Dropbox, a company that turned down an offer from Steve Jobs in 2009, is finally going public
The place where you may or may not store and share your photos, PDFs, and other documents is going public.
Dropbox, a cloud storage company based in Silicon Valley's heart San Francisco, is listing on the Nasdaq under the stock ticker $DBX, according to its S-1 document unveiled by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. Dropbox was most recently valued at $10 billion and is now seeking to raise $500 million.
"Our modern economy runs on knowledge. Today, knowledge lives in the cloud as digital content, and Dropbox is a global collaboration platform where more and more of this content is created, accessed, and shared with the world. We serve more than 500 million registered users across 180 countries," the S-1 document states.
Dropbox's move to go public isn't all that surprising, but it is an important step for the company and the larger tech industry. Dropbox filed documents with the SEC confidentially in January and had plans to go public the first half of 2018, Bloomberg reported. But Dropbox's move is impressive in part because CEO Drew Houston once took a risk by turning down an offer from the one and only Steve Jobs. Now, Dropbox is the first big tech IPO of the year.
The announcement comes as new tech stock has had somewhat of a rocky start on the public market. Blue Apron was a big disappointment, partially because of Amazon's dominance in the delivery industry. Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is facing ongoing competition from Facebook and user backlash. Earlier this week, celebrity Kylie Jenner, one of the app's most popular users, admitted she wasn't using Snapchat anymore.
Of course, Dropbox is quite a different business. The company offers free and paid cloud storage to individuals and businesses. The company shared it has 500 million registered users, with 100 million users having signed up since the beginning of 2017. More than 11 million of these users pay for the services.
Dropbox's revenue was $1.11 billion in 2017, a 31 percent increase from the year prior. It lost $111.7 million in 2017, about $100 million less than in 2016. Those are both good signs.
Dropbox competitor Box listed on the public markets back in 2015. It's currently valued at $3.17 billion.
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
