Dropbox Looks To Raise Another $250 Million, Suggests Its Valuation is Over $8 Billion
Drew Houston, a former student at MIT, would often forget to pack his USB flash drive on the way to class. He solved his problem by creating Dropbox for his own personal use, but it didn't take him long to figure out that others could benefit as well. That was around six years, and since then, Dropbox has become one of the most popular cloud-based services around, and apparently a pretty valuable one, too. Just how valuable is it?
Perhaps as much as $8 billion. Apologies if that made you choke on your early morning donut, but rest assured, that's not a typo. Dropbox to date has secured $257 million in funding, and now the service is seeking an additional $250 million investment within the next few weeks, Bloomberg reports. The amount of equity the company is willing to give up in exchange for $250 million would value the firm at $8 billion.
The onus falls on Dropbox to convince investors it's worth such a high sum, but how do you make that pitch if you're representing the company?
"What we can say is that with over 200 million users and 4 million businesses, Dropbox has continued and strong momentum," Dropbox spokeswoman Ana Andreescu told Bloomberg.
Houston will point out that Dropbox hasn't spent all of the money it raised during its last funding round, so while the $8 billion might be a bit ambitious, it'd be hard to claim the company is reckless by any means. Just the opposite, Dropbox has been adept at changing with the times, going from a consumer oriented company to putting more focus on businesses as of late.
Still, $8 billion is a massive valuation, and it doesn't help that there exists so much competition at this stage. Services like SugarSync, Box, SkyDrive, and Google Drive, plus full featured backup services like Mozy and Carbonite, to name a few, are all viable alternatives.
Perhaps as much as $8 billion. Apologies if that made you choke on your early morning donut, but rest assured, that's not a typo. Dropbox to date has secured $257 million in funding, and now the service is seeking an additional $250 million investment within the next few weeks, Bloomberg reports. The amount of equity the company is willing to give up in exchange for $250 million would value the firm at $8 billion.
The onus falls on Dropbox to convince investors it's worth such a high sum, but how do you make that pitch if you're representing the company?
"What we can say is that with over 200 million users and 4 million businesses, Dropbox has continued and strong momentum," Dropbox spokeswoman Ana Andreescu told Bloomberg.
Houston will point out that Dropbox hasn't spent all of the money it raised during its last funding round, so while the $8 billion might be a bit ambitious, it'd be hard to claim the company is reckless by any means. Just the opposite, Dropbox has been adept at changing with the times, going from a consumer oriented company to putting more focus on businesses as of late.
Still, $8 billion is a massive valuation, and it doesn't help that there exists so much competition at this stage. Services like SugarSync, Box, SkyDrive, and Google Drive, plus full featured backup services like Mozy and Carbonite, to name a few, are all viable alternatives.
