Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#121

Post by gravyboat » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 8:29 AM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #2

I talked to a friend just before Christmas whose firm made a good portion of their returns on the insight that VC firms, IPO participants and the market in general all have gaps in how they evaluate the worth of a company and the fact that this gap has grown significantly in the past 5 years. Previously, companies went public much sooner and you could expect a match, not an exact one, but in the same ball park, betwe…

You would have to be an idiot at this point to accept options/stock as an employee for an SF start up. They'll squeeze the options until you make nothing from them.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#122

Post by zeveb » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 8:57 AM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #38

The fact that Dropbox's revenue is well above Box's if the rumors in the article are true is a great positive sign. As is being cash flow positive which would indicate that if they are burning cash it isn't at the rate of 2x revenue that Box has been a victim of. However, the vision they are selling will not come to pass. That of them being a collaborative platform. Google docs, slack, and a myriad of other tools hav…

> In the meantime Dropbox's core offering of syncing and sharing files seamlessly as well as providing more security minded options for businesses is something that no one else has quite gotten right.

I'd argue that Dropbox haven't quite gotten it right either: to my knowledge, they still don't support client-side encryption, which is IMHO non-negotiable in any cloud storage product.

I really respect Dropbox's ease-of-use, but I think at this stage in history it's outright irresponsible to offer a cloud service in which one can see one's customers' data.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#123

Post by zeveb » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:08 AM UTC

new299 wrote: post #99

I'm slightly shocked that tech-types who in general seem to be against mass state sponsored surveillance continue to support Dropbox. Dropbox appointed Condoleezza Rice to their board. Rice supports warrentless surveillance [1]. They've made no moves to encrypt data service side. I hope their IPO fails spectacularly so that support of warrentless surveillance does not become the norm in tech companies. [1] Condoleezz…

> Rice supports warrentless surveillance.

Warrants are only required in some cases of surveillance. Those who are not U.S. persons do not have a constitutional right to a warrant before being surveilled. Public information does not require a warrant (e.g. the government does not require a warrant to open a phone book). Third parties may volunteer information without a warrant. Items crossing a national border — including communications crossing a national border — do not require a warrant.

There are plenty of constitutional, legal warrantless searches. You may not like some or all of those; I may not like some of those. But neither you nor I are the dictator of the Constitution or the law.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#124

Post by microtonal » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:09 AM UTC

vthallam wrote: post #28

bsharitt wrote: post #12

Being the one cloud service that sync across Linux, Windows, OS X with a native client, Dropbox is the service I'd like to give money for about 100GB of space for a couple of bucks a month, but I just don't need 1TB for $10 a month. So instead I use Google and wait in vain for a native Linux client that's probably never coming.

This is the exact reason i didn't switch to a pro yet. I love dropbox and all the syncing, but give me a plan below $5 with a relative storage. Google Drive gives 100GB at $2, that would be an amazing start for Dropbox.

That is not going to happen. Google can sell Google Drive space at a loss, since they have other sources of income (ads, Google Apps subscriptions, etc.). In fact, nothing from Google's terms holds them from mining your Google Drive data for ads (unless you are using Google Apps for Work).

For Dropbox, storage is the only source of income. Most of their income comes from people like me who are modest users ( Offering intermediate plans would make nearly all users high-loss users.

(I also can't understand why people are expecting to pay only $2 per month for 100GB of highly redundant storage with a top-notch client.)

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#125

Post by microtonal » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:12 AM UTC

bsharitt wrote: post #12

Being the one cloud service that sync across Linux, Windows, OS X with a native client, Dropbox is the service I'd like to give money for about 100GB of space for a couple of bucks a month, but I just don't need 1TB for $10 a month. So instead I use Google and wait in vain for a native Linux client that's probably never coming.

So instead I use Google

And Google is permitted to mine your Google Drive data for advertising purposes. You are just paying in a different way.

If that's acceptable to you, that is fine of course. But for me, data privacy is worth more than $2 or $3.

(No, I don't trust Dropbox either, but for different reasons.)

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#126

Post by microtonal » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:16 AM UTC

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #71

I predict the quality of free Dropbox service will go down (or not significantly improve) after they become publicly-traded, similar to what happened to Facebook, since the stockholders will force them to monetize the free accounts. They why I avoid using free but proprietary services.

The quality of the Pro service already went down considerably: it has advertisement for the business version in all places. I guess that they want to drive up value for the IPO.

I just don't understand why they are annoying Pro users. Not every Pro user uses Dropbox for company work. Not every Pro user is in a company/organization that will ever switch to Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#127

Post by microtonal » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:18 AM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #54

4rtemis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and by no means is it a replacement, but https://syncthing.net is pretty damn interesting if you want to control your own data. https://www.syncany.org [now abandonded] was a cool twist on the idea using cloud storage in a secure way.

I've been using SyncThing for a few years now and I'm mildly surprised that it is not more popular. Though every time they release a new major version it breaks compatibility with the older major versions and this happens quite often. They need to stop doing that if they want mainstream adoption.

I think SyncThing also has the wrong model for mainstream adoption: you have to fiddle with host keys that you need to add to every peer. Bittorrent/Resilio Sync's model of using shared RW/RO/encrypted keys per share is much more intuitive.

There seems to be one open source project that aims to implement Resilio Sync's model:

https://librevault.com

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#128

Post by pricechild » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:26 AM UTC

raiyu wrote: post #38

The fact that Dropbox's revenue is well above Box's if the rumors in the article are true is a great positive sign. As is being cash flow positive which would indicate that if they are burning cash it isn't at the rate of 2x revenue that Box has been a victim of. However, the vision they are selling will not come to pass. That of them being a collaborative platform. Google docs, slack, and a myriad of other tools hav…

> As is being cash flow positive which would indicate that if they are burning cash it isn't at the rate of 2x revenue that Box has been a victim of.

I'm probably inferring something you didn't mean here. By "if they are burning cash" did you mean "yes they're wasting money, but still less than they're making so that's great"

Or is it possible to be "cash flow positive" while spending >1x revenue?

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#129

Post by em3rgent0rdr » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:26 AM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #126

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #71

I predict the quality of free Dropbox service will go down (or not significantly improve) after they become publicly-traded, similar to what happened to Facebook, since the stockholders will force them to monetize the free accounts. They why I avoid using free but proprietary services.

The quality of the Pro service already went down considerably: it has advertisement for the business version in all places. I guess that they want to drive up value for the IPO. I just don't understand why they are annoying Pro users. Not every Pro user uses Dropbox for company work. Not every Pro user is in a company/organization that will ever switch to Dropbox.

Maybe they annoy the pro users with ads for the business version because they know the pro users have money and are willing to pay...somewhat targeted advertising.

Re: Dropbox Could Have One of 2017’s Most Interesting IPOs

#130

Post by adrianN » Thu, Jan 05, 2017, 9:38 AM UTC

tspike wrote: post #33

curiousDog wrote: post #3

Dropbox is one of those products that is just a pleasure to use (like Stripe). Sync works seamlessly. I've tried all other alternatives and gotten back to being a paid customer of Dropbox. I think it also boils down to most of your employees being passionate, smart folks from MIT, CMU and the like. Good luck to them with the IPO.

I was initially ecstatic about Dropbox, but they seem to be at best stagnant in terms of functionality. It was my solution for having access to all my photos on all devices, but then they canceled Carousel with the promise that its functionality would be rolled into the main app. That hasn't happened. The photos feature on iOS is pathetically limited, with slow loading times, no way to organize photos (you can't even…

I'm satisfied with Dropbox, because it does what it advertises: it syncs files between computers without getting in the way. I would be very worried if it weren't stagnant in terms of functionality, because change for change's sake is the path to bloated crapware.

If you want your photos on all devices, Dropbox does this for you. If you want software to look at the photos that is a different task and should be accomplished by a different piece of software.