adversely affect our business.

If we fail to manage our technical operations infrastructure, our existing customers may experience service outages, and our new customers may experience delays in the deployment of our solutions.

We have experienced significant growth in the number of users, projects and data that our operations infrastructure supports. We seek to maintain sufficient excess capacity in our operations infrastructure to meet the needs of all of our customers. We also seek to maintain excess capacity to facilitate the rapid provision of new customer deployments and the expansion of existing customer deployments. In addition, we need to properly manage our technological operations infrastructure in order

As a providerThe inability to maintain software licenses, or the existence of cloud-basederrors in the software we rely on the services of third-party data center hosting facilities. Interruptions or delays in those services could impair the delivery of our service and harm our business.

Our solutions incorporate certain third-party software that may be licensed to or hosted by or on behalf of Workiva, or may be hosted by a licensor and accessed by Workiva on a Software-as-a-Service basis. We anticipate that we will continue to rely on third-party software and development tools from third parties in the future. There may not be commercially reasonable alternatives to the third-party software we currently use, or it may be difficult or costly to replace. In addition, integration of the software used in our services. Ifsolutions with new third-party software may require significant work and require substantial investment of our time and resources. Any undetected errors or defects in this third-party software could prevent the servicesdeployment or impair the functionality of one or more of these providers are terminated, disrupted, interrupted or suspended for any reason, we could experience disruption in our ability to offer our solutions, or we could be required to retain the services of replacement providers, which could increase our operating costs and harm our business and reputation. In addition, as we grow, we may move or transfer our data and our customers’ data to other cloud hosting providers. Despite precautions taken during this process, any unsuccessful data transfers may impair the deliverydelay new solution introductions, result in a failure of our service. Further, any damage to, or failure of, the cloud servers that we use could result in interruptions insolutions and injure our services. reputation.

Interruptions in our servicethird-party services or software may damage our reputation, reduce our revenue, cause us to issue credits or pay penalties, cause customers to terminate their subscriptions and adversely affect our renewal rates and our ability to attract new customers. Our business would be harmed if our customers and potential customers believe our service is unreliable. Any inability to maintain or acquire third-party licensed software for use in our solutions could result in increased costs or reduced service levels, which would adversely affect our business.

Any failure or interruptions in the internet infrastructure, bandwidth providers, data center providers, other third parties or our own systems for providing our solutions to customers could negatively impact our business.

Our ability to deliver our solutions is dependent on the development and maintenance of the internet and other telecommunications services by third parties. Such services include maintenance of a reliable network backbone with the necessary speed, data capacity and security for providing reliable internet access and services and reliable telecommunications systems that connect our operations. While our solutions are designed to operate without interruption, we may experience interruptions and delays in services and availability from time to time. We

Further, we rely on third-party systems as well as third-partyand vendors, including data center, bandwidth, and telecommunications equipment providers, to provide our solutions. Our platform has been developed with, and is based on, cloud computing technology. It is hosted pursuant to service agreements on servers by third-party service providers, including those with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform. We do not control the operation of these providers or their facilities, and the facilities are vulnerable to damage, interruption or misconduct. We also do not maintain redundant systems or facilities for some of these services. InUnanticipated problems at these facilities could result in lengthy interruptions in our services. If the eventservices of a catastrophic event with respect to one or more of these systemsproviders are terminated, disrupted, interrupted or facilities,suspended for any reason, we maycould experience an extended period of system unavailability, which could negatively impact our relationship with our customers.

Changes in laws and regulations related to the internet or changes in the internet infrastructure itself may diminish the demand for our solutions and could have a negative impact on our business.solutions.

The future success of our business depends upon the continued use of the internet as a primary medium for commerce, communication and business solutions. Federal, state or foreign government bodies or agencies have in the past adopted, and may in the future adopt, laws or regulations affecting the use of the internet as a commercial medium. Changes in these laws or regulations could require us to modify our solutions in order to comply with these changes. In addition, government agencies or private organizations may begin to impose taxes, fees or other charges for accessing the internet or commerce conducted via the internet. These laws or charges could limit the growth of internet-related commerce or communications generally or result in reductions in the demand for internet-based solutions such as ours.

In addition, the use of the internet as a business tool could be adversely affected due to delays in the development or adoption of new standards and protocols to handle increased demands of internet activity, security, reliability, cost, ease of use, accessibility and quality of service. The performance of the internet and its acceptance as a business tool has been adversely affected by “viruses,” “worms” and similar malicious programs, and the internet has experienced a variety of outages and other delays as a result of damage to portions of its infrastructure. If the use of the internet is adversely affected by these issues, demand for our solutions could suffer.

We are subject to U.S. and foreign data privacy and protection laws and regulations as well as contractual privacy obligations, and our failure to comply could subject us to fines and damages and would harm our reputation and business.obligations.

We manage private and confidential information and documentation related to our customers’ finances and transactions, often prior to public dissemination. The use of insider information is highly regulated in the United States and abroad, and violations of securities laws and regulations may result in civil and criminal penalties. In addition, we are subject to the data privacy and protection laws and regulations adopted by federal, state and foreign legislatures and governmental agencies. Data privacy and protection is highly regulated and may become the subject of additional regulation in the future. Privacy laws restrict our storage, use, processing, disclosure, transfer and protection of non-public personal information that may be placed in Wdeskour platform by our customers or collected from visitors while visiting our websites. We strive to comply with all applicable laws, regulations, policies and legal obligations relating to privacy and data protection. However, it is possible that these requirements may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other rules or our practices. Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to comply with federal, state or international laws, including laws and regulations regulating privacy, payment card information, personal health information, data or consumer protection, could result in proceedings or actions against us by governmental entities or others.

In addition to government activity, the technology industry and other industries are considering various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. If the processing of privatepersonal and confidential information were to be curtailed in this manner, our software solutions may be less effective or diminish the user experience, which may reduce demand for our solutions and adversely affect our business. Furthermore, government agencies may seek to access sensitive information that our customers upload to our service providers or restrict customers’ access to our service providers. Laws and

We are also subject to the privacy and data protection-related obligations in our contracts with our customers and other third parties. We could be adversely affected by changes to these contracts in ways that are inconsistent with our practices or in conflict with the laws and regulations of the United States, foreign or international regulatory authorities. We may also be contractually liable to indemnify and hold harmless our clients from the costs or consequences of inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure of data that we store or handle as part of providing our services. Finally, we are also subject to contractual obligations and other legal restrictions with respect to our collection and use of data, and we may be liable to third parties in the event we are deemed to have wrongfully used or gathered data.

As our customers and prospects prepare to comply with frequently changing privacy legislation, and ultimatelyincluding GDPR, we are subject to our current and prospective customers’ enhanced due diligence prior to contract execution. Furthermore, the uncertainty of how regulators will apply privacy laws in different jurisdictions has caused many companies to adopt very broad and restrictive vendor policies, contract templates and pre-requisites. Many times, these policies are applied without consideration of the underlying intent of the vendor’s service or data that will be shared (e.g., a blanket policy that all vendors, regardless of services, are required to agree to a Data Protection Agreement).requirements. Due to the aforementioned changes to privacy law, our current and prospective customers have begun to require us to adopt standard contractual clauses, data processing agreements, or amendments to existing agreements regarding privacy and/or security compliance prior to conducting new (or any) business with us by virtue of negotiating new clauses and/or agreements.us. In addition, due diligence by current or prospective customers may take the form of onsite audits and questionnaires. Negotiating these clauses and satisfying customers’ concerns around privacy risk can slow down the overall sales cycle due to the coordination of so many subject matter experts. Slower sales cycles may limit our ability to grow and create focus on compliance points as opposed to new sales.

Any failure by us or a third-party contractor providing services to us to comply with applicable privacy and data protection laws, regulations, self-regulatory requirements or industry guidelines, our contractual privacy obligations or our own privacy policies, may result in fines, statutory or contractual damages, litigation or governmental enforcement actions. These proceedings or violations could force us to spend significant amounts in defense or settlement of these proceedings, result in the imposition of monetary liability, distract our management, increase our costs of doing business, and adversely affect our reputation and the demand for our solutions.

protect customerFurthermore, government agencies may seek to access sensitive information and prevent data loss and other security breaches, these measures may be breached as a result of third-party action, employee error, malfeasance or otherwise. Because the techniques usedthat our customers upload to obtain unauthorized access or sabotage systems change frequently and generally are not identified until they are launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques or to implement adequate preventative measures.

Any failure to protect our intellectual property rights or defend against accusations of infringement of third-party intellectual property rights could impair our ability to protect our proprietary technology and our brand.

Our success substantially depends upon our proprietary methodologies and other intellectual property rights. Unauthorized use of our intellectual property by third parties may damage our brand and our reputation. As of December 31, 2017,2021, we had 3063 issued patents and 1915 patent applications pending, in the United States, and we expect to seek additional patents in the future. In addition, we rely on a combination of copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, employee and third-party non-disclosure and non-competition agreements and other methods to protect our intellectual property. However, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or obtain and use our technology to develop products with the same functionality as our solutions. We cannot assure you that the steps we take to protect our intellectual property will be adequate to deter misappropriation of our proprietary information or that we will be able to detect unauthorized use and take appropriate steps to protect our intellectual property. United States federal and state intellectual property laws offer limited protection, and the laws of some countries provide even less protection. Moreover, changes in intellectual property laws, such as changes in the law regarding the patentability of software, could also impact our ability to obtain protection for our solutions. In addition, patents may not be issued with respect to our pending or future patent applications. Those patents that are issued may not be upheld as valid, may be contested or circumvented, or may not prevent the development of competitive solutions.

Patent and other intellectual property disputes are common in our industry. We might be required to spend significant resources and divert the efforts of our technical and management personnel to monitor and protect our intellectual property. Litigation brought to protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could be costly, time-consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Any failure to secure, protect and enforce our intellectual property rights could seriously adversely affect our brand and adversely impact our business.

In addition, our business and operating results.

Some of our solutions utilize open source software, and any failure to comply with the terms of one or more of these open source licenses could negatively affect our business.

Some of our solutions include software covered by open source licenses, which may include, by way of example, GNU General Public License and the Apache License. The terms of various open source licenses have not been interpreted by United States courts, and there is a risk that such licenses could be construed in a manner that imposes unanticipated conditions or restrictions on our ability to market our solutions. By the terms of certain open source licenses, we could be required to release the source code of our proprietary software, and to make our proprietary software available under open source licenses, if we combine our proprietary software with open source software in a certain manner. In the event that portions of our proprietary software are determined to be subject to an open source license, we could be required to publicly release the affected portions of our source code, reengineerre-engineer all or a portion of our technologies, or otherwise be limited in the licensing of our technologies, each of which could reduce or eliminate the value of our technologies and services. In addition to risks related to license requirements, usage of open source software can lead to greater risks than use of third-party commercial software, as open source licensors generally do not provide warranties or controls on the origin of the software. Many of the risks associated with usage of open source software cannot be eliminated and could negatively affect our business.

The market forChanges to U.S. tax laws could also impact how U.S. corporations are taxed. Although we cannot predict whether or in what form such changes will be issued or enacted, they could have a material impact on our solutions depends in part on the requirementseffective tax rate, income tax expense, deferred tax assets, results of the SEC, the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporationoperations, cash flows, and other regulatory bodies. Any legislation or rulemaking substantially affecting the content or method of delivery of documents to be filed with theseprofitability.

Determining our income tax rate is complex and subject to uncertainty.

The computation of provision for income tax is complex, as it is based on the laws of numerous taxing jurisdictions and requires significant judgment on the application of complicated rules governing accounting for tax provisions under U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. In addition, the application of federal, state, local and international tax laws to services provided electronically is evolving, and new tax requirements could be applied solely or disproportionately to services provided over the internet. Provision for income tax for interim quarters is based on a forecast of our U.S. and non-U.S. effective tax rates for the year, which includes forward-looking financial projections, including the expectations of profit and loss by jurisdiction, and contains numerous assumptions. Various items cannot be accurately forecasted and future events may be treated as discrete to the period in which they occur. Our provision for income tax can be materially impacted, for example, by the geographical mix of our profits and losses, changes in our business, such as internal restructuring and acquisitions, changes in tax laws and accounting guidance and other regulatory, legislative or judicial developments most recently the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,changes in tax rates, tax audit determinations, changes in our uncertain tax positions, changes in our intent and capacity to permanently reinvest foreign earnings, changes to our transfer pricing practices, tax deductions attributed to equity compensation and changes in our need for a valuation allowance for deferred tax assets. For these reasons, our actual income taxes may be materially different than our provision for income tax.

In general, under Section 382 of the Code, a corporation that undergoes an ownership change within the meaning of Section 382 of the Code and the underlying regulations is subject to limitations on its ability to utilize its pre-change net operating losses (“NOLs”), to offset future taxable income. If our existing NOLs are subject to limitations arising from previous ownership changes, our ability to utilize NOLs could be impacted depending onlimited by Section 382 of the applicabilityCode. Future changes in our stock ownership, some of withholding taxes and indirect tax on software licenses and related intercompany transactions in certain jurisdictions. In determining the adequacywhich are outside of income taxes, we assess the likelihood of adverse outcomes thatour control, could result ifin an ownership change under Section 382 of the Code. Furthermore, our tax positions were challenged byability to utilize the IRS and other tax authorities. The tax authorities in the United States and other countries where we do business regularly examine our income and other tax returns. The ultimate outcomeNOLs of these examinations cannot be predicted with certainty. Should the IRS or other tax authorities assess additional taxes as a result of examinations, we may be required to record charges to operationscompanies that could have a material impact on our results of operations, or financial position.

Our stock price has been and will likely continue to be volatile or may decline regardless of our operating performance, resulting in substantial losses for our investors.performance.

The trading price for shares of our Class A common stock has been, and is likely to continue to be, volatile for the foreseeable future. The market price of our Class A common stock may fluctuate in response to many risk factors listed in this section, and others beyond our control, including:

Furthermore, the stock markets recently have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many companies, and technology companies in particular. These fluctuations often have been unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies. These broad market and industry fluctuations, as well as general economic, political and market conditions such as recessions, interest rate changes or international currency fluctuations, may negatively impact the market price of our Class A common stock. In the past, companies that have experienced volatility in the market price of their stock have been subject to securities class action litigation. We may be the target of this type of litigation in the future. Securities litigation against us could result in substantial costs and divert our management’s attention from other business concerns, which could harm our business.

The price of our Class A common stock could decline if thereour convertible senior notes are substantial salesconverted. In addition, upon conversion of our Class A common stock, particularly sales by our directors, executive officers and significant stockholders,the convertible senior notes, we have the option to pay or if there is a large number ofdeliver, as the case may be, cash, shares of our Class A common stock, available for sale. Allor a combination of thecash and shares of our Class A common stock, sold in our initial public offering are freely tradeable without restrictions or further registration underand anticipated conversion of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (Securities Act), except for any shares held by our affiliates as defined in Rule 144 under the Securities Act. Shares held by directors, executive officers and other affiliates are subject to volume limitations under Rule 144 under the Securities Act. In addition, theconvertible senior notes into shares of our Class A common stock subject to outstanding options undercould depress the price of our equity incentive plans andClass A common stock. Further, the shares reserved for future issuance under our equity incentive plans are eligible for sale toexistence of the public, subject to certain legal and contractual limitations. convertible senior notes may encourage short selling by market participants that engage in hedging or arbitrage activity.

The market price of the shares of our Class A common stock could decline as a result of the sale of a substantial number of our shares of common stock in the public market, including by us, our directors, executive officers and significant shareholders, or by the perceptionconversion of our convertible senior notes into shares of our Class A common stock and the subsequent sale of such shares in the market that thepublic market. New investors in subsequent transactions could gain rights, preferences and privileges senior to those of holders of a large number of shares intend to sell their shares.our Class A common stock.

The dual class structure of our common stock has the effect of concentratingconcentrates voting control with certain of our executives and their affiliates.executives.

Our Class B common stock has ten votes per share, and our Class A common stock has one vote per share. As of December 31, 2017,2021, the holders of shares of our Class B common stock collectively beneficially owned shares representingby certain of our current and former executive officers collectively represented approximately 76%47% of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock. Our executive officers collectively beneficially owned shares representing a substantial majorityThis significant concentration of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock as of that date. Because of the ten-to-one voting ratio between our Class B and Class A common stock, the holders of our Class B common stock collectively will continue to control a majority of the combined voting power of our common stock and therefore be able to control all matters submitted to our stockholders for approval so long as the shares of Class B common stock represent at least 9.1% of all outstanding shares of our Class A and Class B common stock. This concentrated control willmay limit the ability of Class A common stockholders to influence corporate matters for the foreseeable future and may have the effect of delaying, deferring or preventing a change in control, impeding a merger, consolidation, takeover or other business combination involving us, or discouraging a potential acquirer from making a tender offer or otherwise attempting to obtain control of our business, even if such a transaction would benefit other stockholders. The holders of Class B common stock may also have interests that differ from those of

Provisions in our certificate of incorporation and bylaws may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control or changes in our management. Our certificate of incorporation and bylaws include provisions that:

We do not intend to pay dividends for the foreseeable future.

We may not declare or pay cash dividends on our capital stock in the near future. We currently intend to retain any future earnings to finance the operation and expansion of our business, and we do not expect to declare or pay any dividends in the foreseeable future. Consequently, stockholders must rely on sales of their Class A common stock after price appreciation as the only way to realize any future gains on their investment.

The trading marketconditional conversion feature of our convertible senior notes may adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.

We completed an offering of convertible senior notes in August 2019. The convertible senior notes became conditionally convertible for the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022 because our Class A common stock will depend in partCommon Stock traded at a price equal to or greater than 130% of the conversion price for at least 20 trading days during the 30 consecutive trading days ending on the researchlast trading day of the immediately preceding calendar quarter. As a result of this trigger being met, and reports that securities or industry analysts publish about us orin the event the conditional conversion feature of our business. If few securities analysts maintain coverageconvertible senior notes is triggered again in future periods, holders of us, or if industry analysts cease coverage of us,such notes will be entitled to convert the trading price for our Class A common stock would be negatively affected.convertible senior notes at any time during specified periods at their option. If one or more of the analysts who cover us downgradeholders elect to convert their convertible senior notes, unless we elect to satisfy our Class A common stock or publish inaccurate or unfavorable research about our business, the priceconversion obligation by delivering solely shares of our Class A common stock (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we would likely decline. If one or more of these analysts cease coverage of us or failbe required to publish reports on us regularly, demand for our Class A common stock could decrease, which might cause our Class A common stock price and trading volume to decline.

Our ability to make scheduled payments of the principal of, to pay interest on or to refinance our current and future indebtedness, including our convertible senior notes, depends on our future performance. In addition, holders of the trading price or trading volumeconvertible senior notes will have the right to require us to repurchase their convertible senior notes for cash upon the occurrence of certain fundamental changes. Upon conversion of the convertible senior notes, unless we elect to deliver solely shares of our Class A common stock to settle such conversion (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we will be required to make cash payments in respect of the notes being converted. Our business may not continue to generate cash flow from operations in the future sufficient to service our debt and may result in shareholder litigation.make necessary capital expenditures.

None.

Our corporate headquarters is located in Ames, Iowa, where we lease approximately 120,000 square feet of office space. We also lease office facilities in elevennine U.S. cities located in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia,the District of Columbia, Illinois, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, and Texas.Carolina. Internationally, we lease offices in Ontario and Saskatchewan, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.Kingdom, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Australia, and Singapore. We believe that our properties are generally suitable to meet our needs for the foreseeable future. In addition, to the extent we require additional space in the future, we believe that it would be readily available on commercially reasonable terms.

From time to time we may become involved in legal proceedings or be subject to claims arising in the ordinary course of our business. We are not presently a party to any legal proceedings that in the opinion of our management, if determined adversely to us, would have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, operating results or cash flows. Regardless of the outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on us because of defense and settlement costs, diversion of management resources and other factors.

Part II.

Our Class A common stock is listed on the NYSE under the symbol “WK”. The following table sets forth the range of high and low per share sales prices for our common stock as reported on the NYSE for the periods indicated.

As of December 31, 2017,2021, there were approximately 17576 stockholders of record of our Class A common stock, as well as 1310 stockholders of record of our Class B common stock.

We have never declared or paid cash dividends on our capital stock. We currently intend to retain any future earnings and do not expect to pay any dividends on our capital stock. Any future determination to pay dividends on our capital stock will be at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend on our financial condition, results of operations, capital requirements and other factors that our board of directors considers relevant. In addition, our credit facility with Silicon Valley Bank restricts our ability to pay dividends. See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Liquidity and Capital Resources” for a summary of the material terms of our credit facility.

The following shall not be deemed incorporated by reference into any of our other filings under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.Act.

The graph below compares the cumulative total stockholder return on our Class A common stock with the cumulative total return on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the Nasdaq Computer Index. The chart assumes $100 was invested at the close of market on December 12, 2014,31, 2016, in the Class A common stock of Workiva Inc., the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Computer Index, and assumes the reinvestment of any dividends.

The following table provides information about purchases of shares of our Class A common stockCommon Stock during the three months ended December 31, 20172021 related to shares withheld upon vesting of restricted stock awardsunits for tax withholding obligations:

(1) Total number of shares delivered to us by employees to satisfy the mandatory tax withholding requirement upon vesting of stock-based compensation awards.

The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of our operations should be read in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report. In addition to historical consolidated financial information, this discussion contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Our actual results could differ materially from those discussed below. Factors that could cause or contribute to these differences include, but are not limited to, those identified below, and those discussed in “Section 1A. Risk Factors” included elsewhere in this Annual Report.

Workiva changes the way enterprises manage and report business data. Our open, intelligent and intuitive platform is builtbased on asingle instance, multi-tenant software applications deployed in the cloud. Our platform connects data, management engine, offeringdocuments and teams, which results in improved efficiency, greater transparency and reduced risk of errors. We offer customers controlled collaboration, data connections,linking, data integrations, granular permissions, process management and a full audit trail. Wdesk helps mitigate risk,trail on our proprietary platform.

Customers use our platform to create, review and publish data-linked documents and reports with greater control, consistency, accuracy and productivity. Customers collaborate in the same document simultaneously, which improves productivityefficiency and gives users confidenceversion control. Our platform is flexible and scalable, so customers can easily adapt it to define, automate and change their business processes in their data-driven decisions. As of December 31, 2017, we provided our solutions to more than 3,000 enterprise customers, including more than 70% of Fortune 500 companies.⁽¹⁾real time.

Our scalable, enterprise-gradeplatform lets our customers connect data engine enables users to collect, aggregatefrom Enterprise Resource Planning (“ERP”), Governance Risk and manage their unstructuredCompliance (“GRC”), Human Capital Management (“HCM”) and structured data in Wdesk. AlthoughCustomer Relationship Management (“CRM”) systems, as well as other third-party cloud and on-premise applications.

While our Wdeskcustomers use our platform is used for hundredsdozens of different use cases, across public and private companies, state and local governments and universities, we are currently focusing our sales and marketing resources to expand the use of Wdesk inare organized into four areas: financesolution groups: Regulatory Reporting, Non-Regulatory Reporting, Financial Services and accounting, audit and internal controls, risk and compliance and performance and management reporting.Integrated Risk.

We operate our business on a software-as-a-service (SaaS)Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) model. Customers enter into quarterly, annual and multi-year subscription contracts to gain access to Wdesk.our platform. Our subscription fee includes the use of our software and technical support. Our subscription pricing is based primarily on a solution-based licensing model. Under this model, operating metrics related to a customer’s expected use of each solution determine the number of corporate entities, number of users, level of customer support and length of contract. Our pricing model is scaled to the number of users, so the subscription price per user typically decreases as the number of users increases.price. We charge customers additional fees primarily for document setup and XBRL tagging services.

We generate sales primarily through our direct sales force and, to a lesser extent, our customer success and professional services teams. In addition, we augment our direct-salesdirect sales channel with partnerships. Our advisory and service partners offer a wider range of domain and functional expertise that broadens the capabilities of Wdesk,our platform, bringing scale and support to customers and prospects. Our technology partners enable more data and process integrations to help customers connect critical transactional systems directly to Wdesk, which becomes a central repository of trusted data, with powerful linking, auditability and control features.

We continue to invest in the development of our solutions, infrastructure and sales and marketing to drive long-term growth. Our full-time employee headcount expanded to 1,3182,106 at December 31, 20172021 from 1,1721,718 at December 31, 2016,2020, an increase of 12.5%22.6%.

We have achieved significant revenue growth in recent periods. Our revenue grew to $207.9$443.3 million in 20172021 from $178.6$351.6 million in 2016,2020, an increase of 16.4%26.1%. We incurred net losses of $44.4$37.7 million and $44.0$48.4 million in 20172021 and 2016,2020, respectively.

(1) Claim not confirmed by FORTUNE or Time Inc. FORTUNE 500 isOn December 29, 2021, we acquired all of the equity interest in Mark V Systems Limited, a registered trademarkCalifornia corporation (“Mark V Systems”) and owner of Time Inc. andArelle, the leading open-source XBRL validation engine. As the global standard, Arelle is used under license. FORTUNEby a community of over 50 global regulators, banks and Time Inc. are not affiliatedtechnology companies that depend on it for data quality and comparison. Workiva is committed to working with the XBRL community to keep Arelle open-sourced and do not endorse products or services of, Workiva Inc.

On December 10, 2021, we acquired all of the incremental costsmembership interests in AuditNet, LLC (“AuditNet”), a global audit content and services provider, which strengthens Workiva’s risk and assurance offerings.

On July 30, 2021, we acquired all of obtainingthe equity interest in OneCloud, Inc., an integration platform as a contract;service iPaaS company, in order to extend our integration and increases in accounts receivable, deferred revenue and accrued expenses and other current liabilities. We will record a one-time adjustmentdata preparation capabilities. See Note 12 to the opening balance of our accumulated deficit as of January 1, 2018 to adjust for these items. We do not expect the adoption of this standard to impact our total cash flows from operations. Refer to Note 1 of the notes to thecondensed consolidated financial statements for additional detailsmore information on our acquisitions.

Although the COVD-19 pandemic persists, we do not believe that it has adversely affected our evaluation of ASU 2014-09.

Should COVID-19 variants continue to 21%develop and spread, there is the possibility of future disruption to Workiva’s operations. The impact of any disruption is dependent upon a number of factors including the duration and severity of any COVID-19 resurgence, its impact on the overall economy and specific industry sectors, vaccination rates and the introductionlonger-term efficacy of a new international “Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income” (“GILTI”) regime, both effective January 1, 2018. Please refervaccinations. We will continue to Notes 1evaluate and 11 of the notes to consolidated financial statements for additional details of the impact of the TCJA.refine our return-to-work and related policies in accordance with OSHA and CDC guidance.

Key Performance Indicators

Our subscription and support revenue retention rate was 96.0% at the December 2017 measurement date, up from 95.4%97.0% as of December 2016.31, 2021, up from 95.0% as of December 31, 2020. We believe that our success in maintaining a high rate of revenue retention is attributable primarily to our robust technology platform and strong customer service. Customers being acquiredwhose securities were deregistered due to merger or otherwise ceasing to file SEC reports have been the largest contributing factor toacquisition, or financial distress accounted for just over half of our revenue attrition.attrition in the latest quarter.

Revenue

We generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions to our cloud-based software and the delivery of professional services. We serve a wide range of customers in many industries, and our revenue is not concentrated with any single customer or small group of customers. For each of the years ended December 31, 2017, 20162021, 2020 and 2015,2019, no single customer represented more than 1% of our revenue, and our largest ten10 customers accounted for less than 5% of our revenue in the aggregate.

We generate sales directly through our sales force and partners. We also identify some sales opportunities with existing customers through our customer success and professional services teams.

Our customer contracts typically range in length from threetwelve to 36 months. We typically invoice our customers for subscription fees annually in advance. For contracts with a two or three year term, customers sometimes elect to pay the entire multi-year subscription term in advance. Our arrangements do not contain general rights of return. We typically invoice our customers for subscription fees in advance on a quarterly, annual, two-year or three-year basis, with payment due at the start of the subscription term. We plan to convert a substantial majority of our remaining quarterly contracts to annual terms over the next twelve months. In addition, we continue to offer limited incentives for customers to enter into contract terms of more than one year, typically for terms of two or three years. Unpaid invoice amounts for services starting in future periods are excluded from accounts receivable and deferred revenue. Invoiced amounts are reflected as accounts receivable once we have initiated services with an offset to deferred revenue or revenue depending on whether the revenue recognition criteria have been met. At December 31, 2017, deferred revenue was $127.4 million. Estimated future recognition from deferred revenue at December 31, 2017 was $104.7 million in 2018, $18.3 million in 2019, and $4.4 million in 2020. 

Cost of Revenue

Cost of revenue consists primarily of personnel and related costs directly associated with our professional services, customer success teams and training personnel, including salaries, benefits, bonuses, and stock-based compensation; the costs of contracted third-party vendors; the costs of server usage by our customers; information technology costs; and facility costs. Costs of server usage are comprised primarily of fees paid to Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.

Sales and Marketing Expenses

Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel and related costs, including salaries, benefits, bonuses, commissions, travel, and stock-based compensation. Other costs included in this expense are marketing and promotional events, our annual user conference, online marketing, product marketing, information technology costs, and facility costs. We capitalize and amortizepay sales commissions thatfor initial contracts and expansions of existing customer contracts. When the relevant amortization period is one year or less, we expense sales commissions as incurred. All other sales commissions are directly attributable toconsidered incremental costs of obtaining a contract with a customer and are deferred and amortized on a straight-line basis over the lessera period of twelve months or the non-cancelable term of the customer contract based on the terms of our commission arrangements.benefit that we have determined to be three years.

Research and Development Expenses

Research and development expenses consist primarily of personnel and related costs, including salaries, benefits, bonuses, and stock-based compensation; costs of server usage by our developers; information technology costs; and facility costs.

General and Administrative Expenses

General and administrative expenses consist primarily of personnel and related costs for our executive, finance and accounting, legal, human resources, and administrative personnel, including salaries, benefits, bonuses, and stock-based compensation; legal, accounting, and other professional service fees; other corporate expenses; information technology costs; and facility costs.

The following table sets forth selected consolidated statement of operations data for each of the periods indicated: