Venture capital firms drop cash on DropBox - 250 million dollars

Cloud storage service Dropbox has become the most valuable startups in Silicon Valley. During attract funding of 250 million dollars the whole company was valued at $ 10 billion initially a free service based on private clients MIT graduate Drew Hauztonom now set his sights on the corporate segment, which in the future can bring big money.

In the new phase of attracting funding has become a major investor management company BlackRock. In addition, increased their investments in Dropbox and the current owners of shares in the company - Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and Accel Partners, which supported data store money at the end of 2011. Then the service was valued at $ 4 billion In addition, Dropbox talks about bringing another 100-150 million dollars of funds Fidelity T. Rowe Price, the resource Re / code.

As a result, Dropbox has become the most expensive at the moment a startup in Silicon Valley on the basis of raising funds not through the public markets. This is a very good result for the company, which is a graduate of MIT (MIT) Drew Hauztonom invented, struggling with its own distraction - he kept forgetting to bring a flash drive with the right information. For comparison, Twitter about a year ago was estimated at $ 9 billion, and its revenue in January-September 2013 amounted to 422 million dollars in November microblogging service went to the stock exchange and now its market capitalization of $ 35 billion

Starting to raise funds in November last year, the company estimated the Dropbox itself only in the $ 8 billion, but has risen in the course of negotiations. This indicates that investors are out to get a "piece» Dropbox before its release to the stock exchange, which, according to many analysts, could be held later this year. Business Dropbox until such assessment is not justified. According to the WSJ, in 2012, revenues were $ 116 million, and by the end of last year it expected to double this figure.

Investors, however, believe that last year's decision Dropbox focus on private customers in the future will allow it to thrive. Dropbox has achieved popularity as a repository of photos, documents and other information that provides ordinary users access from any device and synchronizes between all changes to the data. This idea is currently estimated at about 200 million users worldwide, most of whom prefer to use free accounts (2-5 GB) and not pay $ 10 a month for premium access (100 GB).

But last year, Dropbox seriously finalized its service, by doing so, it became convenient not only for personal but also for the needs of workers - with ample opportunities for companies to administer the work of employees with corporate information, access to which is protected. Corporate Account costing at least $ 75 a month (for a group of five members) or $ 175 per person per year. Dropbox claims that she had 4 million corporate clients. However, most of them - small or medium sized business.

In order to attract to their services of major international companies, Dropbox last year hired sales professionals and lured known representatives of the Internet industry. Its staff has grown from 200 to 500 employees, among whom were the head of mobile partnerships Facebook Muassinak Henry and Kevin Egan, lining up the direction of sales Salesforce. Attracting new funds will allow Dropbox continue hiring staff and build relationships with large corporate clients.