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back to article Does Box really need $284m in VC cash?

Once upon a time Joe Kraus dreamed that future start-ups would be 30 times cheaper to build. Clearly he hadn't talked to Aaron Levie, chief executive of enterprise collaboration company Box, which just raised $125m on a reported $1.2bn valuation. Box is playing a high-stakes poker game which will end in complete victory. Or …

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  1. Lee Dowling Silver badge

    One question.

    Who the hell are Box and why the hell should I care?

    Until people know the answer to that question without having to do quite a tricky bit of Google navigating (don't name your company after a single dictionary word if you want it to be found on Google!), all that money is wasted.

    Seriously, I've never heard of them and have no idea what they do. And even The Reg's "free advertising" as an article doesn't really clue me in, nor inspire me to find out.

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    1. Steve the Cynic
      Reply Icon

      Re: One question.

      www.box.com

      Dude, just search for "box funding" and you'll find links to things that contain links to its website...

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      1. Lee Dowling Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: One question.

        Or I could just not play silly games trying to find out who the hell they are and people could either link it in the article, explain it in the article, or pick a damn name that's more useful.

        Sign #1 of a company I will never use: You can't find out exactly what they do without having to dig through the Internet. This also applies to every van I pass on the motorway that has the company name in HUGE letters and not one single description of what they actually do, or sometimes even a website to find out more.

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  2. Mike 29
    FAIL

    WTF is "Box" and why do companies still pick names that are impossible to Google?

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    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Do you think that's why "site:localhost" went bust?

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  3. Dave Perry
    Trollface

    Expensive to be simple

    Sounds like apple. Spend loads on r&d etc to make simple to use, innovative products. But charging a fortune, and not looked at what Box costs.

    Icon cos it's Friday and I'm feeling cheeky

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  4. Michael Hawkes
    Thumb Up

    similar to Dropbox

    The university where I work started using Box recently and it is much, much easier to use than Sharepoint. I've use it on Macs and PCs, and have accessed it with iOS and Android devices.

    It's pretty much like Dropbox in that you can store your files "in the cloud" and access them anywhere there's a network connection. You can also 'invite' people to upload, download, or edit files in your personal Box folder. Most of the people I work with use it to collaborate with other rather than emailing documents back and forth.

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  5. Mark 65

    It would seem from the article that money raised is inversely related to success, perhaps because the less of a business plan you have the more money you need to string out your inevitable demise. As other posters have mentioned - I've never heard of them and what makes them so great, which is not good news when everyone in the enterprise has heard of sharepoint for better or worse.

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  6. seansaysthis

    good idea or runit till the VC runs out

    @mark65 Well said. It would seems that we are going back to the dot com days when VCs handed over stupid amounts of cash for businesses that would never work. Seems that banks and investors never learn. There have been very few tech IPOs where the value has remained. Creating and driving a successfully new business is hard that's why so many fail. I know of several companies that were just run till the VC ran out and the staff move on to the next one. They are all of the "koolade" variety, all flashy website and no plan or ability to execute consistently.

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  7. P_0

    I've been using Box for over two years. I'm not sure what innovation they've sone in that time. They aren't a bad service.

    Why are they suddenly getting loads of investment, as though they are a hot new Silicon Valley start up? In the Silicon Valley start-up sausage factory these guys are old timers and haven't done any innovation in years.

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