By Bart Brooks, Nasdaq
Dropbox makes its public debut on the Nasdaq Stock Market in one of this year's most highly-anticipated IPOs. A pioneer in file-sharing software, Dropbox is an innovative and fast-growing company with half a billion registered users -- 100 million of whom joined just in the past year.
In a nutshell, Dropbox lets you create a folder on your computer where you can store your files, which are then hosted in the cloud. You can then access those files from anywhere in the world, on any computer or smartphone. You can also use Dropbox to share large files quickly with other people, which is a feature commonly used by consumers and businesses everywhere.
It's hard to believe because the company still feels new and fresh, but Dropbox was born over 10 years ago, when co-founder and CEO Drew Houston was taking a bus from Boston to New York City, and realized he had forgotten his thumb drive. He told Business Insider , "I was so frustrated-really with myself, because this kept happening. And I'm like, my God, I never want to have this problem again. And I opened up the editor and started writing some code. I had no idea what it would become."
Shortly after, Houston pitched his idea to Paul Graham of Y Combinator, a venture capital company that provides seed money to startups (Y Combinator has also invested in companies like Airbnb, Reddit, and Coinbase, among many others). According to Forbes , Graham advised Houston to get a co-founder onboard before submitting his application.
Enter Arash Ferdowsi, a fellow student at MIT. From Forbes: "A friend referred [Houston] to Ferdowsi, the only son of Iranian refugees, who was studying computer science at MIT. They talked for two hours back in Boston and "got married on the second date," as Houston describes it. Ferdowsi dropped out of school with just six months to go [to work full-time on Dropbox]."
Dropbox officially launched in 2008 , and has since gone on to win countless accolades, including being named "Startup of the Year" in 2012 by TechCrunch and "Application of the Year" in 2010 .
Today, Dropbox has 500 million registered users across 180 countries, who collectively have made 4.5 billion connections to share content. These numbers include 8 million businesses. The company can also boast $1.1 billion in revenue with 11 million paying users . And just before its IPO, they had placed their expected pricing range at $18-20 , which means Dropbox, which is listed on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol DBX , could be valued at $7.9 to $8.8 billion.
On Nasdaq, Dropbox will be joining the likes of other groundbreaking companies and cultural powerhouses like Apple ( AAPL ), Amazon ( AMZN ), Netflix ( NFLX ), Tesla ( TSLA ), and Starbucks ( SBUX ).
"We are excited to welcome Dropbox to the Nasdaq family of innovative companies. They are helping to unleash the world's creative energy and redefining the way work gets done," said Jeff Thomas, head of Western US Listings at Nasdaq.
Once Dropbox goes public, what's next? According to CNBC , "Proceeds from the IPO will be used to fund an expansion plan of upgrading more users to subscriptions and expanding integration with third-party software." Bloomberg also noted that "Dropbox has shifted to focus on selling its cloud service to larger businesses, which has helped boost revenue."
From a founder forgetting a thumb drive on a Chinatown bus to an IPO at the Nasdaq Marketsite in Times Square in New York City, Dropbox ( DBX ) has come a long way. In 2009, when Houston was asked if he thought Dropbox would get as big as it did, he said , "Yes and no. Yes, because it was clear that the world needed an elegant solution to these problems ... [and no], because we've been repeatedly surprised at how well Dropbox has resonated with our users, from the phenomenal response from Digg to the rate of growth and positive feedback that continues today."
Image by Getty images
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
