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Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

nytimes.com

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Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#61

Post by smt88 »

ljk wrote: post #47
new299 wrote: post #31

In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board ( http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ ). I don't know what their future holds. But personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service. I'd hope their customers are also looking at the security of their data in…

what's your take on this? - https://blogs.dropbox.com/dropbox/2016/01/future-of-diversit...

Why do you ask? I don't see how the two are related.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#62

Post by geoelectric »

microtonal wrote: post #34
pyrrhotech wrote: post #16

I'd be shocked if Dropbox is still in business in 5 years. It's kind of sad because it was the first mover and I loved the service when it was the only one, but now there are a million options that are probably just as good. Not to mention they've never made a dime on me personally or anyone I know (and as I understand it that's true for 95% of their user-base). Our company actually banned Dropbox.com because we deci…

but now there are a million options that are probably just as good Few of them have block-level sync or LAN sync. In practice, Dropbox is often much faster than alternatives, especially when syncing/modifying large files. The only programs that are better at it are Bittorrent Sync and SyncThing. And they are specifically made for peer to peer syncing.

Yeah, I was sold on Dropbox the first time I stood up a machine and it synced a couple of GB in a few minutes. After scratching my head because my broadband isn't that fast, I realized it had quietly sideloaded the data from my other signed-in box on the network. That was pretty spiffy.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#63

Post by huac »

InvisibleCities wrote: post #54
sharkweek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem being, how many of these businesses would have won any market share without early VC investment enabling the companies to dump money into customer acquisition at a loss? Probably a few of them, but I'm guessing some other company with a similar business model would have come along with VC backing and eaten their lunch (sure, that company might then be in the exact same place as the current over-valued lat…

That's a great question, and one I won't pretend to have the answer to. On one hand, Basecamp has carved out a very profitable niche for themselves despite venture-backed competition from Jira and others, so it's certainly possible. I also think that there is a big difference between taking money when you are small with typical angel / seed-round terms and taking late-stage money with 2x VC liquidation preferences an…

Jira isn't VC-backed either ;)

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#64

Post by Retric »

tyre wrote: post #39
koralatov wrote: post #7

Unless I'm reading this wrong, the takeaway from this article is that Dropbox is a reasonably successful company, with enviable brand-recognition and reach, that's `suffering' from being overvalued early on and is simply no longer hot and new. That seems like a reasonably good problem to have, and is certainly better than being a loss-maker.

Better than a loss-maker, but that's a low bar. For all of the employees that received options based on the inflated $10bn valuation, not a good problem to have. This is the danger of VCs wanting everyone to be a unicorn, and structuring their firms around that mindset. I agree that a $5bn or $2bn company is fantastic. Until those with capital agree, however, founders are almost required to pitch a fantasy.

A 2bn company is still a unicorn. So, it's only people that got in between ~2bn and 10bn that lost out.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#65

Post by nicoburns »

sharkweek wrote: post #40
InvisibleCities wrote: post #28

Dropbox has the same problem a lot of the moderately successful unicorns have; it's a good product managed by smart people that would be much better off as a right-sized stable lifestyle business a la 37 Signals / Basecamp than as an attempt at a world-beating massive-growth juggernaut like Google or Facebook. Unfortunately for them (and Evernote, and a whole host of others), once you've signed that deal for the huge…

The problem being, how many of these businesses would have won any market share without early VC investment enabling the companies to dump money into customer acquisition at a loss? Probably a few of them, but I'm guessing some other company with a similar business model would have come along with VC backing and eaten their lunch (sure, that company might then be in the exact same place as the current over-valued lat…

Which of course is precisely why we should have an economy which allows ordinary people the financial freedom to create these companies on their own, rather than vesting that power in only a few.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#66

Post by mattzito »

tyre wrote: post #39
koralatov wrote: post #7

Unless I'm reading this wrong, the takeaway from this article is that Dropbox is a reasonably successful company, with enviable brand-recognition and reach, that's `suffering' from being overvalued early on and is simply no longer hot and new. That seems like a reasonably good problem to have, and is certainly better than being a loss-maker.

Better than a loss-maker, but that's a low bar. For all of the employees that received options based on the inflated $10bn valuation, not a good problem to have. This is the danger of VCs wanting everyone to be a unicorn, and structuring their firms around that mindset. I agree that a $5bn or $2bn company is fantastic. Until those with capital agree, however, founders are almost required to pitch a fantasy.

I obviously don't know the specifics of the dropbox option pool, but it's not uncommon to have employee options issued at a 409(a) valuation instead of the fundraising valuation.

So even if money was raised at a 10bn valuation based on the expectation of future value, a 409(a) valuation would probably place the company at somewhere closer to 10-40% of that, which puts employees in a much better situation.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#67

Post by nemothekid »

nicoburns wrote: post #65
sharkweek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem being, how many of these businesses would have won any market share without early VC investment enabling the companies to dump money into customer acquisition at a loss? Probably a few of them, but I'm guessing some other company with a similar business model would have come along with VC backing and eaten their lunch (sure, that company might then be in the exact same place as the current over-valued lat…

Which of course is precisely why we should have an economy which allows ordinary people the financial freedom to create these companies on their own, rather than vesting that power in only a few.

Not quite sure what this quote is implying? That the government should take over VC, or that by solving income inequality, customer acquisition would be cheaper.

With regards to the second point, as long as as potential outcome of the VC method can bring about some EV of $1B, then there will be someone willing to spend $999M to capture that market.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#68

Post by Spooky23 »

> Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease.

Honest question: WTF are they doing?

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#69

Post by bluedino »

ipozgaj wrote: post #37

It's very hard to be optimistic about their future when their main competitors are Google (Drive), Microsoft (OneDrive), Apple (iCloud), Amazon (CloudDrive), Box etc. Virtually every single one of big players nowadays offers cloud storage. I cannot see Dropbox succeeding in the long run, especially with the amount of innovation they've put in their product in the past two years (close to none).

For my uses, DropBox is the best solution by far out of all of those.

Re: Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

#70

Post by chrshawkes »

nemothekid wrote: post #67
nicoburns wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which of course is precisely why we should have an economy which allows ordinary people the financial freedom to create these companies on their own, rather than vesting that power in only a few.

Not quite sure what this quote is implying? That the government should take over VC, or that by solving income inequality, customer acquisition would be cheaper. With regards to the second point, as long as as potential outcome of the VC method can bring about some EV of $1B, then there will be someone willing to spend $999M to capture that market.

I think what he's implying, is becoming a unicorn in of itself is more about who you know rather than what you can do.
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