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Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

fortune.com

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Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#81

Post by rikkus »

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…

Same answer as always: It just works.

While we're here and speaking of consumer offerings: Has anyone found a satisfactory solution to displaying photos from Dropbox on their TV? Everything I try is clunky.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#82

Post by xiaoma »

hkmurakami wrote: post #47
prklmn wrote: post #21

A major difference between between this tech boom and the dot com boom of the 90s is the general public had a real shot at investing in serious growth potential during the dot com boom. Now most of the growth is experienced under private ownership, then the grossly overvalued company is pawned off for the public to invest in. VCs have figured out how to extract most of the exciting gains.

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 much for them). The other place where independents have an edge is long time horizons. They don't have anyone to report to or any need to sacrifice the long term in order to make quarterly numbers.

As for the average person picking well, I encourage you to look at the Motley Fool community. There you'll find literally millions of hobbyist investors, some who have been chatting together since the mid 90s and many, many people doing well. Even looking at the medium-active CAPS player (basically their over/under prediction board where anyone can make bull or bear cases on any stock), it's better than what you'd get giving your money to Wealthfront or some other manager.

Blocking retail investors from micro caps would just be one more way insulating the rich from competition with the conscientious. As bad as Sarbox has been, that would be an entirely new way to make the US system less equitable for the masses.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#83

Post by jakubp »

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.

So this is interesting. You may feel closer to people you haven't seen for a while when they are always "with" you on Snapchat -- I have certainly experienced that with people I don't talk to often or people who live on another continent.

But then again, I can't shake the feeling that this is more about fun than really being close. I remember having close friends in high school and at the university. We spent many hours a day together for several years. Can't fake that, and I doubt anything like that will be born through Snapchat or similar tools.

You sound quite certain that it has value. However, some claim that "communication" through technology can also alienate people. Some say it's a bit more shallow, that it doesn't have the same feel as actually talking to someone or even touching them for a second or two (really important for bonding).

Value is not always clear. Forgive me a drastic comparison, but factory farming strikes me as similar: it brought cheap, tasty meat to a great number of people, but the jury is still out on whether it's good.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#84

Post by RodericDay »

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.

Snapchat adds value in the way meth adds value.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#85

Post by puranjay »

speedplane wrote: post #61
imron wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the original comments "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem."

I remember that comment vividly, and love it. What better example of tech not understanding design and product-market fit?

I see similar comments on virtually every ShowHN thread. "You can just take these 5 extra steps and do it yourself! This product will fail"

Somehow, HN seldom seems to grasp that people are inherently lazy and any solution that cuts work for them will find at least a few takers.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#86

Post by puranjay »

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…

Although I use Google Docs almost exclusively for most of my work, I still use Dropbox for document storage.

Reason is simple: I've been burned by Google Drive before. Lost some important documents because I thought they'd synced when they hadn't. Drive - at least back then - was simply unreliable with its synchronization.

Never had that problem with Dropbox

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#87

Post by puranjay »

synaesthesisx wrote: post #49

If I had anything to do with Dropbox I'd be scrambling to cash out ASAP. It’s a matter of time before Apple rolls out iCloud file/folder sharing (which currently exists in some form already). In addition, they recently announced iMessage "Business Chat" which will likely later include other enterprise functionality.

iCloud has one of the worst user-experiences I've ever had of any mainstream product from a major provider. I'm not a tech dunce, but I just couldn't "get" it

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#88

Post by xiaoma »

I was a pretty early user of Dropbox back when it was featured on this site. As much as I'm loathe to admit it since I don't like the consolidation of huge tech companies, I've pretty much completely abandoned them for Google offerings.

Google drive is just there, whether I wanted it or not. And that goes for anyone who's signed up for Gmail or YouTube (i.e. collectively 40% of the people I know). It's not quite as nice as Dropbox, but it's right there in that weird 9-squared popup menu every time I check my email.

Kudos to Dropbox for having made it to this point, but how long can they survive against free + connected to your email + everything you save on an Android? What if chromebooks get more popular? I wouldn't short them, but it's really hard to see a big win for them given the market dynamics.

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#89

Post by detaro »

robotresearcher wrote: post #65
onion2k wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess that Dropbox make most of their revenue from businesses that have large numbers of different computers. If you have a network of computers all running the same OS then sharing and sync'ing is relatively easy; Dropbox solves the pain where you don't have that. Any service that's Apple-only, or Windows-only, or even just perceived to be limited to a particular OS, isn't going to have much of an impact on Drop…

There's value in cross-platform, sure. I stuck with Dropbox because they have Linux and Mac clients. But aren't there whole government departments and other very big customers that are pretty much single-platform, usually Windows?

> But aren't there whole government departments and other very big customers that are pretty much single-platform, usually Windows?

Would be interesting to know how much that class of customer uses services like this. I would assume primarily as part of a bigger package (e.g. if it comes with Office365 or Google Suite (or whatever that is called right now))?

Re: Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO

#90

Post by djhworld »

madengr wrote: post #33

So what's the advantage of Dropbox over FTP? Seriously. I have only used it for sharing large files. What else good is it?

It removes a whole number of barriers to get access to your files, no mounting network drives, no logging into FTP servers, it's just there and works with your local filesystem.

It's especially useful if you use multiple devices

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