“omm – never go negative, Chad, never go negative… ah screw it…”
Intellectual laziness is dangerous. When you’re talking about your information (which along with insight, intelligence – is frankly what powers productivity) – intellectual laziness can be downright dangerous.
I’m appalled that the market is even contemplating a BOX IPO (or putting their data on a money-pit). If you’re too lazy to follow this link, let me quote TechCrunch (who is, IMO, right here):
“Box has long been rumored to have quickly growing revenues and large losses, which has proven to be the case. For the full-year period that ended January 2014, Box’s revenues grew to $124 million, up from $58.8 million the year prior.
However, the company’s net loss also expanded in the period, with Box posting losses of $168 million for the full-year period that ended January 2014, more than its total top line for the period. In the period prior, Box lost a more modest $112 million.
What is driving Box’s yawning losses? Sales and marketing. The company’s line item for those expenses expanded from $99.2 million for the year ending January 2013, to $171 million for the year ending January 31, 2014. That was the lion’s share of Box’s $100 million increasing in operating costs during the period.
Or, put more simply, Box spent more dollars on selling its products in the year than it brought in revenue during the period. This could indicate customer churn, or merely a tough market for cloud products.
Why IPO now? Box only has $108 million in cash and equivalents. That means it has under a year of burn at current losses. It needs the money. The company could go back, again to the private markets to pick up another tranch of, say, $100 million, but by going public, presuming market interest, Box can get enough cash for, say, two years in one go.”
Umm – you want to put your data WHERE? Now, everyone points to “startups need to spend to grow fast, then pivot to a money-making model”. I get that. The question is HOW. Just like with the AFA market (also filled with huge burn rate examples), the question is “if you’re not profitable now, and your market is becoming MORE competitive, how will you become profitable” (and “I’ll make it up in volume” is not a good answer).
People – you have BETTER CHOICES.
Put EMC Syncplicity through it’s paces. It’s a free download and start – just like Dropbox and Box. It has real choices for on-prem and off-prem cloud storage. If you’re not a consume, but an enterprise, it has deeper integration with enterprise authentication and security. As a consumer (and an enterprise) user, it has a BETTER user experience (the iPad client is absolutely awesome and wait until you see the new iPhone client).
EMCers reading this, and EMC partners – if you’re not giving accounts to our customers, something is wrong with you :-)
I’m always skeptical of Gartner Magic Quadrants (they oversimplify, and depend on subjective analysis) – but, for what it’s worth, here’s what Gartner thinks…(click for full doc)
Seriously… Box? Sign up with www.syncplicity.com!
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