3 ms·

Can someone please explain the economics behind this deal? Congrats to those involved...but at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense (to an outs

Can someone please explain the economics behind this deal? Congrats to those involved...but at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense (to an outsider at least).

minimaxir 14y ago
"But at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense" could describe every startup M&A deal made in the past year.
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
I'm a Dropbox member. I pay $100 a year for the privilege. I use it because it integrates well with my desktop OS and several apps I use on my mobile devices. I'm still on the waiting list for Mailbox, but I'll happily fork over another $100 a year to use it. A portion of Dropbox's customers have grown accustomed to paying for the service. I believe those are Mailbox's future customers. Mailbox should be a premium add-on to Dropbox. Even if the Mailbox add-on is priced at $50 a year, if only 1 million of Dropbox's customers subscribe and they stay with the plan for two years, Dropbox will have recouped its investment. I believe that providing features like this add to the Dropbox brand. It's about adding infrastructure that the OSes are leaving at the wayside. In the same vein, I would like Dropbox to add RSS & and photo/video/music sharing backends that client apps could tie into.
ctbeiser 14y ago
Dropbox's goal seems to be killing the local filesystem on iOS. Email, being a big part of using an iPhone and the associated file-transfering, is their one big problem; you can't attach things to emails from dropbox, or save them to it from the default app. Here, they get a high-quality email app for their users, and it gives them the opportunity to do things like send attachments as links to dropbox files (great for lock-in), and give users a positive brand experience, to prevent the commoditization of the space.

3 ms·

Can someone please explain the economics behind this deal? Congrats to those involved...but at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense (to an outs

by CoachRufus87 14y ago

Can someone please explain the economics behind this deal? Congrats to those involved...but at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense (to an outsider at least).

minimaxir 14y ago
"But at the end of the day, this just doesn't make much sense" could describe every startup M&A deal made in the past year.
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
I'm a Dropbox member. I pay $100 a year for the privilege. I use it because it integrates well with my desktop OS and several apps I use on my mobile devices. I'm still on the waiting list for Mailbox, but I'll happily fork over another $100 a year to use it. A portion of Dropbox's customers have grown accustomed to paying for the service. I believe those are Mailbox's future customers. Mailbox should be a premium add-on to Dropbox. Even if the Mailbox add-on is priced at $50 a year, if only 1 million of Dropbox's customers subscribe and they stay with the plan for two years, Dropbox will have recouped its investment. I believe that providing features like this add to the Dropbox brand. It's about adding infrastructure that the OSes are leaving at the wayside. In the same vein, I would like Dropbox to add RSS & and photo/video/music sharing backends that client apps could tie into.
ctbeiser 14y ago
Dropbox's goal seems to be killing the local filesystem on iOS. Email, being a big part of using an iPhone and the associated file-transfering, is their one big problem; you can't attach things to emails from dropbox, or save them to it from the default app. Here, they get a high-quality email app for their users, and it gives them the opportunity to do things like send attachments as links to dropbox files (great for lock-in), and give users a positive brand experience, to prevent the commoditization of the space.