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Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

reuters.com

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Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#51

Post by amit_m »

rfnslyr wrote: post #4
shocks wrote: post #3

Every time I see Dropbox on the front page of HN I think about this[1] all over again… 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

That thread is hilarious, especially the first reply.

What is so funny about it? I think the first reply is spot on.

In fact, one of the best things about Dropbox is that they worked very hard on removing any barriers, including making sure that it can be installed on a windows machine without requiring administrator privileges.

I am confident that a large percentage of their users would have been unable to use Dropbox had this issue not been addressed.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#52

Post by amit_m »

chii wrote: post #16
NLPsajeeth wrote: post #6

"Dropbox tallied $116 million in sales last year, more than doubling its $46 million in revenue in 2011. The year before, it nearly quadrupled sales from $12 million." http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303...

i m flabbergasted at the amount of money there is in this service (and related ones) - is it really that useful? I had a dropbox account since the early days, and i have hardly put any use into it. What do people actually use it for? Share files? Backup solution?

Dropbox has basically replaced my homedir and nearly everything I do now goes inside (documents, photos, git repositories).

It is installed on my home laptop, university desktop, smartphone and tablet. Goodreader (a PDF reader) can sync to a Dropbox directory with PDF files. So I can quickly access all of the papers I ever saved. This is a very convenient way of overcoming ipad's terrible sync-using-itunes mechanism.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#53

Post by Altaer »

jwr wrote: post #36

Will the use the funds raised to finally optimize their CPU-hungry client, so that it doesn't cut my battery life by 30%? I'm worried about Dropbox. Worried that they concentrate on adding features (photo syncing?) instead of caring about their loyal paying business customers, who mostly want the software to Just Work and Work Well.

While CPU and battery improvements are always nice, I personally love the added features such as photo syncing. I take a photo on my phone anywhere and it automatically uploads it to my Dropbox in the background so I can view them on my computer when I get home. It's probably one of my favorite features of Dropbox and I hope to see more of this kind of thing in the future. Not to say that other aspects don't need improvement, but I think features like this add a lot of value to the product.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#54

Post by foobarqux »

netcan wrote: post #25
brador wrote: post #11

The problem I see is dropbox as a service becoming a commodity as competition in the sector ramps up. Apple is making a big push on cloud with airdrop and icloud, Tencent is offering 10tb storage. It's heating up and it's gonna be hard to maintain a viable USP.

IMO the underlying assumption of Dropbox's competitiveness is that it is not a commodity. 1GB with the right user experience is worth more than more with a worse UX. Commodity would imply that it's all about price per gb. So far, I think that assumption has been right.

But how hard is it to tell an engineering team to just copy Dropbox? And then offer a lower price point or better OS integration?

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#55

Post by TomJoad »

teh_klev wrote: post #8
shocks wrote: post #3

Every time I see Dropbox on the front page of HN I think about this[1] all over again… 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially...." That's my other favourite gem. But in all seriousness, I wish I could use Dropbox, but sadly where I live and work my ADSL upstream speed is 448kbit/s rendering it useless for anything other than very small files.

I've been using ownCLoud (owncloud.org) on a raspberry pi set up on my LAN to solve this type of problem. While I don't have it publicly facing, as soon as I get home, any file I was working on is synced to the rest of my computers and devices.

With docker being ported to the rasberry pi recently, I suspect it will be even simpler to set up an ownCloud for $35 + the cost of storage.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#56

Post by nlh »

seivan wrote: post #32
InclinedPlane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few friends who work at Box, that company seems much better at extracting revenue from its product via concentrating on the business rather than consumer space.

Their product isn't as good, but I bet they have some amazing sales people. Like most 'enterprise' stuff.

Depends what your definition of "good" is -- my company is about to switch to Box from Dropbox. Once you get to a certain size and have a certain type of user (non-power-users), Box is MUCH better for maintaining some organizational structure / permissions.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#57

Post by seivan »

nlh wrote: post #56
seivan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their product isn't as good, but I bet they have some amazing sales people. Like most 'enterprise' stuff.

Depends what your definition of "good" is -- my company is about to switch to Box from Dropbox. Once you get to a certain size and have a certain type of user (non-power-users), Box is MUCH better for maintaining some organizational structure / permissions.

Is the overhead of having to maintain 'organizational structure / permissions.' worth it?

Is your head count > 100?

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#58

Post by tlogan »

jwr wrote: post #36

Will the use the funds raised to finally optimize their CPU-hungry client, so that it doesn't cut my battery life by 30%? I'm worried about Dropbox. Worried that they concentrate on adding features (photo syncing?) instead of caring about their loyal paying business customers, who mostly want the software to Just Work and Work Well.

Yes. Dropbox can easily win against SkyDrive, Google Drive, Box, and others by just not screwing up their solution and making it more robust.

Each time I see Dropbox sick page or I have to delete my "~/.dropbox", I think about how focus and doing things right is so important when it comes to storage / data.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#60

Post by objclxt »

seivan wrote: post #32
InclinedPlane wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a few friends who work at Box, that company seems much better at extracting revenue from its product via concentrating on the business rather than consumer space.

Their product isn't as good, but I bet they have some amazing sales people. Like most 'enterprise' stuff.

I would say their branding isn't as good, and for personal use Dropbox is a lot easier to get started with. However, Box has far more functionality than Dropbox, with an emphasis on corporate (I use Dropbox personally, I used to use Box at a previous employer).
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