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Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO
- djhworld 9y agoThe only comment I will say about Dropbox is the price, I wish they would do a 100GB tier or something for £1.99 a month. I really cannot justify paying £7.99 a month for 1TB of storage, especially when I'll most likely use less than 10% of that space
- wingerlang 9y agoI use 6% of the 1 TB and it definitely feels like they could have a smaller tier. I gladly pay for it though, for now. As recently as last week it saved my ass after I deleted ~200 files that I thought were tracked in git.
- erikb 9y agoI also pay dropbox, but I never checked the size. I think when I started it was like 50 GB for the same amount of money. You pay for the service and softwaredevelopment. The storage is just what they can give you cheaply.
- T-hawk 9y agoThis often comes up regarding Dropbox. It's not that Dropbox couldn't offer a cheaper tier than $10/month. It's that they don't want to. $10/1TB is not a ratio to be arbitrarily divided, no matter how much people want to assume it should be. Dropbox would lose more revenue from customers downgrading from $10 to $2 than they would gain from the few customers that care about the difference between $0 and $2. $10 is the floor for Dropbox to care enough to serve any customer. It's a version of "fire your pathological customers", or rather to never acquire them in the first place. SaaS vendors know that the cheapest customers are the biggest headaches. If you care about the difference between $5 and $10, Dropbox doesn't need to care about serving you.
- visarga 9y agoIn other words, getting ready to become more selfish from now on. Is Condoleezza Rice still working for Dropbox?
- macspoofing 9y agoOh grow up.
- badsock 9y agoI don't agree with visarga's first sentence. But I don't think it's childish to want a war criminal to be held to some account. More than 100,000 civilians died in that conflict, and Rice played a key role in knowingly selling the lies that lead to their deaths. She deserves prison, and the founders and board of Dropbox deserve to be hounded for their complicity in her escape from any negative consequence resulting from her actions.
- dang 9y agoWould you please stop using HN primarily for political battle? I don't think it requires being an Iraq War supporter to point out that accounts that do this violate the mandate of this site. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
- badsock 9y agoSigh. You're right, sorry. I'm out.
- visarga 9y agoSorry, I thought IPOs make companies beholden to quarterly profits and lose much of their pre-IPO spark. My mistake.
- dang 9y agoWe ban accounts that post like this, so please don't.
- hprotagonist 9y agoAmusingly, I just deleted my account for wholly unrelated reasons last week.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y agoStrangely enough, they actually deleted mine recently. I was using a few hundred MB and hadn't logged I now for a few years and got a notification that unless I logged in they were wiping my data. Not something that typically occurs these days.
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- brightball 9y agoGood luck to them. Been an excellent service from day 1.
- JabavuAdams 9y agoI love Dropbox, but where's the growth potential? They do an amazing job of storage and syncing, and as a user I'd love for them to focus on that. Can they use their early success in sync to bootstrap other products? "Evernote" by Dropbox? EDIT> This is an honest question, and I'd appreciate informative replies.
- ant6n 9y agoReplace everybody's hard-drive with a dropbox, shared across every device they own. Why shouldn't they IPO, it's basically the last funding round? Even if they were done growing and ready to start paying dividends now, what would be bad about that?
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y agoI'm having trouble understanding what the benefits are of going public for Dropbox. Increased financial reporting and the fiduciary duty to shareholders. I suspect, as the article implies "there is increasing pressure to go pubic as investors look to cash out. What features or new products could Dropbox develop with a few hundred million at they couldn't without? I think the investors just want to cash out. If there was huge throw potential wouldn't they continue to raise VC money?
- hkmurakami 9y agoYes VC fund vintages are likely maturing.
- nerdwaller 9y agoI would guess the Enterprise side, granted I'm not sure what/how much they have there. Picture this box[1] that's inside the company firewall... But seriously, they could have on prem, active directory integration, more permissions, user edit tracking/audit logs, etc. My work changed entire email/storage/etc providers almost entirely for the file management system... [1] https://cdn2.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/05/pied-piper-box.png https://cdn2.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/05...
- flunhat 9y agoThey've come a long way from their Show HN 10 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 From a demo hacked together over a few months (written in Python, IIRC) and posted on HN to an IPO. Pretty cool, honestly.
- pen2l 9y agoI would be soooooo happy if I got to see the code that began it. Does it happen to available anywhere?
- imron 9y agoAccording 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."
- prklmn 9y agoA 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.
- omarchowdhury 9y agoIt would seem that ICO may change that.
- clarky07 9y agoThat's what everyone said about facebook, but it's up 4x since IPO, and 8x from the post IPO dip it had.
- taneq 9y agoThe exception that proves the rule, eh?
- the_watcher 9y agoCompare that to the first 5 years of Amazon post-IPO.
- clarky07 9y agoit went from $2 to $16 (split adjusted). The real difference is that it was much much smaller at IPO, meaning it's pretty much impossible for FB to continue generating outsized returns whereas Amazon actually did much better from 5-10 or 10-15 than FB possibly could.
- GuiA 9y agoSaving everyone a Google search: AMZN opened at (split adjusted) $1.49. 5 years later it was at $19.47. Over that span, it maxed at $106.69 (Dec 1999).
- 9y ago
- r618 9y agodeleted dropbox from mac machines after recent privacy issues - e.g. [0] still using it on windows machines because of public links, but won't be for long, until hopefully iCloud gets this too good luck with the IPO - will be the first one publicly traded feature and not a product ;0) served me with some free GBs gained from various promos over the years well; so long and thanks for all the fish! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338
- madengr 9y agoSo what's the advantage of Dropbox over FTP? Seriously. I have only used it for sharing large files. What else good is it?
- 1123581321 9y ago* "It just works" folder syncing (not every FTP client does this, none as well as Dropbox) you can get nearly any colleague or family member using * Very good online file sharing UI * And no need to run and secure an FTP server
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y agoThe advantage is that Brenda from accounting is capable of using it without too much trouble.
- rtpg 9y agoseamless integration with loads of apps (especially on mobile). Lets you build a "cloud" feature into apps without actually needing servers. It's not super useful for big stuff, but nice if you're trying to write stuff just for yourself.
- TheAceOfHearts 9y agoJust FYI: instant.io [0] is a nice tool for sharing large files. It uses web torrent, so data can flow directly between you and the recipient. [0] https://instant.io https://instant.io
- Nition 9y agoIf you use a cloud-based drive locally, it's reduced to the speed of your internet connection. If you use a local copy, you have to set up something to sync it with the cloud version, or sync it manually. Dropbox keeps a local copy for speed, and also syncs automatically. It's the best of both worlds. It's also easy to use. It also keeps a file version history.
- djhworld 9y agoIt 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
- TheAceOfHearts 9y agoI 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 a few years, but looking at their landing and pricing page, it's clear they're transitioning away from being a consumer product and focusing on enterprise customers. For those of you that are paying for their consumer offering, I'd be very interested in reading about why you've chosen to stick with em instead of migrating to another service.
- Danihan 9y agoBox has always been better, with less baggage. No dark UI patterns. No creepy Bush-era board members. And overall just a better application.
- robotresearcher 9y agoI just went to the Box website to look for a Linux client. I'd like to report back, but on Safari[1] I can't read anything on the page. It's just black. [1] Version 10.1.1 (12603.2.4)
- josteink 9y ago> For those of you that are paying for their consumer offering, I'd be very interested in reading about why you've chosen to stick with em instead of migrating to another service. I'm a freeloader so I guess I don't fully qualify. That said, what I like about Sropbox is how it works (and works well) everywhere. Windows, Linux, Android. At home, at work, on my NAS and in "the cloud". All other services have major shortcomings if you want universal platform-support.
- akg_67 9y ago> what's their value proposition in 2017? I have been paid user of Dropbox for now 4+ years. The reason I have stuck with it because "It works! plain and simple." I have tried other storage services like Google, iCloud and Box. But none match the simplicity, consistency, invisibility, cross-platform, seamless features of Dropbox. Google is untrustworthy because you never know when they discontinue any service. They have no concept of customer service. They might well be running by robots. I experienced Box at work, forced by the work IT group. IT wasn't very willing to hand out Box accounts unless you can justify business use case , people who used it didn't like it. Box interface was always in your way if you wanted to do anything stored in Box, few extra clicks to do anything. Most people who needed to collaborate used free Dropbox to get around all restrictions. iCloud is okay but only seems to work with Apple ecosystem. I still can't figure out how to access files in iCloud from my Mac and iPhone. Works great for photos and contacts but not so much for files. While Dropbox has released new features, I have never bothered with any. IMO, Dropbox need to continue focusing their service seamless. There only mistake was to not go after business/enterprise earlier. They could have killed Box easily. While Box was hiring consultants and Enterprise sales people to pitch to IT groups (top down) Dropbox had the mindshare of employees (bottoms up). They were Dropbox champions, just Dropbox failed to leverage that in enterprise.
- divenorth 9y agoDropbox has a great product. Before dropbox I had a special email account to store files to share with people. It was annoying if I needed to update stuff. Dropbox has without a doubt saved me time and money.
- ramoq 9y agoPitching this as the biggest tech IPO since Snapchat isn't very impressive. Kind of shocked they used that comparison.
- synaesthesisx 9y agoIf 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.
- ericd 9y agoI use it for mirroring a significant percentage of my disk across Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android. There's no way I'd ever drop it for one brought out by a platform vendor, especially not one brought out by Apple.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y agoI think your statement is correct but example is not very good. Majority of Dropbox users are using Windows. Perhaps if Azure were to come out with Dropbox-like functionality this would be more apt. (I'm sure that Azure has at least some Dropbox-like functionality but is still a distance away from replacing Dropbox)
- SREinSF 9y agoMicrosoft OneDrive for Business is moving in that direction. Online collaboration of Office files, couple of clicks sharing and security controls that Enterprise IT departments love. I'd still say Dropbox is easier to use with a cleaner interface. However with so many Fortune 500 Enterprises already in bed with Microsoft, OneDrive for Business has a leg up.
- arethuza 9y agoIgnoring OneDrive for the moment, Azure File Storage is rather cool as it doesn't work by synchronizing copies of files it is literally a cloud based SMB drive: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/files/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/storage/files/ It's not terribly user friendly at the moment - I have wondered if there is a market for a nice easy to use front end for it...
- josteink 9y ago
- jonthepirate 9y agoMy office got a call on a great deal for a renewal on our subscription and our new pricing .. and our sales rep would give us a good deal since we had a subscription for a while... it would only be 2x what it currently was. We cancelled it and went to box. Easy and much happier.
- mdm_ 9y agoSimilar thing happened at MPOW. We've been Dropbox for Business subscribers for several years and all of a sudden they informed us of some astronomical price increase. We're migrating everyone's data before the end of the year and moving to a locally hosted Seafile-based storage solution.
- GordonS 9y agoAnother Seafile user here, also moved from Dropbox. I moved before the big price hike, and I did so for a few reasons: 1. It kills machines on startup. My machine had the CPU and HDD maxxed out for 30 minutes every time I started it, rendering it unusable 2. You can only sync a single folder, which is really limiting 3. The syncing algorithm is crap (well, it was for me anyway) - I was constantly resolving conflicts incorrectly 4. Probably a continuation from point 2 - it actually deleted files it shouldn't have I'm mostly happy with Seafile. I've had a few issues from time to time with the Windows client, but overall a much better experience than with Dropbox.
- flurdy 9y ago> 2. You can only sync a single folder, which is really limiting That is easily worked around as Dropbox follows symlinks. E.g on my desktop ~/Dropbox is on a small SSD so on that machine ~/Dropbox/Photos is a symlink to a folder on my large capacity HDD. > 4. Perhaps you already aware of the symlink solution :) It works for me, but is a little hacky. And you need to make sure dropbox is not running when moving and soft linking folders.
- GordonS 9y ago
- therealmarv 9y agoI see no value in Dropbox since using GDrive (have it anyway because of GSuite) and using a decent sync client like InsyncHQ. Never looked back at Dropbox.
- xiaoma 9y agoI 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.
- kobeya 9y agoNot everyone uses gmail...
- sangnoir 9y agoAs I expected - it looks like no-one remembers the "Drop Dropbox" boycott campaign that came right on the heels of Brendan Eich's ouster at Mozilla. I strongly believe had Mozilla's board showed him the same robust support Dropbox showed Condoleezza Rice, Mozilla would be in a much better place today.
- mtmail 9y agohttp://www.drop-dropbox.com/ http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ and the HN discussion from back then https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7566069
- ceejayoz 9y agoEich was far more closely tied to Mozilla than Rice to Dropbox, though. No one in their right mind thought Rice had much to do with Dropbox beyond being a name they could drop and a bit of lobbying help.
- sidhuko 9y agoTheir focus on corporate users must be why their sdk's are horrendous for a migration to their v2 api. Most users I know are on extensions while their javascript sdk is broken.
- Etheryte 9y agoWhile one of Dropbox's strengths is its simplicity, one thing that I think is currently keeping many enterprise customers away is detailed configurability – currently you only have manual folder-level control over what to sync. However, a very common use case is to autosync everything except certain types of files (certificates, keystores etc). They would probably see some quick adoptions if they covered detailed configuration and enterprise-level management in a good manner.
- flurdy 9y agoThe day dropbox can read and follow .gitignore in my folders I would be happy. If I don't want version control over it I also don't need to back it up.
- flurdy 9y agoContinuously manually disabling syncing of e.g. binary build files, temporary log files etc from my projects. But you can not do it before they exist, only afterwards whilst dropbox is busy syncing megabytes of unneccesary files... Though the linux client has a CLI that helps a little with disabling certain patterns but no mac equivalent.
- chewyland 9y agoI love Dropbox.
- bsvalley 9y agoDropbox is like twitter. An over-engineered solution for a very narrowed use case. Don't get me wrong, the product works very well. I actually use it everyday, but from an investor/growth perspective, I fall back into what Jobs said - "it's just a feature".
- jakozaur 9y agoAlso many platforms are adding storage as add-in (Amazon, Google, Microsoft) which decreases available market.
- j_s 9y agoI only use their web UI, mostly for free online storage / sharing.