Dropbox's New IPO and Partnerships
Dropbox has been making news for the past few days so let's do a recap of what is happening with this company! Going public and the many other partnerships that they have recently formed.
Many of you know who they are but don’t actually know how they came about. While attending MIT, Drew Houston conceived the Dropbox concept after repeatedly forgetting his USB flash drive. The existing services available at the time suffered many problems and were unreliable so he decided to come up with something that would work for all, since he was sure he wasn't the only one forgetting his USB drive. Founding Dropbox in 2007 with Arash Ferdowsi and securing seed funding from Y Combinator, they launched their service in September 2008 and since then they have never looked back with a steady growth since inception.
Dropbox made it’s debut on the Nasdaq when it sold its shares to the public for the first time last week. This has become one of the biggest technology initial public offerings since Snap’s IPO a year ago, which is impressive considering it is an MIT science project turned into a company worth $20 billion today.
Its been a busy year for Dropbox in relationship and partnership building, first they announced their expanding partnership with Adobe introducing a new Adobe Creative Cloud integration but, what does this mean? This will make it easier for users to find their Adobe XD documents on Dropbox. They will also be-able to view Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files stored, allowing users to quickly preview files created in XD—Adobe’s latest solution for designing, prototyping, and sharing user experiences. These previews can be seen whether you’re working from dropbox.com or our mobile apps.
“Adobe XD is an innovative all-in-one tool for UX designers, and we’re excited to bring the power of Dropbox, Adobe XD and Creative Cloud to our joint users,” said Daniel Wagner, Engineering Lead, Dropbox Previews. “Our goal is to unleash creative energy through an expanding partner ecosystem, and connect design tools like Adobe XD with core Dropbox mobile, web and desktop products.”
“Our aim is to make the design process more efficient with Adobe XD,” said Kate Eom, Senior Product Manager for Adobe XD. “That’s why we’re excited to bring Dropbox native file preview to our users. Now, designers and their extended team members can preview XD from Dropbox without opening the file.”
The beginning of March they then announced a partnership with Google Cloud, which will deliver a more unified home for work. Working with Google Cloud, Dropbox plans to develop a series of cross-platform integrations that connect G Suite cloud productivity tools and content (Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Hangouts) with its global collaboration platform making it easier to use Dropbox more effectively.
“We want to make it easy for our users to work across devices with the tools they love,” Tony Lee, Dropbox’s Vice President of Engineering, wrote in a blog post. “This partnership with Google Cloud is one more way we’re creating a unified home for content and the conversations around it. We’re excited to work with Google to break down silos and centralize the information teams rely on every day.”
Ritcha Ranjan, Director, Product Management at Google Cloud, shares the same enthusiasm, saying, “Our goal is to make G Suite accessible no matter what tools you bring to work, and these integrations help our shared customers better collaborate in the tools they use every day. Working with Dropbox to make our apps work better together helps our customers focus their time on work that matters.” The new Google Cloud integrations will begin launching later this year.
Most recently Dropbox announced their strategic partnership with Salesforce. Which will integrate Salesforce's Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Quip platforms, creating native, two-way access between these platforms and Dropbox. With this partnership their focus will be in two key areas: brand engagement and digital asset management, as well as productivity and collaboration for teams in a cloud environment.
On the brand engagement front, Salesforce EVP of Business Development and Strategy Ryan Aytay said “the integration will lead to branded Dropbox folders inside of Salesforce Commerce and Marketing Clouds that can be accessed by both team members and external partners, like creative agencies or lawyers, for example, Bringing that content together and creating a two-way workflow is what we are focused on here."
The collaboration and productivity side centers around Quip. The integration will bring Dropbox into Quip so files can be accessed from within Quip and vice versa. "The goal is to bring together and further integrate our platforms and build new tools," said Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside. "We have been partners for four years, but this is taking everything to a new level in terms of bringing our two companies together. This is entering a strategic partnership of a different magnitude."
Along with these partnerships, Dropbox has also announced their expanded partnerships within the construction, architecture and engineering sectors with Aconex, BulldozAIR, Fieldwire, and PlanGrid, which will give teams more freedom to use the tools and platforms they prefer and new intergrations with Microsoft.
So what happens next? CEO Drew Houston says they plan to expand into business software and targeting large enterprise companies. Even though this is a competitive field with powerful players like Google, Apple, and Microsoft. He is confident about Dropbox’s future. “We’ve always been in a competitive environment even going back to 2011,” he says, “and since then we’ve added a billion in revenues.”
Ending Notes
Since going public I don’t think they will be slowing down anytime soon and I’m finding it very interesting to see where they are headed, I believe that they will surpass the other giants in the industry and become the go-to service. Personally, I love the Dropbox service and find it very easy to use. With all the partnerships and integrations that they are manifesting for themselves, it will be just a matter of time. Houston mentioned Dropbox is designing a more“enlightened way of working,” meaning "instead of having my stuff in ten different places, I have it in one place,” adding that it won’t be long before people will be saying, “Thank God for Dropbox because it makes my life easier at work.” I will be following the company’s future growth and will keep you updated.
Natalie Evans
Natalie Evans has over 16-years in the tech industry and currently works as the event coordinator and tech reporter for CMS-Connected, keeping up-to-date on what's happening in and around the Content Management industry.