Dropbox Raises $250M In Funding, Boasts 45 Million Users • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Raises $250M In Funding, Boasts 45 Million Users

#41

Post by kd1220 » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:02 PM UTC

ebaysucks wrote: post #10

revorad wrote: post #7

Congrats guys! I'm really pleased with Dropbox's success. It gives me encouragement to stay focused on solving unsexy but fundamental problems.

I actually think Dropbox has a very sexy business model. It's the Silicon Valley darling with the least amount of flaws in the business model, imo. Too many others need to police their users to take their cut, e.g. AirBnb.

Dropbox also has the ability to take the path of becoming a platform more easily than something like AirBnB. I'm bringing this up because Steve Yegge's recent post on Amazon vs. Google struck a chord in me.

I could see Dropbox becoming a large file sharing network with great access controls. The amount of data that's produced every day needs a place to be stored and accessed, even if only a fraction of it is worth sharing. It's definitely a problem that many organizations and groups have, and there are few good solutions out there.

Re: Dropbox Raises $250M In Funding, Boasts 45 Million Users

#42

Post by Talon » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 7:51 PM UTC

gravitronic wrote: post #32

LeafStorm wrote: post #4

Of course, now the question is: what are they going to do with this $250M? The only new feature that has really come out of Dropbox recently is the API, and even that has been in development for some time.

They needed all this money so they could implement read-only folder sharing. (I kid, I kid, huge dropbox fan here ;) )

You didn't see the Gizmodo featured comment on the sharing model?

Re: Dropbox Raises $250M In Funding, Boasts 45 Million Users

#43

Post by jsz0 » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 10:40 PM UTC

sandieman wrote: post #9

Is iCloud going to be a threat for dropbox?

I think so, yes. iCloud is a very different service but serves a similar purpose. I think ultimately it's a more elegant solution for what most people are using Dropbox for today. It's not just Apple though. It's Google & Microsoft too. I just don't see how DropBox a) makes money b) competes with deep OS integration of other cloud storage solutions.

Re: Dropbox Raises $250M In Funding, Boasts 45 Million Users

#44

Post by mchusma » Tue, Oct 18, 2011, 11:22 PM UTC

thematt wrote: post #30

leftnode wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new datacenter.

That would be a huge distraction. If they're already profitable (according to Forbes) with the current model, they should focus on the product and customer acquisition, not cost-cutting.

The cost savings would be pretty massive for a company this size. This is not a trivial aspect to the business, but a way to get significant profitability gains.