Dropbox in discussions for IPO this year

 

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By Dave Stevenson

Posted on 15 Feb 2013 at 15:20

Dropbox is in discussions with bankers ahead of a potential IPO, according to a report by business analysis site Quartz.

Dropbox is valued at $4bn (around £2.6bn) and claims to have over 100 million users. An IPO would need to be carefully handled, not least because of Facebook’s rocky start as a public company, and Dropbox’s heavy slant towards consumer users as opposed to potentially more profitable corporates.

This week, Dropbox took a step to adjust its reputation for consumer-first services with a range of new features for its paid-for Dropbox for Teams accounts.

The features include a new dashboard to make it easier for administrators to track individual use of a Dropbox account, as well as new features for managing users on mobile devices. Security has been bolstered, with administrators able to force users to use double-authentication when signing in.

Dropbox has suffered a number of high-profile security breaches in recent years, including one in 2011 that left accounts accessible without a password for four hours, while a hacking attack on a Dropbox employee’s computer in 2012 led to the loss of a number of user email addresses.