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Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

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Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#171

Post by toomuchtodo »

hellworld wrote: post #145
sah2ed wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We are all hoping to flip our investments in the equities market; no one is holding forever. Unless you intend to die and pass your ownership interest to heirs.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#172

Post by kogepathic »

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…

> Yes, we need retail investors to be able to invest in micro cap level companies.

No retail investor will invest in a micro cap company because the cost to perform due diligence is too expensive for the amount they want to invest.

Retail/institutional investors want a company they can put 10-1000 million dollars into. For this size of investment, the due diligence research is worthwhile. For a micro cap company, they can't throw that amount of money at them because it'd be larger than the company's market cap, so basically the investor would be buying the whole company (and the investor doesn't want to buy the company, just own a portion of it).

Basically, the administrative overhead for investment institutions is too large for micro cap companies. Just look at how much money is in Small Cap ETFs versus other ETFs.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#173

Post by zulln »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #131
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #40

I used Dropbox for a few years, but ultimately switched to another big-name company service. Consumers now have great options available from all the big-name companies: Amazon Drive, Apple iCloud, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. Meanwhile, in the enterprise world it looks like Box is dominating. Given this, I think it's reasonable to ask: what's their value proposition in 2017? I hadn't been following them for…

Paying DropBox user here. Reasons I loved them since day one: - It Just Works™. - It's bullshit-free. A folder that syncs. No upselling, no storing documents as JSON links only accessible through a web interface (hello Google Office Suite w/ Google Drive). - Works on Linux. - Relatively lightweight. - The "Public" folder, which unfortunately they now retired, was a huge thing that convinced me to use them. With it, s…

Is it not possible to just create a folder, call it Public and then set share-options to "everyone with the link" or something like that to get the feature back?

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#175

Post by dahauns »

robotresearcher wrote: post #60
josteink wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a matter of time before Apple rolls out iCloud file/folder sharing And that solution won't work on my work-machine running Windows, nor on my home-machines running Linux. Nor on any machine owned by anyone in my greater family. Because most people don't have Macs. It will be completely irrelevant outside some niche Apple-only circles. Like most services Apple make. I'd be surprised if it disrupted Dropbox noti…

Microsoft might follow Apple's lead of OS developers including cloud sync. That's gonna leave a mark on Dropbox's business.

> Microsoft might follow Apple's lead of OS developers including cloud sync.

You mean OneDrive?

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#176

Post by kogepathic »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #131
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #40

I used Dropbox for a few years, but ultimately switched to another big-name company service. Consumers now have great options available from all the big-name companies: Amazon Drive, Apple iCloud, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. Meanwhile, in the enterprise world it looks like Box is dominating. Given this, I think it's reasonable to ask: what's their value proposition in 2017? I hadn't been following them for…

Paying DropBox user here. Reasons I loved them since day one: - It Just Works™. - It's bullshit-free. A folder that syncs. No upselling, no storing documents as JSON links only accessible through a web interface (hello Google Office Suite w/ Google Drive). - Works on Linux. - Relatively lightweight. - The "Public" folder, which unfortunately they now retired, was a huge thing that convinced me to use them. With it, s…

>- Works on Linux.

>- Relatively lightweight.

I was once asked to backup all the data in our Dropbox for Business account. 30 users, around 400GB (total).

I installed the Dropbox client on a VM in our data center and waited more than a week while it tried to sync files.

It used a lot of memory, and good lord the download rate was poor. Under 10MBit/sec for a VM which had a Gigabit connection to the internet.

The nail in to coffin for me was that Dropbox for Business administrators don't have access to all the data within the organization. No, every single shared folder must be shared with the account you are using to sync the data.

If a user creates a folder in Dropbox and doesn't share it with the backup user, that data won't be available.

Sadly, in spite of the above, my company is still using Dropbox. We've just given up completely on having a backup of the data in it (IMHO, a decision they will come to regret).

But the experience (also with Dropbox for Business support, who took multiple days to respond to a customer paying them over $5k/year) ruined them for me.

For personal files I use syncthing now.

But your points are valid. The reason others in the company like Dropbox are the client "just works" and their web interface is nicer than OneDrive/Google/NextCloud.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#177

Post by throwaway001009 »

vecter wrote: post #71
j7ake wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the public benefit of snapchat ?

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

And poor people can eat it and use it for healthcare and affordable housing! Oh wait...

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#178

Post by baron816 »

eternalban wrote: post #150
baron816 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].

True. I don't know if this system is really any better than the system of the 90s. We do know that that one led to a market crash and the current one hasn't (yet). But we very well could have more innovation if companies still IPOed early. I really don't know.

My comment was intended to establish a yardstick to judge them by. Society doesn't value free market enterprise because it's great at enriching a small number of people. We don't like that Dropbox exists because it turned its founders and investors into millionaires and billionaires. We value capitalism because it encourages people to bring new products to market. If society's goal was to enrich a small number of people, then we should've stuck with feudalism. But society wants to enrich society.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#179

Post by eternalban »

baron816 wrote: post #178
eternalban wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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].

True. I don't know if this system is really any better than the system of the 90s. We do know that that one led to a market crash and the current one hasn't (yet). But we very well could have more innovation if companies still IPOed early. I really don't know. My comment was intended to establish a yardstick to judge them by. Society doesn't value free market enterprise because it's great at enriching a small number…

Market crashes of 80s and 90s is not even remotely what I am talking about. Who cares about that.

If a tiny tiny subset of a society has established a system where they are the analog of "judge, jury, and executioner" of what sort of mind products are developed, supported, and made de facto 'necessity of modern life' (such as Google's) then let's stop pretending and call it what is it: an authoritarian system that (ab)uses market mechanisms

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#180

Post by TeMPOraL »

zulln wrote: post #173
TeMPOraL wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying DropBox user here. Reasons I loved them since day one: - It Just Works™. - It's bullshit-free. A folder that syncs. No upselling, no storing documents as JSON links only accessible through a web interface (hello Google Office Suite w/ Google Drive). - Works on Linux. - Relatively lightweight. - The "Public" folder, which unfortunately they now retired, was a huge thing that convinced me to use them. With it, s…

Is it not possible to just create a folder, call it Public and then set share-options to "everyone with the link" or something like that to get the feature back?

AFAIK you still won't get direct file links this way - only links to a landing page, from which you still have to initiate the download. Being able to get a direct link to file (the kind that works with e.g. wget, or as a src attribute of an tag) was the most useful feature of the Public folder.
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