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I 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

I 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 ago
  I know that Facebook moved to Dropbox from Box for internal use.
  - slackoverflower 9y ago
    Let 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 ago
  Maybe 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%.

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 ago
I know that Facebook moved to Dropbox from Box for internal use.
- slackoverflower 9y ago
  Let 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 ago
Maybe 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%.