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Dropbox S-1
- uptown 9y ago"My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB" Apr 4, 2007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- mozumder 9y agoDo companies normally take 10+ years to go public? I think it was much quicker during the dotcom era, but I don't know how that compares to previous decades... Oh and congrats to the team :)
- lcalculus 9y agohttps://www.quora.com/How-long-does-the-average-company-take-to-go-public https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-the-average-company-take...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- m-watson 9y agoThose comments are a lot of fun to read through. It seems like, at least on HN, people were generally positive about Dropbox. A lot of comments about solving a problem (more so for windows users) and having a good demo.
- artursapek 9y agoIt's too bad they let that original URL die.
- uptown 9y agoHere's the Wayback archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20070220080513/http://getdropbox.com https://web.archive.org/web/20070220080513/http://getdropbox...
- MrMember 9y agoThere's always that one guy asking why a product exists when it's "trivial" to spin up and manage yourself.
- FreakyT 9y agoThat comment is my personal favorite HN naysayer comment of all time: > 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 Yes, absolutely trivial. Even a child could do it. /s
- bobsil1 9y agoJust smelt some silicon, yadda, yadda, yadda. Trivial.
- dictum 9y agoBrandonM retells his experience reading a certain now-famous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988051 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7988051 Dropbox's Show HN is a reminder of how dismissing designers isn't such a wise idea for engineers ;)
- minimaxir 9y agoDo companies typically announce an IPO on a Friday, right before market close?
- jtmcmc 9y agoan S1 isn't an IPO it's a preliminary to an IPO.
- mtmail 9y agoDoesn't seem like. Facebook 2012: Wednesday, Twilio 2016: Thursday, Snap 2017: Thursday
- ereli1 9y agoLooking at data from the last couple of years, it appears that filling on Friday is pretty common. (see ipomonitor.com for data). pbpaste |sort|uniq -c|sort -k1nr 614 Friday 436 Monday 339 Thursday 326 Tuesday 283 Wednesday 2 Sunday
- willow9886 9y agonice work, Dropbox.
- tardo99 9y agoCongratulations to them. I don't really understand why anyone would use dropbox given the multitude of different offerings out there. I'm curious if anyone who uses them can give me a take on why I should use them. I currently use Google Drive + Google Docs and am very satisfied. I pay for 1 TB of storage for personal work / storage.
- devmunchies 9y agoThey are used by lots of businesses. It’s just for personal use.
- tardo99 9y agoWait I think you're missing a word there...
- blakesterz 9y agoI guess it still works, and it's just what we've always been using. It's probably the first thing that most people used like this, and it still gets the job done for most people, I'd guess.
- tsm 9y agoMy two reasons: 1) More people use Dropbox, which makes sharing easier. 2) First-class support for Linux
- braderhart 9y agoDropbox never worked on Linux for me. It was buggy and maxed out my CPU. They didn't even provide proper changelogs at the time.. not sure if they do now? Is their application open source? Rclone works with Google Drive just fine, and it is unlimited storage.
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoI had a major data-loss (recommended third-party element for KDE may have been responsible; was using free version), haven't used it since. It's very similar to IMAP in the way a major data loss can be sync-ed. Would love to have "only mark remote deletions" (in both! with option to perform deletion locally on request), perhaps it's in there now, or part of the paid version.
- speedie 9y agoMega.nz
- braderhart 9y agoDescent client yes, but honestly pretty terrible once you compare features. Versioning counts against storage, speed can be slow, questionable company...
- wonder_bread 9y agoSeems like the move away from AWS to it's own infrastrucutre is starting to pay dividends. 33% GM to 67% in two years is certainly impressive!
- wmeredith 9y agoFriendly heads up: "its" is possessive (like his or hers) whereas "it's" is a contraction of "it" and "is".
- 123212321 9y agoYou should reassess how you see the world
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- FreakyT 9y agoI really want to file this as a bug report in the English language. ENG-21238: Contraction for "it is" easily confused with possessive form of "it"
- blfr 9y agoEnglish is my second language and I barely notice most mistakes but this and the death of proper use of "whose" really, really bother me for some reason.
- joncrane 9y agoAnother great find. Yeah wasn't Dropbox one of the first big things that was built on top of S3? Amazing to re-engineer that.
- habosa 9y agoI believe this is the first ever YC company to go public? If so congrats to YC as well as the team at Dropbox.
- blocked_again 9y agoCurious why going public deserves an applause. Is being private a bad thing?
- brink 9y agoIt's more of a "congrats on the money" applause.
- tdb7893 9y agoIt signifies a milestone. Being single isn't bad but there's no problem celebrating a wedding
- whoisjuan 9y agoWell. For Y-Combinator is a win. It's an opportunity to convert their equity to cash and get a return on their investment.
- rockostrich 9y agoPrivate companies that operate at a positive cash-flow are free to distribute profits to shareholders. Sure, going public makes it easier for investors to liquidate their stock, but that doesn't mean you can't get returns from investments in private companies.
- rlanday 9y agoAs a practical matter, Dropbox is operating at a loss, yet has value as a company because of the expectation that it will hopefully someday turn a profit. IPOing allows Y Combinator, which specializes in early stage investment, to realize a return on their investment and invest in more companies without having to wait even longer.
- meritt 9y agoRough numbers here because BOX hasn't reported full 2017 yet but: Dropbox 2017: $1107M Revenue Dropbox 2017 Paying Users: 11M ARPU: $100 [1] Box.com (Q4-16 to Q3-17): $479M Revenue Box.com (Q3-17) Paying Users: 9.7M - 10.2M [2] ARPU: $47 - $49 [3] [1] $1107/11 [2] "over 17% of our registered users [57M] were paying users" [3] 479/10.2 to 479/9.7
- swampthinker 9y agoWow, I assumed that Box would've had a higher ARPU given it's focus on enterprise.
- meritt 9y agoMe too. I'm trying to find better ARPU metrics to ensure I'm not misunderstanding that vague "over 17%" statement. As a company they tend to report "Number of Paying Customers" which are businesses and only occasionally reference individual user accounts. Though simply looking at per user per month pricing: Dropbox for Business has $15, $25, and Enterprise Dropbox Individual has Free, $10, and $20 Box.com has $5, $15, $25, and Enterprise The math doesn't even really make sense though. Dropbox's ARPU is $8/user/mo whereas Box is $4/user/mo. Either the my math is wrong or Box offers some pretty steep Enterprise discounts that work out to <$5/user/mo.
- swampthinker 9y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the enterprise discount is in fact <$5/u/mo. Seems like a simple conversation, "Why am I paying more per person even though I'm a large client?" Digging deeper into Dropbox's finances is astounding too. They've added about $150m in additional revenue each year, while cutting their net losses by $100m each year.
- secabeen 9y agoBox offers a significant discount on Enterprise to Universities through Internet2. https://www.internet2.edu/products-services/cloud-services-applications/box/ https://www.internet2.edu/products-services/cloud-services-a...
- mankash666 9y agoJust curious - how's a raw SEC filing preferable to a reliable article summarizing it in non-legalese, providing context with the competition, etc. Other than lawyers and economists, does anyone ACTUALLY prefer this raw filing? EDIT: Adding my preferred link: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/dropbox-ipo-form-s-1-prospectus-filing-full-text.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/23/dropbox-ipo-form-s-1-prospec...
- rainbowmverse 9y agoThe risk factors section is pretty close to a good summary.
- keyboardhitter 9y agowell, there's less chance of advertisements, and it gets to the point rather quickly i am not an economist or lawyer and prefer it i don't have to worry about a writer/editor injecting personal opinions that i could care less about
- nightcracker 9y ago> and it gets to the point rather quickly In a mere 160 pages. Unless you know what to look for it most certainly does not get to the point rather quickly.
- keyboardhitter 9y agothen i guess i know what to look for to satisfy myself, I'm not speaking for everyone here, just responding to OP's question
- tomrod 9y agoLearning curves can have solid payoff.
- teej 9y agoI always find juicy information in the S1 that doesn't get reported on right away. Off the top of my head: * Reliance and risks of Zynga in the Facebook S-1 * Customer acquisition costs in the Blue Apron S-1 * Growth specifics and positioning of algorithms in the StitchFix S-1 * Infrastructure costs in the Snapchat S-1 Besides, an S-1 filing is not written in legalease, it's written in plain language. One of the target audiences is street investors so it's meant to be accessible. I'm looking forward to digging into this one.
- joelrunyon 9y agoAmazed there's still no good permission settings on nested folders in dropbox. Ran into this on a 4-5 year old project with multiple contributors and even on their paid versions, there's no good way to consolidate folders that have multiple "owners." Seems like there has to be a better way to handle this - Google Drive takes care of it much better.
- blaike 9y agoNever gonna be a priority unless they release a new enterprise platform. Use Box for this.
- nilsbunger 9y agoDropbox Business supports nested shared folders now. Source: I evangelized it and worked on it.
- joelrunyon 9y agoBut from different sources, etc? I have a whole bunch of folders over the past 3-4 years that are "owned" by different people that worked for me. I tried to get them all organized under one subfolder and it's not allowed.
- nilsbunger 9y agoTwo options depending on what you’re looking to do: 1. If you just want to personally organize shared folders you receive, you can always put them in folders in your account. 2. If you’re trying to create a nested shared structure, that’s what dropbox biz does. You make your employees team members. The ownership issue becomes less tricky since the biz content is all “owned” by the biz. As a dropbox alum, I’m not up to speed on all the latest nuances. You should chat with sales to see how it could work for you, or just try a trial.
- varenc 9y agoInteresting. Glad to see that a security breach is called out as one of the major risk factors on an sec filing. Our business could be damaged, and we could be subject to liability if there is any unauthorized access to our data or our users’ content, including through privacy and data security breaches.
- eganist 9y agoConsidering their service is the safekeeping of others' data, I'd probably s/interesting/obvious. Not putting your comment down, mind you. Most would probably find an infosec inclusion as a major risk factor "interesting" in that it just doesn't feel like infosec gets that kind of respect in the C-suite, but I'd like to think it's different in this case considering the offering.
- zwily 9y agoIsn’t this pretty common in SaaS business filings?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mankash666 9y agoCommentary on valuation: 1. Box, a public company, is currently valued at $3.17B. It had revenues of ~$480M with a net loss of $150M in 2017 [1] 2. In contrast, Dropbox had revenues of $1.11B with a net loss of $111M in 2017. The higher revenues, and lower losses bode well for Dropbox. Objectively, that would value Dropbox in the $8B-$9B range, $1B-$2B short of it's previous $10B private valuation [1]: https://goo.gl/Agf5Xt https://goo.gl/Agf5Xt
- maxxxxx 9y agoHow are they planning ever to make any profits? Their product was innovative some years ago but now they have a lot of competition so I'd expect their margins to get squeezed even more.
- swampthinker 9y agoThose numbers are even more impressive given that 2 years ago they had $600m in revenues with a net loss of $300m
- mankash666 9y agoBut it also means transfer of more equity from founders to investors, as investment terms these days typically include equity transfers if an IPO falls short of private valuations
- olivermarks 9y agowould like to see more evidence and proof those numbers are credible...
- mankash666 9y agoDropbox's numbers are in their S1 filing and Box's in their financials already linked. Are you questioning the legitimacy of these filings?
- olivermarks 9y ago
- megadeth 9y agoWill make a few billionaires.
- kolbe 9y agoReally? How many people own more than 10% of the company?
- abuckenheimer 9y agoI'm not surprised to see net neutrality mentioned as a risk factor. Our platform depends on the quality of our users’ access to the internet. Certain features of our platform require significant bandwidth and fidelity to work effectively. Internet access is frequently provided by companies that have significant market power that could take actions that degrade, disrupt or increase the cost of user access to our platform, which would negatively impact our business. I wonder if you could make an argument that public SAAS companies have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to support net neutrality policy.
- twinkletwinkle 9y agoThey could also call out the flip side though, right? Dropbox could negotiate deals with the ISPs to "box out" smaller competitors. Maybe it costs them upfront but it also solidifies them in the market.
- raverbashing 9y ago> Dropbox could negotiate deals with the ISPs to "box out" smaller competitors. Maybe it costs them upfront but it also solidifies them in the market. Yes, if you're a short sighted MBA that wants to encourage your own extortion
- mjburgess 9y agoWell, either way, their competitors are icloud/onedrive/googledrive... box'ing-out isnt going to be a successful strategy.
- tomrod 9y agoThis describes a whole lot of business leaders.
- maxxxxx 9y agoThat would be a shrewd business move unless the ISPs want to get into the same business.
- 9y ago
- throwaway0255 9y ago.
- Jtsummers 9y agoThey're saying they have essentially one revenue source. A lack of diversity in income sources is the risk factor. Compare to Microsoft: Various consumer software options, OEM OS licenses, government contracts, support contracts, physical hardware (Xbox), licensing for game publishers, Azure, etc. Dropbox has one revenue source, and it's primarily fed by consumers (11 million at that, per this filing). A loss of 1 million users is a loss of 100 million in revenue for them, but doesn't correspond to a drastic reduction in their costs (due to the number of non-paying users).
- notfried 9y agoTip: Never pay for Dropbox at $99/year. It's repeatedly discounted throughout the year at Dell's website for $60, and often also comes with a $25 Dell gift card. So effectively, its value is $35/year, and you can buy multiple codes, redeem them, so you'd be effectively paying in advance for as long as you want, at 1/3rd of the price.
- asadlionpk 9y agoany link for this? I am planning to renew my plan.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- notfried 9y agoYou can add an Alert on Slickdeals to notify you. There was one last week for $70/year [0], but it's no longer active. [0] https://slickdeals.net/f/11225815-dropbox-annual-subscription-69-99?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1 https://slickdeals.net/f/11225815-dropbox-annual-subscriptio...
- jedberg 9y agoNormally I would jump on this, but I like dropbox, I like the people there, and I like Drew, so I'm willing to spend an extra $30 a year to increase their revenue and keep them in business longer.
- jcsnv 9y agoSame here, I have yet to have an issue with the Dropbox UX
- tetrazine 9y agoSorry, what??? I mean, you're entitled to do whatever you'd like. But do you see the potential valuations being tossed around? "Drew" is worth tens to hundreds of millions. I just have no idea why someone would find it not only worth it to take money out of their own pocket to further a corporation that has no need for the empathy we would normally afford to people (or small businesses, which "round down" to individual people or small groups), but would actually see value in sharing this thought process with everyone else. It's not like using a "deal" is unethical or illegal (like, say, piracy), the company in question (or a reseller taking the hit) offered it. Is this some kind of silicon valley flavor of virtue signaling? If dropbox was a startup with 8 employees, especially one that didn't offer the near-commodity service (yes, I know UX etc matter here) that dropbox does, I would understand this. But that's so far from the case
- JohnJamesRambo 9y agoI think Dropbox is a dying company, I don't know anyone that uses it in my circles except old people now, very similar to Facebook.
- malthaus 9y agoI have a lot of respect for Dropbox as they've created an awesome product and user experience that accelerated its niche. But as with Twitter i'm sceptical of the long-term prospects (and hence the need for an IPO vs a trade sale) of single-feature/protocol companies. Nice liquidity event for current shareholders but why should the public invest here? The product is becoming more commoditized with time as well as being an ever more tightly integrated feature with hardware/OS. Box seems to have a lock on the enterprise market which feels like the better long-term strategy than being a consumer/startup brand. The stated growth strategy in the S-1 is rather meh. Post-IPO they might go further down the Evernote route and expand in all possible areas, diluting the core product/brand.
- jedberg 9y ago> Box seems to have a lock on the enterprise market which feels like the better long-term strategy than being a consumer/startup brand. Yet box only makes about $48 per user per year, whereas Dropbox makes $111 per year. So either Dropbox has more enterprise than we think, or consumer is a lot more valuable than we think.
- napoleonIV 9y agoI know that Facebook moved to Dropbox from Box for internal use.
- slackoverflower 9y agoLet it be known that Mark Zuckerberg and Drew Houston are best friends. I know it might not be the main reason, but it is something to consider.
- jpalomaki 9y agoMaybe Dropbox is serving mostly smaller companies, which have just a few users are therefore not so price sensitive. If you have five guys, then it's still just like $50-100 per month, not really worth the effort to start thinking how to save money on that. If you are an enterprise with tens or few hundred users, the monthly bill starts to be in a range where it actually makes sense for somebody to spend a few hours to see if you could cut it by xx%.
- faramarz 9y agoDoes this suggest they are in the 60-day roadshow quiet period before to the listing? It's a good value buy for me. Dropbox and Spotify whenever they go public. These two apps I've been a paying member since I discovered them.
- skellera 9y agoI’ve considered buying Spotify but I am unsure of future growth or long term profits. What do you see?
- mcintyre1994 9y agoIt'd be interesting to see if they had a similar moment of growth evaporating when Apple Music entered like Snapchat did when Facebook finally got a clone to stick.
- toephu2 9y agoI've been using Google Drive for years and haven't paid a dime and it works great for me. Do you really need 1 TB in the cloud? How much of that do you actually use? Or is it like how people hoard stuff in their garage that they never use but think they will so are afraid to throw it away.
- a_d 9y agoIs this the first company to go public that (almost) started/took-off as a "Show HN"? In a way, this is a big moment for YC, PG and this community. Is there a list of "Show HNs" that have become "big"? It would be very interesting to see.
- alexnewman 9y agoHow big?
- carlsborg 9y agoCongrats YC
- ejcx 9y agoMust be nice to be Quintin Clark. Showed up in Sept of 2017 and was awarded $34MM worth of stock according to this S-1. It looks like a healthy business. Congrats to dropbox.
- lylo 9y agoI’m a fan of Dropbox, it’s an excellent product. It’s the only file sync product I’ve used in anger that I actually trust — I’ve had glitches of one sort or another with iCloud, Google Drive, OneDrive... never with Dropbox. It just works. Apple should have bought them, Jobs got it wrong ;-) Dropbox Paper is also a delight to use, from a personal perspective. I’ve never used it on a team. I would be interested to hear whether teams of 50+ have successfully used it — it just doesn’t feel ready for the enterprise in the way that Google Drive does/is. I’ve not read this S-1 (perhaps it clarifies this) but Dropbox seems a little confused about positioning B2C vs B2B. Does it have a packaging problem? Can it have it both ways? It feels like it’s trying to, but when I was a paying Pro user, I couldn’t get away from the upsell on the site for me to move to the business package. Annoying. Good luck to them though — they have killer design, a killer viral product and a loyal user base.
- sid-kap 9y agoDropbox Paper is great but the Android app sucks
- brisance 9y agoApple did not get it wrong. Steve Jobs offered to buy (for a putative $800M) but Drew Houston said it was not for sale. Thereafter, Steve was reportedly to have said that Apple would crush them since Dropbox is a feature and not a product.
- lylo 9y agoI stand corrected! I thought he didn’t want to buy them for that reason, didn’t realise he had made an offer.
- kjaer 9y agojxub called it on the Dropbox Foundation thread 2 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16428729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16428729
- JepZ 9y agoIts been a while but those who don't know: Some years ago Dropbox kinda started here on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- yugf 9y agofuck dropbox
- elvirs 9y agoonly 1 in 50 users is actually paying? thats not good
- martin-adams 9y agoExcept that 49 out of 50 are quite likely to invite friends into the Dropbox ecosystem through invites and shares of who can turn into a paying customer. Sure more paying customers is good, but may be cheaper than paying for advertising to acquire customers.
- andysinclair 9y agoFrom the S-1, looks like they will be excluded from the S&P500: In addition, in July 2017, FTSE Russell and Standard & Poor’s announced that they would cease to allow most newly public companies utilizing dual or multi-class capital structures to be included in their indices. Affected indices include the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600, which together make up the S&P Composite 1500. Under the announced policies, our multi-class capital structure would make us ineligible for inclusion in any of these indices, and as a result, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and other investment vehicles that attempt to passively track these indices will not be investing in our stock. These policies are very new and it is as of yet unclear what effect, if any, they will have on the valuations of publicly traded companies excluded from the indices, but it is possible that they may depress these valuations compared to those of other similar companies that are included.
- cjalmeida 9y agoThis seems huge considering how popular ETF are these days.
- uiri 9y agoIf this ever becomes a concern, the class B shareholders can convert their shares 1 to 1 into class A shares. Once all class B shares have been converted, class C shares will also convert 1 to 1 into class A shares. This would then make the company eligible to be included in the S&P 500. I imagine that the class B shares are nontransferable, which means that this will cease to be an issue once the founders have fully cashed out.
- joncrane 9y agoThat is a good find! Wonder why. Also if a significant number of firms are excluded, I wonder if new ETFs will pop up.
- jseip 9y agoAmazed by the R&D expense of $380.3M especially because I'm not aware of substantive innovations that they're bringing to market. How has / will that investment translate into new technology or a technically superior product?
- xoob 9y agoThey also work on stuff like [Dropbox Paper](https://www.dropbox.com/paper https://www.dropbox.com/paper), a markdown capable minimalist Google Docs alternative.
- uniformlyrandom 9y agoYou underestimate the amount of engineering effort required to simply run a fast-growing highload service.
- alex_young 9y agoR&D is probably almost all going to be salaries for engineering talent. It takes a lot of people to run your own end to end solution for 500m users. Remember, they are doing everything from software development to running data centers.
- adadad3442 9y agoThat also suprised me- I know that they spend a great deal on optimizations to reduce backend cost, improve uptime / reliability, etc., but I don't see much on the customer side myself...
- codezero 9y agoI’m not 100% sure but I believe this is also called R&D because it had different financial/accounting meaning which affects how spend/revenue are reported. They can be considered expenses that are reported on taxes, and also since there is risk of no or poor ROI knowing the R&D component of the budget helps adjust for risk in modeling future revenue and expenses.
- runewell 9y agoI like Dropbox but as a potential investor I would be a bit nervous about the online storage industry as a whole considering crypto-backed decentralized storage seems only 12-24 months away.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- laktek 9y agoIt's interesting that they use Paying Users & Average Revenue per paying user as their key business metrics. I find it simpler and closer to the reality than the MAU & ARR most other SaaS rely on these days.
- Kiro 9y agoWhere do all the new shares come from in an IPO?
- uiri 9y agoSame place that they come from when doing an investment round with VCs - the corporation issues new shares and dilutes existing shareholders.
- notgoingaway 9y agoDropbox has been managed by literal war criminals for nearly 5 years. http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ http://www.drop-dropbox.com/
- Krypt1k 9y agoDefinitely gonna dig into this one.
- a_taylor 9y agoI find the equity split between Drew (25.3%) and Arash (10.3%) especially interesting given @paulg's 2014 tweet that "Zero of the most successful YC companies have a significantly disproportionate equity split" https://twitter.com/paulg/status/535588566978404352 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/535588566978404352
- hueving 9y agoHow is that not counterevidence given the significant split between the two?
- andyfleming 9y agoI think that may be his point (that PG views that as an appropriate split for one or more reasons).
- portman 9y agoIt may have started equal at founding and changed over subsequent rounds. I know of a case where 4 founders started equal and differed by order of magnitude by the end.
- Hydraulix989 9y agoHow did this happen?
- LoungeFlyZ 9y agoMany will sell some of their stock during a funding round to the new investor to take some money out and blow it on lambos.
- mbesto 9y agoCome to think of it - I don't many successful startups where the split is exactly equal prior to the IPO. You'll find in the twitter replies that most people don't agree with his anecdata.
- 9y ago
- foobaw 9y agoAny ideas on how I can purchase with the underwriter price?
- taychen 9y agoIt's interesting they have invisible small white text under images with embedded text so that you could do a text search.
- _RPM 9y agoThe executive team each has a base salary of 400,000. That's a lot of money, with a 65% target bonus. That is so much money.
- ttul 9y agoLoL. Many engineers at Google make more than that with their RSUs.
- jest3r1 9y agoThe risk factors fail to mention their inability to offer any kind of end-to-end encryption. Or that E2E encryption is the differentiator that most of their competitors offer. Dropbox (employees and trusted third parties) will always have access to your files. Before you downvote. This is not necessarily a bad thing. They can deliver more features and better performance as a result. Reliability is key, and it's certainly easier to understand what users need, and to develop, implement and debug new features, when you've got access to the files users are storing. But eventually, end-to-end encryption will take hold. It took decades for HTTPS to become the defacto standard, but it did. Email is moving that direction (Proton Mail, Tutanota). Text messaging is moving that direction (Signal, WhatsApp?). And there's a number of Dropbox competitors that are growing fast because of better privacy and E2E encryption (SpiderOak, Tresorit, Sync.com, pCloud). NextCloud (open source self-hosted Dropbox alternative) also just launched end-to-end encryption. These companies have been slowly solving the problems that Drew claimed were impossible when Edward Snowden dropped the bomb. Meanwhile Dropbox has been pouring dollars into marketing and a Microsoft Office / OneNote / Google Docs competitor (Paper). Drew's response to end-to-end encryption: https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/04/dropboxs-drew-houston-responds-to-snowdens-privacy-criticism-its-a-trade-off/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/11/04/dropboxs-drew-houston-resp... Dropbox risk factors (many unsolvable): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467623/000119312518055809/d451946ds1.htm#toc451946_2 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467623/000119312518... I use Dropbox and feel the product is still the leader in terms of features, but I see the competition catching up, with better privacy (end-to-end encryption) built in.
- varenc 9y agoDropbox mentions their real competition in S1 filing: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Box. None of them seem to offer E2E. The competitors you cited aren't worth mentioning due to their small market share relative to the big players. E2E might be feature customers start demanding in the future, but it sure doesn't seem like that now. (though I wonder how many folks are using the big players on top of other encryption solutions like truecrypt/veracrypt/safe, etc)
- jest3r1 9y ago
- skaushik92 9y agoGiven the volume of our users, we do not track the retention rates of our individual users. As a result, we may be unable to address any retention issues with specific users in a timely manner, which could harm our business. Isn't this measurement critical to understanding if the business decisions are in line with customer expectations and use-cases? I find it odd that such a key metric is not tracked, and having more users should mean that it's an even more reliable metric to gauge features and releases.
- dzonga 9y agoEvery-time, I read a 10-K or S-1 I imagine if humans evaluated their lives as companies do. Humanity will be better off. Every potential and risk to a good degree honestly evaluated.
- throwaway93192 9y agoI'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago. For all employees that are considering joining a startup as rank-and-file engineers and putting in years of effort, remember that your compensation will be paltry compared to founders and top execs. When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them. Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them.
- matchagaucho 9y agoIf there's ever an Equifax scale breach at Dropbox, accountability will fall on the SVP of Eng.
- latch 9y agoSo no consequences?
- arbie 9y agoOther than a generous severance package?
- throwaway93192 9y agoYes, he'd be fired. Perhaps have to testify in front of Congress, even. Accountability is worth $8M a year?
- adventured 9y agoThe average NBA player salary is $6 million per year. In the next few years all of the NBA players combined (~420 players) are set to make more in salary than all the S&P 500 CEOs earn in salary combined. Should top executives at $10 billion companies (7x the average value of an NBA team) receive compensation on par with professional athletes? How does that not make sense? The US will spend $10 billion per year compensating several thousand athletes. How much should be spent compensating the people directly responsible for operating businesses that represent trillions of dollars in GDP and tens of millions of employees? Mediocre middle relief baseball pitchers should make $8 million per year, but execs running billion dollar companies shouldn't? You can argue that baseball players are overpaid, but that's an absurd premise. It's directly representative of the value in the system - tens of trillions in wealth in the stock market, and vast profit generation - and the price of acquiring talent.
- kccqzy 9y agoCongrats to everyone at Dropbox! It has come far: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- wglb 9y agoI was hoping someone would find that. It is interesting how many negative and middlebrow comments were on that submission. As there are this one as well.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y agoHN is generally very bitter. People here are quick to find faults.
- chj 9y agoI used to love Dropbox, but nowadays I have little use of it. Sometimes it just stops syncing and reinstallation won't fix the problem. And forcing API upgrade caused a lot of headache for me as a developer.
- rossgarlick 9y agoInteresting that there was no mention of IPFS / Filecoin in the Risk Factors, or any other risk of decentralized storage possibilites.
- TroubleTicket 9y agoReality check: Most enterprises aren’t adopting Dropbox… and for good reasons https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reality-check-most-enterprises-arent-adopting-dropbox-greg-knieriemen/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reality-check-most-enterprise...