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Comment by ssharp | Hacker News Reader

"Dropbox is just one of the best examples out there of everything that makes a software product solid: do one thing, do it well, don't bother the user, and be profitable."

I hate to be cynical here, but they're EBITDA profitable, not profitable, and they've been in business for 10 years. I think there are thousands of better examples but they might not be at the scale of Dropbox.

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EBITDA should really be renamed EBMS: Earnings Before Manipulative Shenanigans. A high net profit might be heavily correlated with high EBITDA, but it's relatively easy to show a GAAP profit while being in terrible financial shape, and not so easy to do that with EBITDA.

In this case, I'd consider Dropbox's emergence into slight EBITDA profits as not great, but a definitely welcome sigh of relief for a unicorn market full of bullshit.

How about SBBSNAMM? Stopped the Bleeding But Still Not Actually Making Money

How do you show a GAAP profit without a corresponding positive EBITDA?

> I think there are thousands of better examples but they might not be at the scale of Dropbox.

Of those thousands of examples, which are the closest to Dropbox's scale?

Probably SpiderOak?

[Disclaimer: I used to work at Dropbox.]

Dropbox has exabytes of data. I'd be very surprised if SpiderOak is storing more than a few PB. Perhaps some SpiderOak folks would care to correct me on this though?

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