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Dropbox S-1

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Re: Dropbox S-1

#251

Post by beatpanda »

dragonwriter wrote: post #248
throwaway93192 wrote: post #247

I'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago. For all employees that are considering joining a startup as rank-and-file engineers and putting in years of effort, remember that your compensation will be paltry compared to founders and top execs. When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them. Good…

> When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them. Well, it'll mostly pay off for major capital holders (which founders are likely but not certain to be, depending on the course of business before then, and top executives at the time may or may not.) Top executives as such (outside of their role, if any, as capital holders) may get more benefit than you, but even if so it will be much less than the c…

The Techies Are Finally Reading Marx

Re: Dropbox S-1

#252

Post by Hydraulix989 »

portman wrote: post #227
a_taylor wrote: post #218

I find the equity split between Drew (25.3%) and Arash (10.3%) especially interesting given @paulg's 2014 tweet that "Zero of the most successful YC companies have a significantly disproportionate equity split" https://twitter.com/paulg/status/535588566978404352

It may have started equal at founding and changed over subsequent rounds. I know of a case where 4 founders started equal and differed by order of magnitude by the end.

How did this happen?

Re: Dropbox S-1

#253

Post by finfun234 »

ultrasaurus wrote: post #176
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...

SEC filings aren't hard to read after you've been through a few and know what to look for. I was really excited to see they cut their infra costs while supporting more revenue (bottom of page 71), that bodes very well for their future prospects.

@ultrasaurus indeed. Wall street wants us to stay away from sec filings. However they are structured data. I am running a project to make sec filings easily searchable(today) and understandable(in the future) at https://www.instant10-k.com/ We currently have 10-k & 10-Q filings for US companies and 6-K filings for foreign companies.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#254

Post by romaster »

dfee wrote: post #110
toomuchtodo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’…

Imagine the sales commission on that one. “Here’s a $10B - Closed Won”. When talking about deals that are the enterprise valuations of Fortune 500 companies, do you value the sale as if it were an acquisition? Or, some other way?

Yeah except imagine instead when you should be due that commission but then they find a creative way to bake it into a new cushy position that they carve out just for you (with no more comms on other deals) and they pay that comm out to you over 5-10 years. And in the process, putting you in a position you dislike in an effort to hope you'll leave some of it at the table.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#255

Post by jest3r1 »

bad_user wrote: post #244
jest3r1 wrote: post #238

The risk factors fail to mention their inability to offer any kind of end-to-end encryption. Or that E2E encryption is the differentiator that most of their competitors offer. Dropbox (employees and trusted third parties) will always have access to your files. Before you downvote. This is not necessarily a bad thing. They can deliver more features and better performance as a result. Reliability is key, and it's certa…

> Email is moving that direction (Proton Mail, Tutanota) No it doesn't. I've never heard of Tutanota, but Proton Mail is hardly evidence of anything. In fact the attack vector for email is very different when compared with other channels, as for email I'm not afraid of my email provider as I'm afraid of hacking attempts. Yes, I value security over privacy for email. Therefore I would trust Gmail more than I would tru…

> Curious, which competition?

I clearly outlined many competitors similar to Dbox that offer end-to-end encryption: (SpiderOak, Tresorit, Sync.com, pCloud). NextCloud (open source self-hosted Dropbox alternative) also just launched end-to-end encryption.

>Therefore I would trust Gmail more than I would trust Proton Mail.

Google: don't expect privacy when sending to Gmail: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/14/google-gm...

Google terms of service: Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored. https://www.google.com/policies/terms/

Re: Dropbox S-1

#256

Post by stanfordkid »

throwaway93192 wrote: post #247

I'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago. For all employees that are considering joining a startup as rank-and-file engineers and putting in years of effort, remember that your compensation will be paltry compared to founders and top execs. When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them. Good…

The guy majored in physics and computer science. There's nothing wrong with compensating people who have proven they can scale things (organizations) commensurate to their record.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#257

Post by gwbas1c »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #203
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…

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…

Early at my days at Syncplicity, (a Dropbox competitor,) I specked out what was needed for true client-side encryption with no ability to decrypt on the server. It's very easy to do, from a technical standpoint.

(We solve the problem by letting our large customers run their own servers, with their own authentication via single sign on.)

The problem is that the user experience for client-side encryption is awful! Every shared folder will need its own key, and users would need to manage and share their keys outside of our system. That is not sustainable.

But then the major feature set breaks down. Want to access your files in a browser? Not with client-side encryption. Want to email someone a hyperlink to a file? Not with client side encryption.

The major lesson is that the world operates on trust. We can only stay in business if our customers trust us.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#259

Post by chj »

I used to love Dropbox, but nowadays I have little use of it. Sometimes it just stops syncing and reinstallation won't fix the problem. And forcing API upgrade caused a lot of headache for me as a developer.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#260

Post by askins4trouble »

tetrazine wrote: post #223
jedberg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I would jump on this, but I like dropbox, I like the people there, and I like Drew, so I'm willing to spend an extra $30 a year to increase their revenue and keep them in business longer.

Sorry, what??? I mean, you're entitled to do whatever you'd like. But do you see the potential valuations being tossed around? "Drew" is worth tens to hundreds of millions. I just have no idea why someone would find it not only worth it to take money out of their own pocket to further a corporation that has no need for the empathy we would normally afford to people (or small businesses, which "round down" to individu…

Pretty sure Drew is going to be worth upwards of $1 billion (25.3% stake at an $8-9 billion valuation minus any equity he has to give up to investors in the latest round) #TresCommas
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