The startup has secured credit for $600 million from a group of lenders headed by JP Morgan. With the recent launch of Snapchat on the New York Stock Exchange, people are eyeing Silicon Valley unicorn Dropbox as a stable sequel to the Snap Inc. story. While Dropbox and its lenders have not made any official announcement, Bloomberg believes the IPO could happen as soon as this year.
The company has been cautious with going public, preferring to slowly grow its business over the course of a decade. However, since Dropbox received its first influx of capital from startup accelerator Y Combinator, the company has steadily grown their technology business. The straightforward nature of the application — providing a file storage service over a wide array of platforms and devices —has allowed Dropbox to expand to 500 million users. Dropbox is was valued at $10.35 billion as of April, 2014.
The company has been expanding towards business, which could make a public offering more appealing to potential investors. DropBox Paper launched in 2017, built on the acquired document-sharing company Hackpad, and provides a shared document-editing platform for people to create on. Dropbox has also created Business and Enterprise packages to supply business-friendly options like unlimited storage and increased security. Dropbox states on their website that they currently have 200,000 businesses and organizations using their Business package.
Nothing’s definite right now, but with the growth that Dropbox has demonstrated since its founding, and the fact that Bank of America is pushing right ahead with the credit facility being organized by JP Morgan should speak to the expectations for the IPO — Snap Inc. was unable to secure any support from Bank of America for their listing when the startup went public.
