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Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

techcrunch.com

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Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#21

Post by eru »

ianl wrote: post #13
Joakal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between 200 million new files and 200 million 'uploaded' files. eg a song has a fingerprint. If 100 other users 'upload' the same song, it's counted towards their usage but no actual upload or storage is performed, saving costs. Pretty clever on their part :)

Yes it is very clever, I had forgotten they ensure they only store unique files (I wonder what percentage of files "saved" are unique). I actually went and looked through the TechCrunch articles from April 17th that announced the Dropbox 25m user mark and 200 million file saves but it doesn't distinguish between unique and saved files. I imagine its the latter as it would be the more impressive number. http://techcru…

About the percentage of unique files: I guess if you go by volume, the percentage of unique files is small. And if you go by number, the percentage of unique files is big.

I.e. bigger files are more likely to be stuff that you didn't make yourself.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#22

Post by keenans »

ssharp wrote: post #7
David wrote: post #4

Dropbox has traction and paying users. Why do they need $200 million? Of course it's not just a two-man gig anymore, but... what is it for? If their business model isn't supporting the growth they want and they're not going to change it, is throwing money around going to be all that helpful? Maybe I'm doubting that they'll be able to bring in that many new users because I can't imagine how anyone hasn't heard of drop…

Current traction and paying customers may not be enough to satisfy their growth/evolution goals. The cash could be used for a lot of thing. One guess is that they may be trying to ramp up the attack the enterprise storage/backup market and need a war chest to have any major impact. Also, plenty of people who could really use a service like Dropbox have not heard of it. Even with their current product offerings, there…

They still need to work on their pricing. They have an opportunity to convert quite a few of their non-paying customers if they'd simply offer a plan between 2GB and 50GB.

https://www.dropbox.com/votebox/90/better-more-affordable-st...

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#23

Post by staunch »

ianl wrote: post #8
carterac wrote: post #6

Very rough mental math: At a $5B valuation, PG's share of Dropbox should pay for ~10,000 YC investments

Did you factor in for dilution, they previously raised a 7.2m round.

We also don't know what percentage YC took. They might have taken a bit more or less than 6%. Regardless, this valuation puts their equity in the $100 million - $350 million range.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#24

Post by rjbond3rd »

peterb wrote: post #17
ianl wrote: post #2

Sounds like a round for the founders and employees to sell some shares (called a series f?), unless Dropbox has some major expansion planned to build its own CDN and data centres instead of using S3. The amount of savings at there scale (200 million new files / day [1]) would be huge as data via S3 is already more expensive then running your own bare metal boxes. I would imagine that Dropbox pays some sort of bulk pr…

I also wonder if they are selling shares because Microsoft is nipping at their heels. Live Mesh is a serious contender and starts with 5G instead of 2G. I switched.

Hmm, interesting. I've never heard of it.

EDIT: Apparently it only works on Windows, so I'll be sticking with Dropbox.

EDIT: Thanks, I had missed the Mac option. But to me, they cheapen their Live Mesh brand by association with Windows Live ID and Hotmail.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#25

Post by peterb »

rjbond3rd wrote: post #24
peterb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder if they are selling shares because Microsoft is nipping at their heels. Live Mesh is a serious contender and starts with 5G instead of 2G. I switched.

Hmm, interesting. I've never heard of it. EDIT: Apparently it only works on Windows, so I'll be sticking with Dropbox. EDIT: Thanks, I had missed the Mac option. But to me, they cheapen their Live Mesh brand by association with Windows Live ID and Hotmail.

Windows and OSX, but not iOS (yet) or Linux (probably never).

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#28

Post by dplakon »

ssharp wrote: post #7
David wrote: post #4

Dropbox has traction and paying users. Why do they need $200 million? Of course it's not just a two-man gig anymore, but... what is it for? If their business model isn't supporting the growth they want and they're not going to change it, is throwing money around going to be all that helpful? Maybe I'm doubting that they'll be able to bring in that many new users because I can't imagine how anyone hasn't heard of drop…

Current traction and paying customers may not be enough to satisfy their growth/evolution goals. The cash could be used for a lot of thing. One guess is that they may be trying to ramp up the attack the enterprise storage/backup market and need a war chest to have any major impact. Also, plenty of people who could really use a service like Dropbox have not heard of it. Even with their current product offerings, there…

I imagine they could spend a little more on marketing.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#29

Post by dplakon »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #14
David wrote: post #4

Dropbox has traction and paying users. Why do they need $200 million? Of course it's not just a two-man gig anymore, but... what is it for? If their business model isn't supporting the growth they want and they're not going to change it, is throwing money around going to be all that helpful? Maybe I'm doubting that they'll be able to bring in that many new users because I can't imagine how anyone hasn't heard of drop…

1) Founders may want to take some money off the table. 2) I do not see why DB couldn't end up being a 100B company. They built a huge business with one fucking product. One. I do not even remember the last time I noticed new features. I want to see them starting to move more into backing up/syncing social data as well. There could be a day when all your social data will be simply poured into your DB, and they will do…

damn, that's genius. it would take a lot of cooperation from huge entities though.

Re: Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation

#30

Post by dplakon »

jsnell wrote: post #20
rokhayakebe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Founders may want to take some money off the table. 2) I do not see why DB couldn't end up being a 100B company. They built a huge business with one fucking product. One. I do not even remember the last time I noticed new features. I want to see them starting to move more into backing up/syncing social data as well. There could be a day when all your social data will be simply poured into your DB, and they will do…

Everything is possible. There might for example be a bout of hyper-inflation in the US, making any business more serious than a lemonade stand worth >$100 billion. And that's about it for plausible scenarios. Becoming that valuable in real dollar terms would probably mean being one of the top 25 largest companies in the US.

true, I think facebook just got a 100B valuation...
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