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Dropbox S-1

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Re: Dropbox S-1

#201

Post by torstenvl »

mankash666 wrote: post #30

Just curious - how's a raw SEC filing preferable to a reliable article summarizing it in non-legalese, providing context with the competition, etc. Other than lawyers and economists, does anyone ACTUALLY prefer this raw filing? EDIT: Adding my preferred link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/dropbox-ipo-form-s-1-prospec...

Primary sources are generally preferable to breathless editorializations, especially when - as here - they are not in fact written in professional jargon. Any adult of average intelligence and education should be able to get the gist of a prospectus.

Feel free to link to "news" (read: opinion) posts about the filing.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#202

Post by martin-adams »

elvirs wrote: post #184

only 1 in 50 users is actually paying? thats not good

Except that 49 out of 50 are quite likely to invite friends into the Dropbox ecosystem through invites and shares of who can turn into a paying customer. Sure more paying customers is good, but may be cheaper than paying for advertising to acquire customers.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#203

Post by godzillabrennus »

teej wrote: post #67
mankash666 wrote: post #30

Just curious - how's a raw SEC filing preferable to a reliable article summarizing it in non-legalese, providing context with the competition, etc. Other than lawyers and economists, does anyone ACTUALLY prefer this raw filing? EDIT: Adding my preferred link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/dropbox-ipo-form-s-1-prospec...

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…

This is my biggest concern with the Dropbox platform summed up in the filing:

* Our business could be damaged, and we could be subject to liability if there is any unauthorized access to our data or our users’ content, including through privacy and data security breaches.

They have made progress. They managed to get SoC II compliance for all of their offerings. They now offer HIPAA compliant hosting as well.

Not that long ago though (circa 2013) I remember a series of articles that made it clear that DropBox employees had access to customer data.

That spooked me enough to recommend folks pair it with https://www.sookasa.com/ if they were going to use it.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#204

Post by dfox »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #146
sonaltr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

apart from the bigger companies (like Fb), have there been any major SaaS companies (esp. B2B but I guess that's trying to be too narrow so B2B & B2C) that have moved from Cloud to their own Data Center? (I know Etsy comes to mind...but apart from them?).

Dropbox: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/15/why-dropbox-decided-to-dro... Github: https://githubengineering.com/evolution-of-our-data-centers/ Backblaze: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/our-secret-data-center/ Twitter: https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastruc... LinkedIn: http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/design-buil... FastMail: https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/security.html…

Many SaaS companies not only lack the ops experience needed to run their own infrastructure (which may be only problem of perception, for me running stuff on dedicated HW in colo center seems like less hassle than dealing with things like AWS) but also the common sense required to not over-engineer the scalability of their solution in the early phases (which falls squarely into the YAGNI teritory, as you can run surprisingly large stuff on two or three physical low-end 1U servers).

Re: Dropbox S-1

#205

Post by runewell »

I like Dropbox but as a potential investor I would be a bit nervous about the online storage industry as a whole considering crypto-backed decentralized storage seems only 12-24 months away.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#206

Post by xoob »

jseip wrote: post #186

Amazed by the R&D expense of $380.3M especially because I'm not aware of substantive innovations that they're bringing to market. How has / will that investment translate into new technology or a technically superior product?

They also work on stuff like [Dropbox Paper](https://www.dropbox.com/paper), a markdown capable minimalist Google Docs alternative.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#207

Post by maxxxxx »

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…

How are they planning ever to make any profits? Their product was innovative some years ago but now they have a lot of competition so I'd expect their margins to get squeezed even more.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#208

Post by slackoverflower »

napoleonIV wrote: post #160
jedberg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Box seems to have a lock on the enterprise market which feels like the better long-term strategy than being a consumer/startup brand. Yet box only makes about $48 per user per year, whereas Dropbox makes $111 per year. So either Dropbox has more enterprise than we think, or consumer is a lot more valuable than we think.

I know that Facebook moved to Dropbox from Box for internal use.

Let it be known that Mark Zuckerberg and Drew Houston are best friends. I know it might not be the main reason, but it is something to consider.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#209

Post by maxxxxx »

raverbashing wrote: post #107
twinkletwinkle wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Yes, if you're a short sighted MBA that wants to encourage your own extortion

That would be a shrewd business move unless the ISPs want to get into the same business.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#210

Post by codezero »

jseip wrote: post #186

Amazed by the R&D expense of $380.3M especially because I'm not aware of substantive innovations that they're bringing to market. How has / will that investment translate into new technology or a technically superior product?

I’m not 100% sure but I believe this is also called R&D because it had different financial/accounting meaning which affects how spend/revenue are reported.

They can be considered expenses that are reported on taxes, and also since there is risk of no or poor ROI knowing the R&D component of the budget helps adjust for risk in modeling future revenue and expenses.

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