When was box founded

Box has been on a bit of a revenue roll as well, in recent quarters. After posting That was when Starboard decided to pick its proxy fight. But Box came off the mat from that nadir, beginning a slow upward trajectory that its management is projecting will continue for the next few quarters.

Aaron had a broader mindset. It's about all your content. Hamid admitted that Box had difficulty raising funds for about a year and a half, offering the simple explanation that " happened. He revealed that Levie even mulled over selling to another private company. You can convince a bunch of VCs with numbers," Hamid explained. The revenue was up. Talking to the customers, the sentiment was that this could grow within their companies. There was a huge market with cloud-based file sharing with both consumers but also enterprises.

That shift toward the enterprise also helped elevate Box above the crowded startup field. Timing didn't hurt either. In , the consumer market was still the target at Box. But by , individuals were using Box's file storage and sharing services for business.

In , groups started using Box products within their companies. In , Hamid said that "whole departments moved onto Box," with entire businesses joining in more wholeheartedly in By , the CIOs finally realized or admitted that hundreds of employees were using Box, essentially forcing their hands to get involved. It has the potential to touch every single employee all over the world," Hamid posited. He concluded that Box is now signing "seven-figure deals" with large corporations worldwide.

Even years later, both Smith and Levie look back at jumping over the Series B hurdle with humility. Levie points to the recession of as a significant turning point, asserting that many businesses were looking at legacy vendors and re-evaluating what they needed to grow. Levie added that Box was "very fortunate in that scenario," while acknowledging that at the time such choices weren't obvious given the challenges the country was facing.

Instead of signing up for the big multi-million dollar, very slow, very cumbersome types of software that they used to be spending money on. They actually went to more efficient solutions. An unexpected but major catalyst for Box was Apple's debut of the iPhone in , and its unveiling of the iPad in What the iPhone did was it said 'Okay, I can finally be untethered from my computer, and I want to be able to get to all of my information.

After the iPhone, all bets were off when it came to legacy technology. In regards to the iPad, he further suggested that was the first time where a new device category wasn't just a consumption tool but actually a tool on which people would do work.

A doctor can pull up a medical image, a construction worker can pull up the plans for the construction site, and we realized they would need new types of software to make that happen. That consumer grade software wasn't going to be enough to allow them to really pull out the kinds of workflows and business scenarios that they needed.

Smith said the entire enterprise cloud services market would be "less developed" without the iPad. You just can't extend that content outside of your business onto an iPad. Smith said it is here where Box has been able to solve a burning pain point that CIOs across all industries are trying desperately to remedy.

Slowly but surely, there has been a noticeable shift toward more willingness, even "excitement and energy," as Smith puts it, among businesses in moving to the cloud. Smith maintained a somewhat conservative analysis though, saying we're still in the early stages of seeing adoption, and that there are still "always" going to be many slower-moving IT departments and CIOs, especially when it comes to regulated industries like healthcare and financial services.

Regulated industries was an opportunity that Box seized upon much faster than its competitors, large and small. Box started tackling healthcare industry needs first, including becoming HIPAA-compliant at the end of In covering government-mandated compliance certifications along with integrating dozens of third-party healthcare software applications, Box already has some high-profile medical organizations as clients across the country.

Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto rolled out Box corporate accounts to 20, users. Box has since moved on to providing similar services for legal firms and agencies. Beyond that, Box executives remain tight-lipped about the next target. That doesn't mean the management team have grown too comfortable. Success has also brought Box to the attention of a new set of powerful rivals. Famous for publicly jabbing at SharePoint, Levie said, "We talk to Microsoft very actively [about] more ways to partner even though we're going to be competing with them directly in some areas.

We work really, really well with Microsoft and [are] always having conversations about how to even deepen that relationship, which is why it's such an interesting space. Gillett acknowledged there is some overlap with Google Docs, but he insisted there isn't a strong comparison there given that Box "comes from a deeper place and focus on collaboration than Google Docs.

Looking at how long Box's strength will endure in the long run, Gillett suggested a few different roadmaps, including the possibility of being acquired by a larger enterprise software provider perhaps even a player at the level of an SAP or a Salesforce.

He also hinted that Box's current strategy of focusing on the enterprise, which is arguably its biggest differentiator from the likes of Dropbox and other growing cloud storage services, might not be enough. But for now they're doubling down on enterprises," Gillett said. He continued that the imaginary digital borders between enterprise and consumer software will eventually evaporate.

Gillett pointed toward another growing software company, Evernote, as an example of a cloud business that likely already has a steady handle on satisfying both worlds. Google arguably could instill fear in just about any company given its seemingly limitless base of financial and intellectual wealth.

Remembering a scoop in The Wall Street Journal in , Hamid speculated that Google Drive was reportedly on track to be launched then. Smith also recalled when Google was working on a storage service around the same time Box held its Series A round, remembering the project codename as " Platypus.

Timing might have proved to be on Box's side once again, because Google Drive didn't emerge as the evolution of Google Docs until Hamid also noted that Box works closely with Google Apps, describing the relationship as possibly "the least competitive" and more cooperative. Setting Google aside, if Microsoft is the gorilla, then the elephant in the room must be Dropbox.

Hamid acknowledged that Dropbox is "close to our heritage," albeit with a few differences. Dropbox has largely been focused on the consumer market from the beginning and is now delving deeper into the business world.

While it shares similar roots in consumer tech, Box's path has largely gone in the other direction. Both companies have also benefitted greatly from the emergence of smartphones and tablets and the technological revolution those mediums have birthed.

But Hamid broke down how the strategies differ. Dropbox's angle, he argued, was syncing content. As for those other file storage startups in the early days of and , Hamid admitted he isn't even sure which if any of those 49 companies still exist. Despite plenty of glowing coverage of Box over the last few months highlighting billion-dollar valuations and successful fundraising rounds, Levie also remains vigilant.

When asked about giants such as Google and Salesforce. Yet at the same time, Levie replied that we're moving to a world that will be fundamentally more heterogeneous, allowing for mixing and matching of tools and capabilities.

A major common trend for software companies scaling its platform and customer bases is to hold a conference of some sort, whether it be for sales reps, developers, or both. These days, Bay Area calendars are often booked up between the last week of August through Thanksgiving with one-day summits to week-long expos sponsored by the likes of everyone from tech news sites such as TechCrunch to software and service providers like Evernote and Oracle.

Box held its first event of this kind in with the cloud-friendly moniker Altitude, targeting IT executives and influencers. The exponential growth of this now-annual occurrence which has been renamed BoxWorks mimics the rapid scaling that Box has experienced in the last three years. In , the one-day summit packed in just about attendees into an oversized conference room crowded with tables at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.

Fast forward to September , BoxWorks has grown 10 times in size. Approximately 3, attendees filled out the ballroom at the opening keynote of the three-day powwow held at the Hilton Union Square. That's what we do. While clarifying that BoxWorks is a "customer and developer event," Smith hinted that Box might be adding a specific developer event to the mix as soon as this year. You constantly feel that no matter what stage you get to, we are ready to continue on the journey.

Box currently employs roughly engineers with another 60 to 70 people on technical operations. Box continues to incrementally move toward embracing the concept of being both a platform and an infrastructure.

Queisser argued that the shift is going more toward a "platform-oriented model," explaining this as something that can be used internally, and then selling it as a standalone offering. Neither Ghods nor Queisser would talk specifics as to which other companies they might be challenging with this particular roadmap, but Ghods said that Box could deliver a platform that is "super easy" for developers to get started on.

Ghods laughed along, "Yes, and so next we want to build an enterprise platform that doesn't suck. Then there is the increasing task of driving the business forward overseas. Box has been steadily building out its footprint in Europe, starting with a sales office in London followed by some roots being planted in Berlin.

The next scheduled stop is Asia, starting in Tokyo. In the case of someone who grew up in a big enterprise software company, Box chief operating officer Dan Levin touted that younger hires help the senior management better understand what's going on with the latest cutting edge stuff and how to think about the ways the next generations of workers are going to behave.

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