Every time someone mentions Box, I find myself obligated to quote one of the funniest passages in recent tech history: the Risk Factors chapter from their S-1 IPO filing:
## Risks Related to Our Business and Our Industry ##
### We have a history of cumulative losses, and we do not
expect to be profitable for the foreseeable future. ###
We have incurred significant losses in each period since
our inception in 2005. We incurred net losses of $50.3
million in our fiscal year ended December 31, 2011, $112.6
million in our fiscal year ended January 31, 2013, and
$168.6 million in our fiscal year ended January 31, 2014.
As of January 31, 2014, we had an accumulated deficit of
$361.2 million. These losses and accumulated deficit
reflect the substantial investments we made to acquire new
customers and develop our services. We intend to continue
scaling our business to increase our number of users and
paying organizations and to meet the increasingly complex
needs of our customers. We have invested, and expect to
continue to invest, in our sales and marketing
organizations to sell our services around the world and in
our development organization to deliver additional features
and capabilities of our cloud services to address our
customers’ evolving needs. We also expect to continue to
make significant investments in our datacenter
infrastructure and in our professional service organization
as we focus on customer success. As a result of our
continuing investments to scale our business in each of
these areas, we do not expect to be profitable for the
foreseeable future. Furthermore, to the extent we are
successful in increasing our customer base, we will also
incur increased losses due to upfront costs associated with
acquiring new customers, particularly as a result of the
limited free trial version of our service and the nature of
subscription revenue, which is generally recognized ratably
over the term of the subscription period, which is
typically one year, although we also offer our services for
terms ranging between one month to three years or more. We
cannot assure you that we will achieve profitability in the
future or that, if we do become profitable, we will sustain
profitability.