Box may delay IPO until June or later | Hacker News Reader

Box may delay IPO until June or later

online.wsj.com

37 pointsSystemOut27 comments

No paywall: http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303...

Seriously curious and off topic, but in almost every HN post these 'no paywall' posts from the WSJ articles are upvoted quite a bit when generally speaking the demographic here seems to be strongly against sharing unlicensed content. Any reason for this? Is WSJ disliked?

I dislike paywalls because they are inconsistent. Depending on how you found an article, or what link you click, or what cookies you have, you may or may not be able to view an article. If you happen to reload the page, or accidentally click a link and immediately go back, you may or may not lose access to the article.

That's not friendly behavior at all to me as a user.

I think the issue is that people like me are not going to subscribe to the WSJ just for an article once or twice a month at most.

It may be better to not post WSJ articles at all and just find coverage elsewhere (as there almost always is coverage elsewhere.)

Too bad they are not more like the NYTs that lets you have a few free articles a month.

> generally speaking the demographic here seems to be strongly against sharing unlicensed content.

No, I don't think that's correct.

I think it because it seen as "information" not "content".

All you have to do is open links in an incognito window. Newspapers want to charge for their content, so they track if you've viewed it for free too many times. But they also want people to be able to see a little bit. Hard to have it both ways, so it's simple to get around. It's their problem if they make it too easy.

There was a rumor on Secret a few days ago that they were pulling the IPO and getting required.[1]

[1] https://www.secret.ly/p/szlqfbqewvwevconzlbngtuzkt

Wow, this was one of the first reliable rumors I've seen on Secret.

The "Square getting acquired" rumor seemed pretty baseless, by comparison.

Deleted comment

oracle?

"acquired"

Good thing Secret's a reliable source of info.

You shouldn't blindly trust Secret. However, I've seen a good number of things on it that turned out to be true. Since this was proven to be half true, it's possible the rest is as well. Don't bet money on it, but also don't be surprised.

That being said, I'm not sure who would be able to AND want to buy them -- Microsoft or Google?

Anonymity can certainly enable better/more information but the anonymity of it makes it substantially harder to take seriously. You'd probably need persistent IDs and a track record. But then it gets trickier to remain anonymous.

What is Box's USP? As a non-user it just seems like a DropBox clone, but I presume there must be more to it than that.

I tried to use it and was appalled at how poor the software was, as well as the atrocious upload speeds (a common problem, there were long threads on their support forums with the same issue that never was addressed). I've learned to be very skeptical of the tech/startup hype machine.

It's for enterprise. Different market from Dropbox.

IMO their real competition is Sharepoint.

Actually I believe Box was started before Dropbox.

Thanks to everyone for the helpful replies.

Box's financials (with its crazy burn rate) once again prove the old adage that you can always buy market share.

Whether Box is worth billions or zero will come down to whether or not they can defend that pricey market share they have purchased ($300M spent so far).

Box is also tied up in a big patent lawsuit from OpenText.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230488690...

This seems odd unless they are expecting to be able to release substantially better numbers soon. I would think the negative signal that a delay sends is worse than any macro goings on.

Yeah, pity the public decided to stop doling out astronomical valuations (and merely stratospheric ones) to companies with seas of red ink and no credible plans to make enough money - let alone any money - to justify said valuations.

The strange reality is that the price Box could get today in an IPO, while less than it was six weeks ago, is probably still outrageous given the circumstances.

I'm confused by this comment. Doesn't Box sell an actual product that actual customers pay for? That's revenue.

Now if you're referring to profit, then there's enough precedence of (technology) companies choosing to invest in operations over generating a profit for growth. Amazon is barely profitable; Twitter still isn't. There's even financial engineering reasons to run a deficit. Why pay taxes when you can re-invest in your company's growth and use the carried losses as a future tax shield? Unless you assume Box and comparable companies are running a Ponzi-like scheme, which I don't think you are.

I think we can agree that investors at large firms who invest in IPOs like Fidelity and T.Rowe Price are not idiots. They use the information that is available to them and make a determination on valuation. If they make an investment in the IPO, their investment thesis is that this stock will go up (some companies do flip at IPO but it's a small minority. Source: I used to price IPOs for a living).

The market isn't a homogenous mass. It's filled with thousands of opinion-makers like you. Your opinion is entirely valid but it's weighed against the opinions of thousands of others who can shape Box's valuation. And that weighted opinion says Box was worth X six weeks ago, and now worth Y.

Hard to compete with Google and Microsoft on pricing or on marketing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com