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Dropbox S-1

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Re: Dropbox S-1

#231

Post by tim333 »

a_taylor wrote: post #218

I find the equity split between Drew (25.3%) and Arash (10.3%) especially interesting given @paulg's 2014 tweet that "Zero of the most successful YC companies have a significantly disproportionate equity split" https://twitter.com/paulg/status/535588566978404352

Dropbox was an unusual case in that Drew built the product and got into YC before getting Arash to join. I guess maybe a lesson is that you can invent and code up something like the early dropbox on your own but it's useful to have a cofounder when employing a bunch of people and building a company?

Re: Dropbox S-1

#232

Post by _RPM »

The executive team each has a base salary of 400,000. That's a lot of money, with a 65% target bonus. That is so much money.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#233

Post by andrenotgiant »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #203
teej wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find juicy information in the S1 that doesn't get reported on right away. Off the top of my head: * Reliance and risks of Zynga in the Facebook S-1 * Customer acquisition costs in the Blue Apron S-1 * Growth specifics and positioning of algorithms in the StitchFix S-1 * Infrastructure costs in the Snapchat S-1 Besides, an S-1 filing is not written in legalease, it's written in plain language. One of the targ…

This is my biggest concern with the Dropbox platform summed up in the filing: * Our business could be damaged, and we could be subject to liability if there is any unauthorized access to our data or our users’ content, including through privacy and data security breaches. They have made progress. They managed to get SoC II compliance for all of their offerings. They now offer HIPAA compliant hosting as well. Not that…

The point of that section of an S-1 is to try and disclose every possible risk so that investors can't accuse you of hiding risks later on.

So, when quoted out of context it sounds really extreme.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#234

Post by ttul »

_RPM wrote: post #232

The executive team each has a base salary of 400,000. That's a lot of money, with a 65% target bonus. That is so much money.

LoL. Many engineers at Google make more than that with their RSUs.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#235

Post by anonytrary »

mankash666 wrote: post #30

Just curious - how's a raw SEC filing preferable to a reliable article summarizing it in non-legalese, providing context with the competition, etc. Other than lawyers and economists, does anyone ACTUALLY prefer this raw filing? EDIT: Adding my preferred link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/dropbox-ipo-form-s-1-prospec...

> Other than lawyers and economists, does anyone ACTUALLY prefer this raw filing?

Apparently they do, since it's at the top of HN. If they didn't, it wouldn't be at the top. Alternatively, my guess is that many HN people saw this document, upvoted it, and then went to Google for more context.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#236

Post by anonytrary »

tetrazine wrote: post #223
jedberg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normally I would jump on this, but I like dropbox, I like the people there, and I like Drew, so I'm willing to spend an extra $30 a year to increase their revenue and keep them in business longer.

Sorry, what??? I mean, you're entitled to do whatever you'd like. But do you see the potential valuations being tossed around? "Drew" is worth tens to hundreds of millions. I just have no idea why someone would find it not only worth it to take money out of their own pocket to further a corporation that has no need for the empathy we would normally afford to people (or small businesses, which "round down" to individu…

Predictably irrational people exist! However, how is this different than a $30 donation? I think the real question you want to ask is: Why do people donate money to people who already have lots of money?

Re: Dropbox S-1

#237

Post by uiri »

andysinclair wrote: post #185

From the S-1, looks like they will be excluded from the S&P500: In addition, in July 2017, FTSE Russell and Standard & Poor’s announced that they would cease to allow most newly public companies utilizing dual or multi-class capital structures to be included in their indices. Affected indices include the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600, which together make up the S&P Composite 1500.…

If this ever becomes a concern, the class B shareholders can convert their shares 1 to 1 into class A shares. Once all class B shares have been converted, class C shares will also convert 1 to 1 into class A shares. This would then make the company eligible to be included in the S&P 500.

I imagine that the class B shares are nontransferable, which means that this will cease to be an issue once the founders have fully cashed out.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#238

Post by jest3r1 »

The risk factors fail to mention their inability to offer any kind of end-to-end encryption. Or that E2E encryption is the differentiator that most of their competitors offer.

Dropbox (employees and trusted third parties) will always have access to your files.

Before you downvote.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. They can deliver more features and better performance as a result. Reliability is key, and it's certainly easier to understand what users need, and to develop, implement and debug new features, when you've got access to the files users are storing.

But eventually, end-to-end encryption will take hold. It took decades for HTTPS to become the defacto standard, but it did. Email is moving that direction (Proton Mail, Tutanota). Text messaging is moving that direction (Signal, WhatsApp?). And there's a number of Dropbox competitors that are growing fast because of better privacy and E2E encryption (SpiderOak, Tresorit, Sync.com, pCloud). NextCloud (open source self-hosted Dropbox alternative) also just launched end-to-end encryption.

These companies have been slowly solving the problems that Drew claimed were impossible when Edward Snowden dropped the bomb. Meanwhile Dropbox has been pouring dollars into marketing and a Microsoft Office / OneNote / Google Docs competitor (Paper).

Drew's response to end-to-end encryption: https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/04/dropboxs-drew-houston-resp...

Dropbox risk factors (many unsolvable): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467623/000119312518...

I use Dropbox and feel the product is still the leader in terms of features, but I see the competition catching up, with better privacy (end-to-end encryption) built in.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#239

Post by secabeen »

meritt wrote: post #51
swampthinker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I assumed that Box would've had a higher ARPU given it's focus on enterprise.

Me too. I'm trying to find better ARPU metrics to ensure I'm not misunderstanding that vague "over 17%" statement. As a company they tend to report "Number of Paying Customers" which are businesses and only occasionally reference individual user accounts. Though simply looking at per user per month pricing: Dropbox for Business has $15, $25, and Enterprise Dropbox Individual has Free, $10, and $20 Box.com has $5, $15…

Box offers a significant discount on Enterprise to Universities through Internet2.

https://www.internet2.edu/products-services/cloud-services-a...

Re: Dropbox S-1

#240

Post by sjg007 »

jeroen wrote: post #188
dfee wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the sales commission on that one. “Here’s a $10B - Closed Won”. When talking about deals that are the enterprise valuations of Fortune 500 companies, do you value the sale as if it were an acquisition? Or, some other way?

$2 billion, not 10.

Still a good reason to become a AWS or GCP sales engineer.
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