{"id":20702,"date":"2018-02-26T15:56:46","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T20:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=20702"},"modified":"2018-03-01T13:51:45","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T18:51:45","slug":"the-dropbox-comp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/26\/the-dropbox-comp\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dropbox Comp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Thompson<\/a> (Hacker News):<\/p>\n

\n

Dropbox’s customer base, thanks to all those consumers, is over 500 million users (Dropbox announced 500 million signups last March<\/a>, but explained in its S-1 that it had culled what were apparently ~100 million inactive accounts over the last year), while Box, as of last quarter<\/a>, had only 57 million registered accounts. On the other hand, 17% of Box’s users had paid accounts; only 2% of Dropbox’s did. This contrast in efficiency gets at the biggest difference between the two companies: to whom they sell, and how they go about doing so.<\/p>\n

Box sells to big companies using a traditional sales force; free accounts exist primarily to enable temporary collaboration with paid accounts, as well as trials. There is a self-serve option, but that’s not the point: Box notes in its financial filings that “Our marketing strategy also depends in part on persuading users who use the free version of our service to convince decision-makers to purchase and deploy our service within their organization”. In other words, when it comes to Box’s ideal customer, the CIO decides for everyone all at once.<\/p>\n

For Dropbox, on the other hand, self-serve is the most important channel by far. The company brags that “We generate over 90% of our revenue from self-serve channels — users who purchase a subscription through our app or website.” Dropbox has a sales team, but as it notes in its S-1, the team “focuses on converting and consolidating these separate pockets of usage into a centralized deployment. Nearly all of our largest outbound deals originated as smaller self-serve deployments.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Tom Krazit<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

After making the decision to roll its own infrastructure and reduce its dependence on Amazon Web Services, Dropbox reduced its operating costs by $74.6 million over the next two years, the company said in its S-1 statement Friday<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously: Dropbox Files Confidentially for IPO<\/a>, Dropbox’s Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2018-03-01): Lisa Stromer<\/a> (via Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

And today, we’re announcing a new partnership with Google Cloud that will bring Dropbox and G Suite users one step closer to a world where our work comes together.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Thompson (Hacker News): Dropbox’s customer base, thanks to all those consumers, is over 500 million users (Dropbox announced 500 million signups last March, but explained in its S-1 that it had culled what were apparently ~100 million inactive accounts over the last year), while Box, as of last quarter, had only 57 million registered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[672,829,101,47,51],"class_list":["post-20702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-amazon-web-services","tag-box","tag-business","tag-dropbox","tag-google"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20754,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20702\/revisions\/20754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}