They had something in common, of course, but Dropbox has always been about managing files in the cloud, while Box has been focused on enterprise content use case cases in the cloud - and that’s a very different approach.Īs Shria Ovide pointed out in her analysis on Bloomberg after the filing, the S-1 also proved that Dropbox has always been a “ a consumer software company with a side hustle.” That side hustle was the enterprise business. (She also pointed out on Twitter that they may be the first company to use a cupcake emoji in their S-1, which is actually kind of cool).

If you don’t believe they’re different, consider that in Dropbox’s S-1 paperwork they filed with SEC, you will note they didn’t even list Box as a primary competitor: “We compete with Box on a more limited basis in the cloud storage market for deployments by large enterprises,” the company wrote. Same goes for investors, analysts and journalists. If you are a VC and still don't get why Box and Dropbox are fundamentally different businesses, maybe stay away from SaaS.

Box vs dropbox