Dropbox Raising Massive Round at a $5B-Plus Valuation • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by mlinsey » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 4:47 AM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #38

mlinsey wrote: post #32

41 days ago, PG's estimation for the sum of the value of all YC companies was 4.7 billion. http://ycombinator.com/nums.html Congrats to Drew, Arash, and the whole Dropbox team. (Ordinarily I would say that giving congratulations before a deal is confirmed as closed is a jinx, but at this point there is no such thing as jinxing Dropbox. Their ultimate success, whether this report is true or not, is inevitable.)

How does PG value YC companies? Is this process public knowledge or something internal to PG?

From the link: "For 18 of the top 21 I used the postmoney valuation of the most recent funding round. The other 3 had grown significantly since their last round, and to estimate the values of those I used the opinions of independent experts and the valuations of the funding offers they are currently receiving."

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

#42

Post by schiptsov » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 4:59 AM UTC

No, no, it is not a bubble and 5 billion dollars is just a several hours of printing.. ^_^

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

#43

Post by mynameishere » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 5:06 AM UTC

Almost the same price as United States Steel (6.2B).

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

#44

Post by Mattcodes1 » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 5:07 AM UTC

All this talk/speculation about how the valuations are done and Amazon S3 costs etc.. Just log in to Dropbox with email ceo@dropbox.com or partner@yc.com on dropbox.com with ANY password and look in their docs folder, S3costs2011.xls and valuation.xls. duh.....

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

#45

Post by seabee » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 5:40 AM UTC

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 Live is the online brand, all their free-download software/online services are "Windows Live X". I'm not sure how it cheapens it any more than if it was "Microsoft X" or "iProduct"...

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

#46

Post by seabee » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 5:43 AM UTC

keenans wrote: post #22

ssharp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Don't forget, they also have an opportunity to downgrade quite a few of their paying customers from 50GB to e.g. 20GB.

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

#47

Post by joshu » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 5:50 AM UTC

and to think i balked at investing in dropbox at 20m pre!

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

#48

Post by Joakal » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 6:03 AM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #40

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 :)

Pretty clever on their part :) It is actually pretty standard. Deduplication is a very common method for not duplicating the same content on shared storage.

OT: How do you add italics to text? I find it preferable than adding >s.

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

#49

Post by danbmil99 » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 6:20 AM UTC

Congrats also to Trevor, Jessica, PG.

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

#50

Post by edanm » Wed, Jul 13, 2011, 6:31 AM UTC

Joakal wrote: post #48

blantonl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty clever on their part :) It is actually pretty standard. Deduplication is a very common method for not duplicating the same content on shared storage.

OT: How do you add italics to text? I find it preferable than adding >s.

Put asterisks around the text: *your text (and another asterisk - can't put one or my text will be italicized!).