6 ms·

Dropbox really needs to accelerate its enterprise sales to justify this valuation long term. Given the tight integration that Box has with so many enterprise so

by mlyang 13y ago

Dropbox really needs to accelerate its enterprise sales to justify this valuation long term. Given the tight integration that Box has with so many enterprise software solutions and Box's focus on enterprise, it'll be interesting to see how these two firms fair against each other on the public markets eventually (inevitable at this point given their valuations). Maybe just being a household name will do it for Dropbox even if Box can close more/better enterprise deals.

sliverstorm 13y ago
Maybe just being a household name will do it for Dropbox even if Box can close more/better enterprise deals. Maybe, but "Box" evokes "Dropbox". I saw some ads for Free 50GB of storage on Box! and the very first thing I thought was, Is that slang for Dropbox? So, with the way Box is immediately reminiscent of Dropbox, that may reduce Box's disadvantage in terms of being a household name. Even though it's a new company, it feels familiar.
- boomzilla 13y ago
  You may be in for a surprise: Box was founded a few years before Dropbox (2005 I think) and is still bigger, at least in terms of number of employees. I actually had a Box account before Dropbox's. Box also seems to be more popular with enterprise.
- guelo 13y ago
  Which makes me wonder why Box never sued to protect their trademark. It's probably too late for them now.
  - pbhjpbhj 13y ago
    This appears to be their UK trademark record, http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU005097555 http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU005097555. [The USPTO trademark search is too blunt a tool for me to be bothered hunting that registration down at the moment.] This http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00002215537 http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00002215537 is a registration of the trademark "box" for the relevant computer and communication classes (inter alia 9, 38, 42) which was filed about 7 years before Box UK filed their application. TBH I can't see how the later one was granted RTM status except that this one appears to be an image mark. "Box" is widely used as a trademark and other companies are using it in the same class. Box presumably can't make the case for infringement of their mark without also making the case that they're infringing someone else's - Boks™ belonging to a Norwegian company for example. It's pretty generic as a term for storage/term in computing. That aside Dropbox would only be problematic if there was genuine confusion. For example Box UK had a series of offerings with trademarks using "box" as a suffix. If Dropbox were considered infringing, for example, Xbox would also be infringing as they operate within the same class - Box presumably haven't challenged the use of Xbox [which probably predates their use anyway].
- malandrew 13y ago
  I'm wondering if Dropbox could start using a slogan like "Add it to the box" or "Add it to your box" Box is sufficiently generic that further commoditizing the word box as vernacular with respect to online storage would get people to use the word box (all lowercase) associated with Dropbox first.
  - perbu 13y ago
    _Drop_ it into the box?
- ThomPete 13y ago
  Given the focus on enterprise the name differences are not that important. Sales are not done through clever advertising but via hardcore sales.
lifeisstillgood 13y ago
>> Dropbox really needs to accelerate its enterprise sales to justify this valuation long term. My first reaction to this was "How can anything justify this valuation long-term ? It's just cloud storage FFS" Then I found they have revenue of 200m 2013 (through growth rate is slowing). Which actually surprised me - and then I realised that I am getting Dropbox links for people who would previously have mailed me a file. It's slowly dawning on me that "cloud storage" is likely to be something as ubiquitous as smartphones - everyone will have a small slice. I still suspect 10bn is waaaay over the top, but they are the clear leader in what I revisionist style realise is going to be a big (if frustrating) industry. Which is weird as I started at Demon Internet and we "gave away" 10MB of web space and stopped in the early naughties as no-one used it or cared :-)
- nolok 13y ago
  > we "gave away" 10MB of web space and stopped in the early naughties as no-one used it or cared :-) It's not about the storage, it's about the client (be it desktop or web).
- jychang 13y ago
  10mB of space? Wow, that's insane for the time. I remember when my Yahoo mail inbox was 4mB.
  - lifeisstillgood 13y ago
    yeah, I think that was why it was a big surprise to the organisation to learn most people did not care (it was obvious from usage rates but organisations don't learn what they don't measure-promote)
awakeasleep 13y ago
As a customer of Dropbox for Business, I can confidently say they have a long, difficult road ahead of them here. The way they've defined their concepts seems hostile to the very things businesses need in a product. Even being a company that spends 50k a year gets you next to nothing wrt feature requests or support outside of what would be given to a free user, aside from speed of reply. If you want any level of control over data and sharing, you're sent over to "sookasa", a shambles of a business, or you can look at non-recommended solutions like boxcryptor (an incredible product that unfortunately carries it's own administrative overhead). If anyone from Dropbox is reading this, the things that make my life the hardest are: 1) removing shared folders from a user's account. (Impossible unless your IT department controls every shared folder in your organization. Difficult & time consuming if they do) 2) Deleting a corporate account from all devices, removing folders. (Impossible) 3) Offering any sort of encryption (need to use 3rd party, unreliable) 4) Managing/reverting changes. Terribly ugly, difficult, and time consuming process. It's bafflingly inefficient, and in an organization of any size clueless or new hires are going to create these problems on a weekly basis. 5) Management and reporting APIs don't exist.
- marknutter 13y ago
  I work on a product that solves most of these issues you mentioned. Shoot me an email at marknutter at gmail dot com if you are interested in hearing more.
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    box.com?
- wwwong 13y ago
  Keep your eye out for upcoming updates to Dropbox for Business. Looks like upcoming features will cover most of your points: https://www.dropbox.com/business/two-dropboxes https://www.dropbox.com/business/two-dropboxes
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
cabbeer 13y ago
I think bittorent sync might be a serious threat in this space.
- XorNot 13y ago
  BitTorrent Sync on mobile seems pretty amazing actually, even just for point-to-pointing data between devices. I wouldn't want to use it for all my files, but I'm setting it up for syncing photos and content to my PCs (i.e. things which are simple and don't get multiple offline edits and the like).
draz 13y ago
Unless they (knowingly or unknowingly) are going to follow Apple's iPhone path where "private", home users started pushing their employers IT departments to switch to iPhone from BB. At the beginning, iPhone was not considered "secure" for financial and medical applications, but as iPhone market share grew, Apple started investing in "enterprise" features (Outlook integration, etc) that it became feasible to do the swtich. Every few months we get an email from our employers telling us that we cannot install Dropbox on our office computers. Eventually, some higher-up who's using Dropbox at home will make enough noise that s/he cannot sync his work docs from home that it will become "ok" to do it (and the org will switch to it)
27182818284 13y ago
I'm not convinced they are strictly going to keep the file syncing business any more than Amazon has kept to only selling books. Drew has bigger things in mind besides just making the existing product more enterprise-friendly. He used to write poker bots during college after all, and wasn't Dropbox business number 2?

by mlyang 13y ago

sliverstorm 13y ago

Maybe just being a household name will do it for Dropbox even if Box can close more/better enterprise deals. Maybe, but "Box" evokes "Dropbox". I saw some ads for Free 50GB of storage on Box! and the very first thing I thought was, Is that slang for Dropbox? So, with the way Box is immediately reminiscent of Dropbox, that may reduce Box's disadvantage in terms of being a household name. Even though it's a new company, it feels familiar.

boomzilla 13y ago
You may be in for a surprise: Box was founded a few years before Dropbox (2005 I think) and is still bigger, at least in terms of number of employees. I actually had a Box account before Dropbox's. Box also seems to be more popular with enterprise.
guelo 13y ago
Which makes me wonder why Box never sued to protect their trademark. It's probably too late for them now.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  This appears to be their UK trademark record, http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU005097555 http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/4/EU005097555. [The USPTO trademark search is too blunt a tool for me to be bothered hunting that registration down at the moment.] This http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00002215537 http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00002215537 is a registration of the trademark "box" for the relevant computer and communication classes (inter alia 9, 38, 42) which was filed about 7 years before Box UK filed their application. TBH I can't see how the later one was granted RTM status except that this one appears to be an image mark. "Box" is widely used as a trademark and other companies are using it in the same class. Box presumably can't make the case for infringement of their mark without also making the case that they're infringing someone else's - Boks™ belonging to a Norwegian company for example. It's pretty generic as a term for storage/term in computing. That aside Dropbox would only be problematic if there was genuine confusion. For example Box UK had a series of offerings with trademarks using "box" as a suffix. If Dropbox were considered infringing, for example, Xbox would also be infringing as they operate within the same class - Box presumably haven't challenged the use of Xbox [which probably predates their use anyway].
malandrew 13y ago
I'm wondering if Dropbox could start using a slogan like "Add it to the box" or "Add it to your box" Box is sufficiently generic that further commoditizing the word box as vernacular with respect to online storage would get people to use the word box (all lowercase) associated with Dropbox first.
- perbu 13y ago
  _Drop_ it into the box?
ThomPete 13y ago
Given the focus on enterprise the name differences are not that important. Sales are not done through clever advertising but via hardcore sales.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

>> Dropbox really needs to accelerate its enterprise sales to justify this valuation long term. My first reaction to this was "How can anything justify this valuation long-term ? It's just cloud storage FFS" Then I found they have revenue of 200m 2013 (through growth rate is slowing). Which actually surprised me - and then I realised that I am getting Dropbox links for people who would previously have mailed me a file. It's slowly dawning on me that "cloud storage" is likely to be something as ubiquitous as smartphones - everyone will have a small slice. I still suspect 10bn is waaaay over the top, but they are the clear leader in what I revisionist style realise is going to be a big (if frustrating) industry. Which is weird as I started at Demon Internet and we "gave away" 10MB of web space and stopped in the early naughties as no-one used it or cared :-)

nolok 13y ago
> we "gave away" 10MB of web space and stopped in the early naughties as no-one used it or cared :-) It's not about the storage, it's about the client (be it desktop or web).
jychang 13y ago
10mB of space? Wow, that's insane for the time. I remember when my Yahoo mail inbox was 4mB.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  yeah, I think that was why it was a big surprise to the organisation to learn most people did not care (it was obvious from usage rates but organisations don't learn what they don't measure-promote)

awakeasleep 13y ago

As a customer of Dropbox for Business, I can confidently say they have a long, difficult road ahead of them here. The way they've defined their concepts seems hostile to the very things businesses need in a product. Even being a company that spends 50k a year gets you next to nothing wrt feature requests or support outside of what would be given to a free user, aside from speed of reply. If you want any level of control over data and sharing, you're sent over to "sookasa", a shambles of a business, or you can look at non-recommended solutions like boxcryptor (an incredible product that unfortunately carries it's own administrative overhead). If anyone from Dropbox is reading this, the things that make my life the hardest are: 1) removing shared folders from a user's account. (Impossible unless your IT department controls every shared folder in your organization. Difficult & time consuming if they do) 2) Deleting a corporate account from all devices, removing folders. (Impossible) 3) Offering any sort of encryption (need to use 3rd party, unreliable) 4) Managing/reverting changes. Terribly ugly, difficult, and time consuming process. It's bafflingly inefficient, and in an organization of any size clueless or new hires are going to create these problems on a weekly basis. 5) Management and reporting APIs don't exist.

marknutter 13y ago
I work on a product that solves most of these issues you mentioned. Shoot me an email at marknutter at gmail dot com if you are interested in hearing more.
- prostoalex 13y ago
  box.com?
wwwong 13y ago
Keep your eye out for upcoming updates to Dropbox for Business. Looks like upcoming features will cover most of your points: https://www.dropbox.com/business/two-dropboxes https://www.dropbox.com/business/two-dropboxes
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

cabbeer 13y ago

I think bittorent sync might be a serious threat in this space.

XorNot 13y ago
BitTorrent Sync on mobile seems pretty amazing actually, even just for point-to-pointing data between devices. I wouldn't want to use it for all my files, but I'm setting it up for syncing photos and content to my PCs (i.e. things which are simple and don't get multiple offline edits and the like).

draz 13y ago

Unless they (knowingly or unknowingly) are going to follow Apple's iPhone path where "private", home users started pushing their employers IT departments to switch to iPhone from BB. At the beginning, iPhone was not considered "secure" for financial and medical applications, but as iPhone market share grew, Apple started investing in "enterprise" features (Outlook integration, etc) that it became feasible to do the swtich. Every few months we get an email from our employers telling us that we cannot install Dropbox on our office computers. Eventually, some higher-up who's using Dropbox at home will make enough noise that s/he cannot sync his work docs from home that it will become "ok" to do it (and the org will switch to it)

27182818284 13y ago

I'm not convinced they are strictly going to keep the file syncing business any more than Amazon has kept to only selling books. Drew has bigger things in mind besides just making the existing product more enterprise-friendly. He used to write poker bots during college after all, and wasn't Dropbox business number 2?