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Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

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Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#121

Post by maverick_iceman »

yeukhon wrote: post #29
blowski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need to expand beyond that? Am I idealistic to say a company can survive just by doing something really well. Salesforce is hardly a paragon of a well-executed clear and consistent vision. I pay Dropbox because I can rely on their backups any place at any time, not because their storage is cheap.

I think we need a better storage backup system. I've got data on iCloud and on multiple desktops and laptops. My iCloud doesn't have all the photos because I'd run out of space and be paying dozens of dollars monthly [1]. I was helping my friend to select a disk backup solution a while ago, and not that many really came to my likings. Backblaze[2] is probably the only one I would say pretty good for a monthly backup…

Try Google Drive and Google Photos. Google Photos offer unlimited space for high-res photos.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#122

Post by nkristoffersen »

yeukhon wrote: post #78
crooked-v wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unlimited" space in any online service almost always means "there is a soft cap where we start threatening to shut down your service, but we won't tell you what it is ahead of time".

Actually quite an interesting point. Consider S3. They provide unlimited storage, but their software has to be able to keep up with the insane growth of data, albeit the hardware storage demand as well.

You still pay per TB. So yes, if you pay, you can have "unlimited" storage.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#123

Post by stephenr »

sidlls wrote: post #101
skdotdan wrote: post #44

"Dropbox it's not a product, it's a feature". Don't get me wrong, I'm a Dropbox user myself, but I don't see their actual moat. Isn't cloud storage a commodity nowadays? IMHO they should have spent money in investing in other productivity companies in order to diversify and be able to offer a complete productivity suite.

It seems to me you're looking at this from a technically proficient developer's perspective. It's easy (trivial) for a technically proficient person to setup any trivial cloud storage system they like on just about any provider's platform they like. It's not so easy for anybody else (read: the vast majority of other users). Dropbox's value proposition isn't commodity storage on somebody else's servers: it's the UI/UX…

Dropbox isn't installed by default on any platform.

Apple, Microsoft and Goole all offer 'cloud' storage services (they aren't a product, stop calling it that) and all have a user-facing platform on devices: macOS/iOS, the various Windows, Android/ChromeOS.

Dropbox is effectively a feature. That isn't to say they can't remain in the market and possibly even become profitable, but just making a sync client whose biggest recent news is the skeezy install process on macOS isn't going to cut it.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#124

Post by Swizec »

nicoburns wrote: post #53
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company with a modest valuation can survive by doing one thing and doing it well. A company with a very large valuation needs either very large sales figures OR large growth potential. Dropbox is squarely in the second category, which is why they need to keep expanding.

Surely if the company isn't "living up to it's valuation" that's a problem for the people who erroneously valued it at that level, not for the company?

"When you owe the bank $1000, you're in trouble. When you owe the bank $1,000,000,000 the bank is in trouble"

Similar mechanics apply to having a large valuation, no?

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#125

Post by Afton »

alphapapa wrote: post #112
Afton wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't involved in these design discussions early on, and Skydrive certainly didn't use rsync, this was just meant as an example of "this is essentially a solved problem, we just need some UI". It isn't, and presenting it as such just gets you into a bad situation.

But Dropbox doesn't handle any merging of changes; any conflicts are left for the user to resolve. In this way it's basically an automatic version of Unison, which is exactly "some UI" around a "solved problem." Right?

I'm not familiar with Unison, and have no idea how successful it is, nor where it falls down.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#127

Post by uvince »

I love that they do one thing really, really well. Further:

"Dropbox is the fastest SaaS company to reach $1 billion in revenue run rate" - given that, I don't care if they are profitable or not. They got to $1B faster than Salesforce, as long as they keep this up they'll be just fine.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#128

Post by sidlls »

stephenr wrote: post #123
sidlls wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me you're looking at this from a technically proficient developer's perspective. It's easy (trivial) for a technically proficient person to setup any trivial cloud storage system they like on just about any provider's platform they like. It's not so easy for anybody else (read: the vast majority of other users). Dropbox's value proposition isn't commodity storage on somebody else's servers: it's the UI/UX…

Dropbox isn't installed by default on any platform. Apple, Microsoft and Goole all offer 'cloud' storage services (they aren't a product, stop calling it that) and all have a user-facing platform on devices: macOS/iOS, the various Windows, Android/ChromeOS. Dropbox is effectively a feature. That isn't to say they can't remain in the market and possibly even become profitable, but just making a sync client whose bigge…

If the market treats them like a product, they are a product. Also the number of people outside of techie communities that care about either Apple computers or "skeezy" installs on them is tiny. Mac has a tiny, tiny fraction of the computing market and the vast majority of MacBook users are about as tech savvy as the vast majority of windows laptop users: that is they aren't savvy at all.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#129

Post by szermer »

shubhamjain wrote: post #10

One concern about Dropbox I have is its inability to establish itself beyond its File Storage / Syncing software. Salesforce.com, in comparison, has been acquiring companies left and right. Notable acquisitions of Dropbox, like Mailbox, have either shut down, or are nowhere on the impact map. As Dropbox user (albeit a free one), I don't find it useful for anything beyond synced storage (if there is any new addition i…

I just presented a deck on this topic today. The 30 year evolution of the document goes something like:

Paper > Word Processing > Email Attachment > Collaborative (Google Docs) > Cloud Storage > Meta Information

The last part, Meta Information, is the ‘conversation about the document’ and represents the evolution from a physical piece of paper that I hold in my hand to having a conversation around a document that I might only view as a file name in a folder and never open it up (or just click on the preview).

Box notes is a good first phase of this evolution, however Conversational UIs will lead that next evolutionary phase. Dropbox needs to support the communication pathways that are formed around the documents that people are storing.

Re: Dropbox Secures $600M Credit Line Ahead of Expected IPO

#130

Post by skdotdan »

sidlls wrote: post #101
skdotdan wrote: post #44

"Dropbox it's not a product, it's a feature". Don't get me wrong, I'm a Dropbox user myself, but I don't see their actual moat. Isn't cloud storage a commodity nowadays? IMHO they should have spent money in investing in other productivity companies in order to diversify and be able to offer a complete productivity suite.

It seems to me you're looking at this from a technically proficient developer's perspective. It's easy (trivial) for a technically proficient person to setup any trivial cloud storage system they like on just about any provider's platform they like. It's not so easy for anybody else (read: the vast majority of other users). Dropbox's value proposition isn't commodity storage on somebody else's servers: it's the UI/UX…

I see, but is it really that better than Google Drive or Onedrive? Also, if you sign up for these services you get a bundle of other apps (office).
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