I would agree–I’m surprised EquityZen is even allowed to do what it does.
Bingo!!! And of course, where is the HQ??? The Fab 7x7!!! OMG, house prices are going up again!!! Cha-ching!!!
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Ultimately, the company admits in the document, “a majority of our registered users may never convert to a paid subscription to our platform.”
Converting existing users to the paid tier is at the top of the company’s list, but the filing admits that their revenue growth rate has declined and could keep slowing. The filing noted the company ended 2017 with a $1 billion deficit, though its rate of net losses had decreased from nearly $326 million in 2015 to almost $112 million in 2017. As the filing summarizes: “We have a history of net losses, we anticipate increasing expenses in the future, and we may not be able to achieve or maintain profitability.”
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How does a “feature” earn a billion dollars in revenue? Just asking…
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Google can build same feature and slap ads on it, and instant revenue 
We also have cloud as a platform, for the enterprise.
Edit: we already have google drive under google suite umbrella.
Dropbox has cool tech. But not enough to base a whole company on it, much less a high profile one.
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I always thought the same. In fact never ever created a Dropbox account.
However, Google had free storage products on the cloud before Dropbox came along. Since they change the names so often, can’t recall what it was called then. And Dropbox still became successful. Steve Jobs tried buying them and told them the same thing - feature not a company. Then Apple launched iCloud but Dropbox still didn’t die.
So even though you and I and a lot of other people think Dropbox shouldn’t succeed, they have proven us wrong so far. Kind of like that famous quote about bumble bee!
In short, don’t be too quick in writing them off.
I think all the products you mentioned is the reason they wont easily become profitable at all. Too many alternatives.
Box has The right approach in focusing on enterprise clients. Dropbox instead focus on consumers. File syncing is an OS feature.
Isn’t Box revenue half of Dropbox in 2017?
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Really? Didn’t pay attention. Does Box turn a profit?
EPS is still negative but stock has recovered to post IPO heights
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Enterprise storage is also a side product, i feel. Amazon & Google have storage solutions with their cloud experience. Box doesn’t look like it.
There is more to enterprises storage than Google Drive. Some companies like financial and medical companies have regulations telling them how to treat their data. I heard an interview with the Box guy how their company spends lots of time navigating those rules. It’s non trivial.
Google Cloud is HIPAA compliant. I am not talking about drive.
https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/hipaa/
It is important to note that there is no certification recognized by the US HHS for HIPAA compliance and that complying with HIPAA is a shared responsibility between the customer and Google. Specifically, HIPAA demands compliance with the Security Rule, the Privacy Rule, and the Breach Notification Rule. Google Cloud Platform supports HIPAA compliance (within the scope of a Business Associate Agreement) but ultimately customers are responsible for evaluating their own HIPAA compliance.
Don’t be evil google! Are you guys trying to kill Box?
Actually Dropbox is trying to pivot to team collaboration software. But isn’t that competing with Office 365?
Team collaboration is a complex product, and there’s no single way to do it.
Storage - less so. it all boils down to API, access control, audit logs, and so on. Things google excels for its own advertising business. Also things like reliability - we have an army of SREs. Google cloud is taking off recently, so it’s eventual success is yet to be seen.
Collaboration - plenty of players. Asana, Atlassian. There was couple more. Google Drive offers docs editing - i am using it internally at google, and externally with wife sometimes. It works for what we need, but it may not work for other corporations. You need issue trackers, triaging tools, etc additionally. It’s not simple.
I’d buy $TEAM rather than Dropbox. More mature product.