Exciting facts about Dropbox

Exciting facts about Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud-based file hosting service that was founded back in 2007 the concept was created by Drew Houston when he was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology commonly referred to as MIT shortly after he developed the concept he received funding from an American seed accelerator called Y Combinator which was also an early investor in Airbnb Reddit doordash and many others the company's official launch came in 2008 at the technology conference called TechCrunch Disrupt one of the people who saw an early demo video was a rush Ferdowsi another student at MIT and he partnered up with Houston to get the company off the ground today Houston is the CEO and Ferdowsi is the chief tech officer. Dropbox has been steadily growing since it was founded going from 1 million to 100 million users in just three years from 2009 to 2012 today it is one of the most successful startups in the world as it continues to expand and increase revenue. Dropbox because of their ability to stand out among the thousands of startups as a true success story in the tech world that only promises to increase value so now it's time to take a look at this influential company.

1. The founder originally created Dropbox just for personal use 

The founder originally created Dropbox just for his personal use the entire concept of Dropbox is facing the fact that drew Houston was a forgetful person at least when it came to remembering to grab his USB flash drive when he enrolled at MIT after he failed to find existing document storage that was bug-free and user friendly he opted to create one for himself initially he had no intentions of starting a business and was just looking for a personal solution to his problem but when he realized how valuable the concept would be for so many people he began to think bigger.

2. It has over 550 million users

It has over 550 million users by 2009 two years after it was founded Dropbox reached 1 million users they reached the 50 million mark by May 2012 and doubled to 100 million by November the same year they added 75 million additional users in 2013 and had reached 300 million by May 2014 by 2016 the company celebrated having half a billion users Dropbox now has over 550 million users and it's still growing daily.

3. Steve Jobs offered to buy Dropbox but the founders delined

Steve Jobs offered to buy Dropbox but the founders decline back in the first few years when Dropbox was getting off the ground the co-founders drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi were often asked to go to Apple headquarters to personally meet with Steve Jobs Jobs told them they had built a great product and expressed his interest in purchasing the company however the two men were interested in developing the company themselves and not looking for a quick payday by selling jobs told him in his own way that if they didn't sell he would run them out of business but they didn't back down and are so happy now that they didn't.

4. It becomes a deca corn in 2014

It became a deca corn in 2014 in the realm of tech startups it used to be so rare for these types of companies to reach a billion-dollar valuation that those that did were referred to as unicorns however in the last few years several tech companies have taken off and reached valuations that were previously unheard of which led to a new term being developed the deca corn deca corns are tech startups that reach a 10 billion dollar valuation these deca corns include 

Airbnb, Pinterest, Uber, Snapchat, and many others including Dropbox as of 2014.

5. Dropbox is valued at around $11 billion

Speaking of deca corns Dropbox is valued at around 11 billion dollars as of their 2014 funding round Dropbox has been able to boast a valuation of ten billion dollars a much sought-after goal in the world of tech startups when they were preparing for their initial public offering in 2018 they scaled the valuation back a bit to eight billion dollars based on what they thought their shares would sell for after the IPO they reached a peak valuation of twelve billion dollars but after the initial demand of the newly offered stock died down the market capitalization leveled out right around eleven billion dollars which is what its valuation sits at today.

6. Dropbox has never turned an annual profit 

Dropbox has never turned an annual profit even though Dropbox was founded over ten years ago and is generally considered a very successful company they have yet to have a year where they turn a profit or even breakeven in 2016 they lost over 200 million dollars and in 2017 they posed a loss of 112 million Dropbox is expected to lose 50 million dollars in 2018 but there's a chance that 2019 will be the first year they post a profit.

7. Over 68 million passwords were stolen in 2012

Over 68 million passwords were stolen in 2012 in 2012 Dropbox was hacked but the true scope of the attack didn't come to light until 2016 Dropbox executives were aware of the hacking but did not realize what exactly had been compromised until a tech site called motherboard claimed to have obtained four files which contained the email addresses and passwords of over sixty-eight point five million Dropbox users Dropbox then quickly implemented a wide-scale password reset and claimed there was no indication that any account was accessed improperly.

8. Leaked documents showed Dropbox was considered for NSA surveillance in 2013

Leaked documents showed Dropbox was considered for NSA surveillance in 2013 some top-secret documents were leaked that contained details of the prism surveillance program used by the National Security Agency of the United States the documents showed that the data was being taken directly from the server's of several tech companies including Google, Microsoft, Apple, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype, and the document also included other companies that were being considered for the use in surveillance and Dropbox was one of them although several of these companies including Dropbox said they had no knowledge of the program and did not allow access people became skeptical about the security and privacy of the documents they shared online and this caused a loss and confidence in Dropbox as well.

9. Only 2.1% of its customers have paid subscriptions  

Only 2.1% of their customers have paid subscriptions Dropbox has hundreds of millions of users but only a small percentage of these are paying customers that helped sustain the business Dropbox of course operates on a freemium model where they offer basic services for free and then more advanced tools and increased capacity for paid subscribers as of the end of 2017 only 2.1% of all of their users were paying customers up from 1.4% in 2016 this equals out to about 11 million paid subscribers.

10. Dropbox CEO and founder Drew Houston has a $3 billion of net worth

Dropbox CEO and founder Drew Houston has a three billion dollar net worth since founding Dropbox 35-year-old CEO drew Houston has managed to accumulate a very impressive wealth of three billion dollars this makes him the 548 the richest person in the US and Forbes named him as the 18th richest entrepreneur under 40 in the United States however he's only the 1999 richest billionaire in the world and is not yet in the ranks of the top tier tech founders which include Jeff Bezos with a net worth of 112 billion Bill Gates with the net worth of 90 billion and Mark Zuckerberg with a net worth of 71 billion.

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