Cuicai
Links: http://www.zhihu.com/question/22207220/answer/20642357
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Box and Dropbox are the companies that provide cloud storage, the business model is freemium, the basic service is free, the value-added service charges, the basic function is also convergent.
The main difference between the two companies is the way they approach the market (or market positioning), box is mainly for enterprise users, Dropbox as early as the beginning of last year are mainly for the individual users, which also directly led to the topic of " box is slower than Dropbox "problem.
In recent years, many entrepreneurs and investors have begun to pay more attention to the enterprise market, the problem is slightly expanded, but also as a case, you can see the different companies choose the enterprise-class market or the mass market after the different development methods and results.
2007, Drew Houston on the bus because forgot to bring a USB flash drive to come out of the idea of cloud storage, he said that dry, and soon made a demo, with this demo he and another with the MIT students Arash Ferdowsi in the occupation, This is the two early founders of Dropbox. That summer, they entered the prestigious Y-combinator hatch, got their seed investment, and following year summer they got the $7.2 million a-round investment from Sequoia Capital and Accel, the two best investment companies in the industry, and it's been a smooth ride. This is also the result of the application of disruptive Innovation (disruptive innovation) in the user market, which can easily attract a lot of media and user attention.
In turn, they are never the media's favorite, and the stories they can find online are far less than Dropbox. Founder Aaron Levie in 2005 from the south stepped out of school to set up box, the same year, they got Mark Cuban angel investment (right, the NBA Mavericks boss Cuban). In 2007, Aaron Levie and his partner discovered that the market for cloud storage was becoming increasingly competitive (whether or not it was related to Dropbox's accession in the same year), so the direction of the company's development from general Market (all markets) adjusted in order to target enterprise-level users of the blue sea, this adjustment determines the direction of the square to the present. Similar to Saleforce and other large enterprise-class companies, enterprise-class market is often difficult to obtain the media's extensive attention, but also difficult to enter the lives of individual users.
So, from 2007 to 2012, Box and Dropbox are also present in the cloud storage market, but in fact they do not have a direct competitive relationship in addition to the intersection of small and medium business users. Dropbox has been immersed in the expansion of the mass market, while box is dedicated to the development of business relations, large enterprise business.
In this way, because of the different market positioning and choice, the direct result is a huge difference in the level of users. In the same period of 2012, Dropbox had 200 million users, while box was 15 million users. But it is worth mentioning that box of the 15 million users have a large number of c-level level of people (CEO,CFO, etc.), and box of the number of enterprise users reached 180,000. So from a profit point of view, the gap between the two companies is not as impressive as the number of users. (Dropbox's profit in 2011 was $46 million, and 2012 was $116 million.) Box's profit in 2011 was $25 million, and 2012 was $85 million. In this way, we can also draw a more important conclusion that the profit margins of companies targeting the individual user market are actually much lower than those for companies.
By the way, from a financing point of view, Dropbox's latest round of financing was at the end of 2011, when $250 million was raised, valued at $4 billion, and box had just announced $100 million in financing on December 6, but with a valuation of just $2 billion. The current value of box is half that of Dropbox two years ago. However, valuations do not fully represent the company's strength, and Box's introduction of the investors from Japan, Europe and Latin America, the acquisition of financing will be mainly used to do international business expansion, which should also be ready for the IPO next year. And the investors are providing more support in the local market, so I believe that the valuation is actually lower than the value of box itself in terms of figures alone.
In February of 2012, Dropbox made a big upgrade to the product, began to focus on the enterprise market, and then Dropbox dug in specifically from Salesforce's leadership and started working with Salesforce. As a result, the history of Box and Dropbox's development in two segments is over, and the two companies have also started a positive battle. But box after all is focused on enterprise-class market for a long time, they do not only provide storage space for enterprises, but also to open up the various aspects of enterprise services. Dropbox is not particularly clear at the strategic level, and in addition to corporate services, they also take "picture sharing" as another important development direction. On the individual market and the choice of the enterprise market alone, Sequoia partner Bryan Schreier said Dropbox made the right choice, that is, to build a mass market, and then enter the enterprise market on this basis.
Finally, from Dropbox to the user's access, I think there are two aspects to do the best.
1) Functional Level
One more Dropbox feature than box is the storage sync for the local folder. That is, any cloud files are automatically saved to a local folder, which can be used directly without the network. At the beginning of the development of cloud storage, users generally do not adapt to or say that the service is not at ease, so this feature reduces the user's cost of use and conversion costs, can be better from the functional level to obtain users.
2) Viral Marketing
Dropbox combines viral marketing and word-of-mouth communication very well, when I first contacted Dropbox when I was studying in the United States, and many people gave me referrals or email invitations because each successful invitation would add 500M of cloud space to the invitee, simply because of this feature, Dropbox's user volume has been significantly improved. Dropbox also carried out a lot of similar activities, such as the "Great Space Race" activity (dropbox-great space race!), which swept the world's universities, and the more students involved in the same school, the greater the free space each student received. Neal
Links: http://www.zhihu.com/question/22207220/answer/20671086
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Look at everyone's analysis, very accurate and in place.
The recent year has been a lot of contact with the box American team because of the working relationship, and I am also a box user. From the user's digital perspective, box is not as dazzling as Dropbox, but Box has its own market and product strategy and layout, I personally do not think box than Dropbox development slow.
1 in front of a friend said, box deep-rooted enterprise-oriented market, I will not repeat. Just add a little bit to the market positioning of box. Now box is not just positioning itself in cloud storage (Storage), but positioning itself in the area of file sharing, social, and collaboration. This is also the potential requirements of the enterprise market, after the safe and reliable storage of documents, the next step is how to effectively use these documents to create business value.
2 Competitive landscape and market strategy
As a cloud-based service, box inevitably intersects with Dropbox,google Drive, SkyDrive, etc., competing with these companies at the individual user level. However, Box's entire company's focus on corporate services, so I personally feel that box for a long time did not use these services as their competitors in the business sector. Gartner has published a report on Marketscope for Enterprise File synchronization and sharing, which will be familiar to Dropbox, Googledrive and SkyDrive were excluded from the evaluation, while box and other not-so-famous products were shortlisted, with box being highly rated. The following is part of the report. (If you need this report, you can contact me separately)
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But with Dropbox's push into the corporate market, box recently unveiled a new pricing system that starter to compete with Dropbox and other low-cost cloud storage systems Plan,box want to use to secure their share of the SME. In fact, I personally think that Dropbox from the individual to the enterprise into the path may not be a smooth road, it is important that for Dropbox, personal-oriented brand effect has been deeply rooted, and this cognition in the short term can not be changed. This leads directly to the box, which has been claimed to be used by the world's top 500 80%, and business customers generally do not focus on Dropbox when choosing a service.
Box also attaches particular importance to the medical, construction, manufacturing and other vertical areas, and continue to publish success stories, these are offensive enterprise market is the killer, but also the lack of Dropbox.
3 Product Strategy
Box has to position itself in file sharing, social, and collaborative areas, constantly improving the usability of the product according to its strategy box. This is something that many other cloud storage services do not have. Document online viewing, Box Edit, document user discussion, simple document review workflow, and more. A personal favorite is box edit, which does not require local download and is stored directly in the cloud after editing. This year I also attended the Boxworks2013 in San Francisco, where box will integrate its acquisition of the Crocdoc Company's HTML5.0 conversion technology to further enhance the online viewing experience. At the same time, the box note that can be edited by multiple people will also be put into beta testing.
At the same time, Box's ecosystem strategy is also very clear, is to become a content management platform for all apps, and the workflow level of integration. This includes Salesforce, NetSuite and other high-end SaaS. This is tantamount to turning Salesforce and NetSuite customers into their own potential customers, which is a good way to develop.
4 Sales Strategy
box is the direct and the channel of both hands grasping. Direct sales are more remotely sold through the Internet, and channels can be expanded by choosing the features and strengths of the distributors, such as at-and-out, as well as some of the most successful companies in Salesforce or NetSuite integration. It's needless to say that the use of its huge sales network will box into the customer is not difficult, and some other Si, box as a part of the solution to the customer sales, is a winning pattern. Because once the use of some kind of file storage, short-term difficult to replace, customer stickiness is very high.
In addition, Box also has to vigorously expand business partners, through other forms of product sales to customers.
As a loyal user of box, I personally very much look forward to the further development of box, I hope that its product excellence, in the market strategy bolder, more rapid action.
The difference between Dropbox and box, including the direct Investor's rating (local sync may be quite important)
