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CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

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Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#91

Post by ssijak »

midas007 wrote: post #88
tristanz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Cuban comment in that thread is interesting: "I didn't miss a thing. When a company raises hundreds of millions of dollars I would have been diluted to nothing. But the bigger issue is that I'm not a fan of situations where you have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to do tens of millions in sales. It's a lesson learned from the tech bubble It was one thing when the valuation as a multiple of sales was in…

Box needs to monetize on enterprise add-ons. There's a huge pile of cash there if they hustle ahead and steal Dropbox's lollipop. Further, nurturing and gobbling up feature plays. Gotta pull off a "Siri." Finally, tons more integrations (other apps, more language sdks and some videos showing off some neat use-cases at open source conferences).

advice pulled out of from where the sun does not shine... really, give talks at open source conferences, that would raise value how much? or library for brainfuck?

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#92

Post by rahimnathwani »

shiftb wrote: post #89
sjg007 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many startups don't even give out the % your options are..

You can always ask the number of shares outstanding and calculate it yourself.

You would also need to know the # of options outstanding. You can't really calculate the value of options without knowing the complete cap table, and details of different share classes (particular liquidation preferences).

I don't know whether it's common for small companies to share all of this information outside the senior team or potential hires for that team.

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#93

Post by midas007 »

ssijak wrote: post #91
midas007 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Box needs to monetize on enterprise add-ons. There's a huge pile of cash there if they hustle ahead and steal Dropbox's lollipop. Further, nurturing and gobbling up feature plays. Gotta pull off a "Siri." Finally, tons more integrations (other apps, more language sdks and some videos showing off some neat use-cases at open source conferences).

advice pulled out of from where the sun does not shine... really, give talks at open source conferences, that would raise value how much? or library for brainfuck?

Having dev evangelists presenting cool shit gets people aware of your platform and it's free marketing, the best kind.

Further, Java, Python, Ruby, Obj-C, Android and C# isn't complete. [0] JS for browser front-end and node back-end is clearly missing or third-party. A somewhat smaller shop, Segment.io, has all of those and PHP and Clojure. And a metric ton of integrations comparatively. [1] [2]

[0] http://developers.box.com/sdks/

[1] https://segment.io/libraries/analytics.js

[2] http://blog.box.com/tag/integrations/

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#94

Post by driesbuytaert »

pyrrhotech wrote: post #12

And the average engineer who thought they'd be rich, probably owns 0.0002%. Have fun with your 200k! Startups are such a scam for the employees.

Based on the S-1, Box is growing at 100% YoY and has retention / upsell of 134%. These are world class numbers. If they can keep that momentum, that $200k could grow substantially over the years to come. It could be much better than holding Google stock or getting a Google sign-on bonus. Not sure why everyone is so focused on the IPO value; the IPO is just a fundraising milestone, not an end point to exit.

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#95

Post by ChuckMcM »

michaelochurch wrote: post #81
ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, so what if it is "$200K" ? Basically that is enough to completely cover one kids education at a state school, put down 20% on a million dollar house, or seed fund your next "big thing" for easily 6 to 18 months. On top of that you've been working for a salary that probably paid all your existing living expenses so you were not accumulating debt. That is a pretty cool thing. Further, if you continue to…

To add to this, so what if it is "$200K" ? Basically that is enough to completely cover one kids education at a state school, put down 20% on a million dollar house, or seed fund your next "big thing" for easily 6 to 18 months. On top of that you've been working for a salary that probably paid all your existing living expenses so you were not accumulating debt. That is a pretty cool thing. You are not allowed to comm…

It is clear from the tone that you've got some emotional investment here, and I respect that, and with all due respect the facts stand in argument to your thesis.

Consider for that there are more millionaires and billionaires in the California than there are in New York ([1] [2]). The housing market that is the Bay Area exists not in a small number of neighborhoods, but from South San Jose to Novato in Marin. One has to appreciate the wealth building effect of the industry if it can raise the median price of a single family home over a thousand square miles by $500,000.

Yes, some acquisitions suck, and yes, even some IPOs suck, but no other industry puts as company value into the hands of the rank and file employees as startups do.

[1] http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p70-88.pdf

[2] http://www.netstate.com/states/tables/state_millionaires_air...

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#96

Post by mahyarm »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #95
michaelochurch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, so what if it is "$200K" ? Basically that is enough to completely cover one kids education at a state school, put down 20% on a million dollar house, or seed fund your next "big thing" for easily 6 to 18 months. On top of that you've been working for a salary that probably paid all your existing living expenses so you were not accumulating debt. That is a pretty cool thing. You are not allowed to comm…

It is clear from the tone that you've got some emotional investment here, and I respect that, and with all due respect the facts stand in argument to your thesis. Consider for that there are more millionaires and billionaires in the California than there are in New York ([1] [2]). The housing market that is the Bay Area exists not in a small number of neighborhoods, but from South San Jose to Novato in Marin. One has…

Do not look at the price of housing as an indicator of being wealthy! It's often an indicator of regulatory failure & NIMBYism more than anything. Otherwise my home area of Vancouver would be land of the wealthy, while it's actually became the 2nd most unaffordable city in the world. Unaffordable being housing price : annual income ratios. The bay area has started to attract mainland chinese cash too. Friends have been outbid by mainland chinese buyers with cash trying to buy a house in palo alto.

You don't even have the luxury of going over a bridge and housing prices dropping significantly. In Vancouver, the average house is $1.2mm - $800k+ and going 1 hour away from the city core just drops you $100k-$200k.

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#97

Post by FireBeyond »

jbooth wrote: post #84
FireBeyond wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I mentioned down thread, it's not that easy. Mike Davidson, who sold Newsvine to MSNBC and had enough liquid cash to (more than) cover his mortgage that day in its entirety still went through hoop after hoop even refinancing his loan. Risk is only a part of the equation here.

If he had that cash, why didn't he just buy the damn house himself?

To my mind (and I don't know exactly how much) - even $1.5MM at a 3% return would nearly make your mortgage payments without touching the capital, so maybe that's why.

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#98

Post by pyrrhotech »

driesbuytaert wrote: post #94
pyrrhotech wrote: post #12

And the average engineer who thought they'd be rich, probably owns 0.0002%. Have fun with your 200k! Startups are such a scam for the employees.

Based on the S-1, Box is growing at 100% YoY and has retention / upsell of 134%. These are world class numbers. If they can keep that momentum, that $200k could grow substantially over the years to come. It could be much better than holding Google stock or getting a Google sign-on bonus. Not sure why everyone is so focused on the IPO value; the IPO is just a fundraising milestone, not an end point to exit.

200k is 200k. It'll be on the public markets. If you think it'll go up a lot, you are welcome to put your own money in it.

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#99

Post by michaelochurch »

mahyarm wrote: post #96
ChuckMcM wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is clear from the tone that you've got some emotional investment here, and I respect that, and with all due respect the facts stand in argument to your thesis. Consider for that there are more millionaires and billionaires in the California than there are in New York ([1] [2]). The housing market that is the Bay Area exists not in a small number of neighborhoods, but from South San Jose to Novato in Marin. One has…

Do not look at the price of housing as an indicator of being wealthy! It's often an indicator of regulatory failure & NIMBYism more than anything. Otherwise my home area of Vancouver would be land of the wealthy, while it's actually became the 2nd most unaffordable city in the world. Unaffordable being housing price : annual income ratios. The bay area has started to attract mainland chinese cash too. Friends have be…

Thank you for writing that. I'm at a conference and don't have time to correct all the wrongness on the Internet. High house prices are a combination of regulatory corruption ( NIMBY) and extreme price inelasticity.

Disasters that destroy housing actually increase the notional value of housing after the (very short) period of panic wears out, because the price spike more than cancels out the loss of supply. But wealth was destroyed, not created.

Re: CEO Aaron Levie Will Only Own 4.1% Of Box When It IPOs, Investor DFJ Owns 25.5%

#100

Post by sjg007 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #92
shiftb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always ask the number of shares outstanding and calculate it yourself.

You would also need to know the # of options outstanding. You can't really calculate the value of options without knowing the complete cap table, and details of different share classes (particular liquidation preferences). I don't know whether it's common for small companies to share all of this information outside the senior team or potential hires for that team.

Yeah, I've gotten absolutely no where when I've asked.
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