Will Facebook become one of the most profitable companies in the world? • Hacker News Board

Re: Will Facebook become one of the most profitable companies in the world?

#21

Post by notahacker » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 12:35 AM UTC

marcamillion wrote: post #10

olivercameron wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the tech industry, maybe, but in the world?

Oh absolutely. Dropbox is reaching the point where now my father and mother use it. It hasn't reached Facebook levels yet (by that I mean, my grandmother ;)), but it is getting there. But with each incremental user, Dropbox's value increases in an e^x fashion. For more on why I think so, here is a more detailed breakdown: http://marcgayle.com/how-dropbox-is-printing-money There is no reason that Dropbox's growth will…

Oil's pretty magical too!

Seriously, Dropbox need >200 million users paying $9.99/month to match the top oil companies even if their costs per user were zero. That's more people paying for Dropbox than using spectacularly good mature free services like Gmail.

Not that I'd be too downhearted by Dropbox's reported $100 million revenues if I held their stock.

Re: Will Facebook become one of the most profitable companies in the world?

#22

Post by marcamillion » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 12:42 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #21

marcamillion wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh absolutely. Dropbox is reaching the point where now my father and mother use it. It hasn't reached Facebook levels yet (by that I mean, my grandmother ;)), but it is getting there. But with each incremental user, Dropbox's value increases in an e^x fashion. For more on why I think so, here is a more detailed breakdown: http://marcgayle.com/how-dropbox-is-printing-money There is no reason that Dropbox's growth will…

Oil's pretty magical too! Seriously, Dropbox need >200 million users paying $9.99/month to match the top oil companies even if their costs per user were zero. That's more people paying for Dropbox than using spectacularly good mature free services like Gmail. Not that I'd be too downhearted by Dropbox's reported $100 million revenues if I held their stock.

Ah hah! This is why it is so brilliant. It's easy to assume that's the only way they can reach those figures.

They have already started to diversify their revenue lines: https://www.dropbox.com/team_create

$795/year for a team of 5.

Besides, in a day and age when a social network has 650M users, I don't see why it is conceivable that in 5 - 10 years Dropbox could have 200M paying users.

Apple just announced that it has ~200M credit cards on file. The largest stash anywhere.

In 5 - 10 years, that will look small in comparison to everybody else.

The more internet connected devices come out, is the more Dropbox's value proposition increases.

Re: Will Facebook become one of the most profitable companies in the world?

#23

Post by sorbus » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 12:43 AM UTC

marcamillion wrote: post #20

sorbus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox is a killer application if you have multiple computers or don't want to care about keeping backups. It's completely removed my need for flash drives, caring about which computer I have documents on, and so forth. I wouldn't underestimate that; I recall hearing that they've hit $100M/year in profits[1], and I expect that they've got quite a ways to grow. However, saying that they'll be the most profitable comp…

This is not something that will happen over night. You meant to say that Gazprom was the most profitable in 2009. Exxon did $30B profit in 2010. - http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:XOM&fstype=ii Exxon did $30B profit on $375B revenues. Net profit margins of less than 10%. Of course we won't know until Dropbox releases their financials, but I strongly believe that they will be a bombshell when they are released. No…

Hmm. There are about 2 billion internet users, and Dropbox's cheapest paying plan is $99/year. Assuming 50% profit or so, and that no one buys the more expensive plan, it would take a billion paying customers to hit $100B/year, 50% of everyone with internet access. It would definitely be a gradual progression, but probably doable, especially if they branch out into other areas - though I can't think of anything obvious, other than licensing the technology to big businesses for internal stuff. Of course, they can certainly afford to experiment.

Re: Will Facebook become one of the most profitable companies in the world?

#24

Post by marcamillion » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:33 AM UTC

sorbus wrote: post #23

marcamillion wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not something that will happen over night. You meant to say that Gazprom was the most profitable in 2009. Exxon did $30B profit in 2010. - http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:XOM&fstype=ii Exxon did $30B profit on $375B revenues. Net profit margins of less than 10%. Of course we won't know until Dropbox releases their financials, but I strongly believe that they will be a bombshell when they are released. No…

Hmm. There are about 2 billion internet users, and Dropbox's cheapest paying plan is $99/year. Assuming 50% profit or so, and that no one buys the more expensive plan, it would take a billion paying customers to hit $100B/year, 50% of everyone with internet access. It would definitely be a gradual progression, but probably doable, especially if they branch out into other areas - though I can't think of anything obvio…

Well there are 2 billion internet users - i.e. individuals. But each individual has multiple functions.

E.g. I have a dropbox account at home, and had one for work. So did my boss, and some other coworkers.

So while there are 2 billion internet users, there are many organiztions - profit, non-profit, ngo, etc - which makes the pie even bigger.

Re: Will Facebook become one of the most profitable companies in the world?

#25

Post by easp » Wed, Mar 23, 2011, 1:52 AM UTC

scottieh wrote: post #3

Yes -- when a single organization owns the connections, interests and geographical data of 600 million people -- it's inevitable. No other entity has amassed this amount of data before.

How many of those 600M monthly active users are fake accounts created by webcam and dating site spammers, and mafia wars addicts?