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Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

fortune.com

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Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#141

Post by kobeya »

Scea91 wrote: post #126
flunhat wrote: post #9

They've come a long way from their Show HN 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 From a demo hacked together over a few months (written in Python, IIRC) and posted on HN to an IPO. Pretty cool, honestly.

Thanks for the link, it was really enlightening read. It is interesting to read the elaborated comments of some naysayers there who are stuck in their old ways and can't see the value of it yet. One of them describes his solution with FUSE and FTP that 'basically achieves the same' and has doubts that anyone would want to use Dropbox if they can use FTP. Same stuff surely happens here today.

I still don't see the value of it...

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#142

Post by amelius »

Scea91 wrote: post #126
flunhat wrote: post #9

They've come a long way from their Show HN 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 From a demo hacked together over a few months (written in Python, IIRC) and posted on HN to an IPO. Pretty cool, honestly.

Thanks for the link, it was really enlightening read. It is interesting to read the elaborated comments of some naysayers there who are stuck in their old ways and can't see the value of it yet. One of them describes his solution with FUSE and FTP that 'basically achieves the same' and has doubts that anyone would want to use Dropbox if they can use FTP. Same stuff surely happens here today.

I believe the naysayers will be right at some point. Cloud storage is really a race to the bottom.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#143

Post by kobeya »

xiaoma wrote: post #88

I was a pretty early user of Dropbox back when it was featured on this site. As much as I'm loathe to admit it since I don't like the consolidation of huge tech companies, I've pretty much completely abandoned them for Google offerings. Google drive is just there, whether I wanted it or not. And that goes for anyone who's signed up for Gmail or YouTube (i.e. collectively 40% of the people I know). It's not quite as n…

Not everyone uses gmail...

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#144

Post by amelius »

imron wrote: post #11
pen2l wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be soooooo happy if I got to see the code that began it. Does it happen to available anywhere?

According to the original comments "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem."

But the "innovative" part is that Dropbox hacked into the OSX kernel to achieve better integration. See e.g. [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#145

Post by hellworld »

sah2ed wrote: post #123
sgustard wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Investing" in those days was "speculating." Hundreds of dubious companies made it to IPO that would never make it that far today, and most of those lost all their public investors' money. https://mattermark.com/technology-company-ipos-then-now/

John Bogle's investment philosophy [0], which I agree with, boils down the difference between investing and speculating to the time horizon: "The main difference between investment and speculation lies in the time horizon." So in a way, I think you and the parent are both right -- you are talking about different sides of the same thing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Bogle#Investment_philo...

Another one of Bogle's self serving comments. He's a legend but rarely unbiased. The key difference is the speculator buys it purely in the hope of flipping it. The investor considers the fundamentals of the investment. Time horizon is irrelevant. You can have special sits which you are in and out of in a month or so; but it's definitely an investment.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#146

Post by michalu »

sgustard wrote: post #30
prklmn wrote: post #21

A major difference between between this tech boom and the dot com boom of the 90s is the general public had a real shot at investing in serious growth potential during the dot com boom. Now most of the growth is experienced under private ownership, then the grossly overvalued company is pawned off for the public to invest in. VCs have figured out how to extract most of the exciting gains.

"Investing" in those days was "speculating." Hundreds of dubious companies made it to IPO that would never make it that far today, and most of those lost all their public investors' money. https://mattermark.com/technology-company-ipos-then-now/

Well, Snap is losing $2 billion a quarter... how's that not a dubious IPO?... Uber's market cap is now 1/3 of WalMart a company with 485.9 billion in revenues.

For comparison, Webvan hit $8 billion market cap, losing $400 million a year, Uber's on $69 billion (hasn't even IPOd yet) losing $3 billion last year.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#147

Post by chii »

jakubp wrote: post #83
vecter wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? People use it as a form of communication. It makes people feel closer to their friends. That has enormous value.

So this is interesting. You may feel closer to people you haven't seen for a while when they are always "with" you on Snapchat -- I have certainly experienced that with people I don't talk to often or people who live on another continent. But then again, I can't shake the feeling that this is more about fun than really being close. I remember having close friends in high school and at the university. We spent many ho…

> the jury is still out on whether it's good.

i think the jury is in on that - the market being the jury. The overwhelming majority of purchasers decide through no uncertain terms, that factory farming is the way to go.

There are some people who have moral reservations against factory farming, but i believe those numbers are low (despite how loud their voices are). A silent majority (especially through less wealth countries) agree by voting with their wallets.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#148

Post by chii »

xiaoma wrote: post #82
hkmurakami wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you invested in all the IPOs from the .com era, would that actually beat the NASDAQ returns over the last 5 years from 2012-2017? Do we really need retail investors to invest in micro cap level companies? Look at the horror stories of people losing their retirement savings on GTAT. There were a lot of busts from that era and the average person isn't going to be able pick them well.

Yes, we need retail investors to be able to invest in micro cap level companies. Nobody independent is going to do well competing against institutional investors who have, better access, faster trades and teams of quants. The only way to win is to play a game they can't play. Micro caps are a good example since institutional investors can't invest in them easily (even buying the whole company doesn't move the needle…

> micro cap

pardon my ignorance, but what is a 'micro cap'?

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#149

Post by chii »

mattmanser wrote: post #140
Scea91 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link, it was really enlightening read. It is interesting to read the elaborated comments of some naysayers there who are stuck in their old ways and can't see the value of it yet. One of them describes his solution with FUSE and FTP that 'basically achieves the same' and has doubts that anyone would want to use Dropbox if they can use FTP. Same stuff surely happens here today.

Though most of the comments are positive, it's only really BrandonM's comment which looks silly in hindsight. Quite a few valid questions and thoughts too, where is this stored, how are you handling locked down corp accounts, etc. It's a pity they hide the vote numbers these days.

> Quite a few valid questions and thoughts too

all of which are "merely" implementation details and polish. The analogy is that you've built a crude engine that can sit on a box in an axel to move rather than using an animal, but the nay-sayers ask how do you deal with the bad weather/water, and how do you brake and turn smoothly?

The idea is fundamentally good, and it takes someone with vision to see through the smog of implementation details and problems.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#150

Post by eternalban »

baron816 wrote: post #36
prklmn wrote: post #21

A major difference between between this tech boom and the dot com boom of the 90s is the general public had a real shot at investing in serious growth potential during the dot com boom. Now most of the growth is experienced under private ownership, then the grossly overvalued company is pawned off for the public to invest in. VCs have figured out how to extract most of the exciting gains.

Whether that wealth is going to the top 1% or to the top .01% doesn't matter so much as far as the welfare of the general public is concerned. I think you could argue that the products that these tech companies are bringing to market are what is really benefiting the general public, much more than any investment returns ever could. And if the current model of investing is most efficient--in terms of generating new pr…

That's a bit too clever.

The issue is whether a society that has mutated to a system funneling meaningful wealth gains to 0.01% of its members is on the path to long term health or on the certain path to some sort of catastrophic system failure with a generous dolling out of collatoral damage to the 99.99% that were on the receiving end of "value added" goods and services [only].

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