It wasn’t every day that Steve Jobs wanted to buy your company. And it certainly wasn’t every day that someone turned down Steve Jobs. However, Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox, is one of the few who can say that he did.
Jobs offered to buy Dropbox back in 2009, but Houston chose to keep it. Now on the brink of having one of the largest tech IPOs in recent years, Dropbox has raised over $600 million from private investors.
According to CNN Tech, Houston is looking to raise $648 million at a valuation of about $7.4 billion. However considering that the pricing is about a 30 percent drop from the $10 billion valuation Dropbox earned in early 2014, investors are worried this could point to Dropbox’s struggle to stay afloat amidst bigger fish in the sea such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Eric Schiffer, chairman and chief executive of the Patriarch Organization, a private equity firm, told Reuters, ““The IPO is a slap in the face to investors of the 2014 round” of Dropbox. Dropbox, co-founded in 2007 by Andrew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, has 500 million users across 180 countries. But most use the free service – about 11 million are paying customers.”
Dropbox’s IPO price is between $16 and $18 per share.
Acording to Bloomberg, “The company’s revenue increased more 30 percent last year to $1.1 billion from $845 million in 2016. In the same period, the company’s net losses shrank to $112 million from $210 million.”
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Deutsche Bank AG and Allen & Co. are leading the offering. The largest shareholder, Houston retains 24 percent of Dropbox after selling 2.3 million shares in the offering.