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Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

reuters.com

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Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#41

Post by venomsnake »

jonathansizz wrote: post #39
ghshephard wrote: post #2

"Dropbox, which is increasingly competing with Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," This implicitly (if not explicitly) reverses the actuality, which is really: "Dropbox, which is increasingly facing competition from Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," They do a better job later on with, "Those featu…

Since you're nitpicking, I'll just point out that both formulations actually have the same meaning. There's nothing (not even an implication) in the first quoted sentence that suggests that Dropbox is younger than its competitors. 'Competing with' and 'facing competition from' are exact equivalents.

I read "facing competition from" as being the incumbent and getting a challenge.

And "Competing with" all are on equal basis.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#42

Post by [deleted] »

jonathansizz wrote: post #39
ghshephard wrote: post #2

"Dropbox, which is increasingly competing with Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," This implicitly (if not explicitly) reverses the actuality, which is really: "Dropbox, which is increasingly facing competition from Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," They do a better job later on with, "Those featu…

Since you're nitpicking, I'll just point out that both formulations actually have the same meaning. There's nothing (not even an implication) in the first quoted sentence that suggests that Dropbox is younger than its competitors. 'Competing with' and 'facing competition from' are exact equivalents.

[deleted]

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#44

Post by franstereo »

w1ntermute wrote: post #15
brador wrote: post #11

The problem I see is dropbox as a service becoming a commodity as competition in the sector ramps up. Apple is making a big push on cloud with airdrop and icloud, Tencent is offering 10tb storage. It's heating up and it's gonna be hard to maintain a viable USP.

I don't think this is true at all. There are huge network effects because of folder sharing. I've gotten at least a dozen people to sign up for Dropbox over the years this way. It was tough at first, but the adoption rate is sufficiently high now that in a group of 5, there may be only one person who hasn't got an account already. And when they're the odd one out, the peer pressure to sign up is so great that it forc…

I agree there are big network effects to sharing folders and that is a big push to sign up. Paying is a different story however. If you are a casual non-business user, sharing photos or the occasional document (e.g., Grandparent use case) then even the annoying space restrictions won't move you to pay.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#46

Post by venomsnake »

julesie wrote: post #38

During the Dublin Web Summit (two weeks ago) Drew Heuston stated that Dropbox hadn't touched the previous funds they had raised. I wonder why the need to raise the money at this point?

A) Some real expansion B) You generate insane amounts of free marketing and get a check at the end.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#47

Post by ultramundane828 »

jonathansizz wrote: post #39
ghshephard wrote: post #2

"Dropbox, which is increasingly competing with Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," This implicitly (if not explicitly) reverses the actuality, which is really: "Dropbox, which is increasingly facing competition from Microsoft and Google as well as fellow startup Box in the fast-growing field of cloud storage," They do a better job later on with, "Those featu…

Since you're nitpicking, I'll just point out that both formulations actually have the same meaning. There's nothing (not even an implication) in the first quoted sentence that suggests that Dropbox is younger than its competitors. 'Competing with' and 'facing competition from' are exact equivalents.

This irks me because of the absolutism in the writing voice. But I'm sure you'd say there is no absolutism present (not even an implication).

Let's leave the linguistic criticisms on this one to Frege and Russell please. I can interpret the phrasing in both your terms and in the previous commenter's terms quite easily.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#48

Post by smrtinsert »

shocks wrote: post #3

Every time I see Dropbox on the front page of HN I think about this[1] all over again… 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

It's amazing how our hindsight is so clear, lets pat ourselves on the back!

I used to use dropbox, but after running in on a bunch of devices and having to learn the quirks of each implementation and its sync hassles I left it. SFTP is simple, free, ubiquitous, and the words 'conflict resolution' never come up when I use it.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#49

Post by slouch »

hemancuso wrote: post #35

I'm curious to know what the plans are to keep driving revenue. Obviously very impressive numbers, but it looks like YoY top line growth looks slow: less than 100% [$116->$200M+]. It leaves one scratching their head as to how Dropbox gets to something like $1B/year under its current business model and later justify something like a 20B public market cap. That would take a something billion users with roughly the same…

I haven't started paying, yet. Last year, I bought an HTC phone that gave me a bunch of space (20 gigs?) free for two years. I have 27.5gb and I am using 5.75 of it today. My account will either drop back down to 7.5 or I'll start paying to keep it. At my current rate of usage, I'll certainly be using some of the free space by then.

Re: Report: Dropbox seeks new funding, valuing company at $8 billion

#50

Post by matwood »

chii wrote: post #16
NLPsajeeth wrote: post #6

"Dropbox tallied $116 million in sales last year, more than doubling its $46 million in revenue in 2011. The year before, it nearly quadrupled sales from $12 million." http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303...

i m flabbergasted at the amount of money there is in this service (and related ones) - is it really that useful? I had a dropbox account since the early days, and i have hardly put any use into it. What do people actually use it for? Share files? Backup solution?

I use it for backups. Put important documents in a truecrypt volume. Copy said volume to dropbox.

For non-sensitive items like books, pdfs, etc... dropbox makes it easy to find items online and then share them across my tablets, phones, and other computers.

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