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Dropbox S-1

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Re: Dropbox S-1

#91

Post by pg_bot »

blocked_again wrote: post #58
habosa wrote: post #23

I believe this is the first ever YC company to go public? If so congrats to YC as well as the team at Dropbox.

Curious why going public deserves an applause. Is being private a bad thing?

When you take investment money, it comes with the expectation that there will be a liquidity event. (going public, selling to another corporation) Being private is not a bad thing at all, in fact I would expect most entrepreneurs would prefer that their companies remain private. However you've accepted a faustian bargain once you take money from someone else. Going public is seen as the most desirable liquidity event, since the company still controls its own agency and you maximize choice if/when you want to sell your stake in ownership.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#92

Post by swampthinker »

meritt wrote: post #51
swampthinker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I assumed that Box would've had a higher ARPU given it's focus on enterprise.

Me too. I'm trying to find better ARPU metrics to ensure I'm not misunderstanding that vague "over 17%" statement. As a company they tend to report "Number of Paying Customers" which are businesses and only occasionally reference individual user accounts. Though simply looking at per user per month pricing: Dropbox for Business has $15, $25, and Enterprise Dropbox Individual has Free, $10, and $20 Box.com has $5, $15…

I wouldn't be surprised if the enterprise discount is in fact Digging deeper into Dropbox's finances is astounding too. They've added about $150m in additional revenue each year, while cutting their net losses by $100m each year.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#93

Post by notfried »

Tip: Never pay for Dropbox at $99/year. It's repeatedly discounted throughout the year at Dell's website for $60, and often also comes with a $25 Dell gift card. So effectively, its value is $35/year, and you can buy multiple codes, redeem them, so you'd be effectively paying in advance for as long as you want, at 1/3rd of the price.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#94

Post by swampthinker »

mankash666 wrote: post #62

Commentary on valuation: 1. Box, a public company, is currently valued at $3.17B. It had revenues of ~$480M with a net loss of $150M in 2017 [1] 2. In contrast, Dropbox had revenues of $1.11B with a net loss of $111M in 2017. The higher revenues, and lower losses bode well for Dropbox. Objectively, that would value Dropbox in the $8B-$9B range, $1B-$2B short of it's previous $10B private valuation [1]: https://goo.gl…

Those numbers are even more impressive given that 2 years ago they had $600m in revenues with a net loss of $300m

Re: Dropbox S-1

#95

Post by toomuchtodo »

ddorian43 wrote: post #86
teej wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find juicy information in the S1 that doesn't get reported on right away. Off the top of my head: * Reliance and risks of Zynga in the Facebook S-1 * Customer acquisition costs in the Blue Apron S-1 * Growth specifics and positioning of algorithms in the StitchFix S-1 * Infrastructure costs in the Snapchat S-1 Besides, an S-1 filing is not written in legalease, it's written in plain language. One of the targ…

Why infrastructure costs in Snapchat ? Doesn't look special ?

Their infrastructure commitments are ridiculously high.

"In its disclosure, Snap has said that it is contractually obligated to “spend $2 billion with Google Cloud over the next five years and have built our software and computer systems to use computing, storage capabilities, bandwidth, and other services provided by Google.” Of the current losses at Snap, more than 80 percent of those funds go straight into Google’s pockets."

https://www.recode.net/2017/2/7/14526832/snap-ipo-snapchat-s...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/02/22/could-snapchat...

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/09/snap-cloud-bill-aws-google-c...

EDIT: @dfee How that revenue is recognized is usually based on when the services are delivered, but I am not an accountant.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#96

Post by asadlionpk »

notfried wrote: post #93

Tip: Never pay for Dropbox at $99/year. It's repeatedly discounted throughout the year at Dell's website for $60, and often also comes with a $25 Dell gift card. So effectively, its value is $35/year, and you can buy multiple codes, redeem them, so you'd be effectively paying in advance for as long as you want, at 1/3rd of the price.

any link for this? I am planning to renew my plan.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#97

Post by twinkletwinkle »

abuckenheimer wrote: post #80

I'm not surprised to see net neutrality mentioned as a risk factor. Our platform depends on the quality of our users’ access to the internet. Certain features of our platform require significant bandwidth and fidelity to work effectively. Internet access is frequently provided by companies that have significant market power that could take actions that degrade, disrupt or increase the cost of user access to our platf…

They could also call out the flip side though, right? Dropbox could negotiate deals with the ISPs to "box out" smaller competitors. Maybe it costs them upfront but it also solidifies them in the market.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#98

Post by dumbfounder »

tardo99 wrote: post #6

Congratulations to them. I don't really understand why anyone would use dropbox given the multitude of different offerings out there. I'm curious if anyone who uses them can give me a take on why I should use them. I currently use Google Drive + Google Docs and am very satisfied. I pay for 1 TB of storage for personal work / storage.

I tried Google drive for about a year several years ago. It never actually backed up all my files, it would always crash before it finished syncing. I tried for quite a while (many dozens of times over months) and finally gave up and bought Dropbox. Dropbox just worked a heck of a lot better. Maybe this has changed, but why change back if it just works and it isn't expensive?

Re: Dropbox S-1

#99

Post by olivermarks »

swampthinker wrote: post #94
mankash666 wrote: post #62

Commentary on valuation: 1. Box, a public company, is currently valued at $3.17B. It had revenues of ~$480M with a net loss of $150M in 2017 [1] 2. In contrast, Dropbox had revenues of $1.11B with a net loss of $111M in 2017. The higher revenues, and lower losses bode well for Dropbox. Objectively, that would value Dropbox in the $8B-$9B range, $1B-$2B short of it's previous $10B private valuation [1]: https://goo.gl…

Those numbers are even more impressive given that 2 years ago they had $600m in revenues with a net loss of $300m

would like to see more evidence and proof those numbers are credible...

Re: Dropbox S-1

#100

Post by mankash666 »

swampthinker wrote: post #94
mankash666 wrote: post #62

Commentary on valuation: 1. Box, a public company, is currently valued at $3.17B. It had revenues of ~$480M with a net loss of $150M in 2017 [1] 2. In contrast, Dropbox had revenues of $1.11B with a net loss of $111M in 2017. The higher revenues, and lower losses bode well for Dropbox. Objectively, that would value Dropbox in the $8B-$9B range, $1B-$2B short of it's previous $10B private valuation [1]: https://goo.gl…

Those numbers are even more impressive given that 2 years ago they had $600m in revenues with a net loss of $300m

But it also means transfer of more equity from founders to investors, as investment terms these days typically include equity transfers if an IPO falls short of private valuations
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