Box is one enterprise company that’s made all the right plays. First, it’s a fully cloud-based service. Second, it nailed the freemium model. Box gives users 10 gigabytes of free storage, which has encouraged thousands of new users to adopt the company’s product every day. Next, Box uses big-data analytics to fine-tune its services. For example, the company analyzes data to find out when a significant number of employees at a company are using Box. When a company reaches critical mass, Box has a sales person contact the IT department to up-sell them on premium Box services. At the other end of spectrum ,small and medium businesses wanted to share seamlessly and safely with global suppliers and distributors and wanted integrations with their …show more content…
Finally, Box puts a tremendous focus on customer success with a large team focused solely on making sure customers are happy and don’t desert them for another collaboration service such as Drop Box. All of these moves will help Box generate revenues of more than $100 million this year. With a $2 billion valuation, the company is expected to go to public in the next few months. At Box, we now see RFPs where “user adoption” is a heavily weighted factor in the purchasing decision; this was virtually unheard of a few years ago. IT managers are realizing that there are better, more strategic uses of their time than training employees, fighting low adoption, and contending with angry users – they want technology that just works. And because of this, we’re seeing more alignment between users and the CIO than ever before. We do know that at the time of the $38m Series D financing the company was doing about $5m/quarter in revenue, or $1.5 million a month. Would you have invested in a company doing $1.5 million in monthly revenue at a $200m pre-money valuation? If you did in the case of Box, that $38m investment has appreciated nearly 7x in just under 3 years and is now worth $215m at the Series E-1 price (the IPO price is likely to be even …show more content…
Notwithstanding mega-economic trends and conditions, you need to ask a very practical question if you are contemplating an initial public offering (IPO): how do I prepare properly for the IPO transaction, cultivate worthy investment in a dynamic market and steer my business to success as a public entity? EY is the undisputed US leader in the number of companies we take public. Not only have we guided more companies through the SEC filing process than any other firm, but we’ve also helped these and other companies optimize tax structures, compensation plans, business processes and controls, corporate governance structures, and much, much more. That work gives us tremendous perspective in guiding you through the IPO transaction and beyond. Moreover, through the IPO and Strategic Transactions track that is now part of the annual EY Strategic Growth Forum, we convene the leading outside experts on how to decide if an IPO is right for your business and how to anticipate the changes your company will