Boxing it up: Box.net and cloud storage

Businesses and their employees are often in a tough spot when it comes to working on files together – IT staff are often overworked and lack the people skills to easily convey information about how to share files in local intranets.  Moreover, when there are multiple office locations, collaborative file use also becomes difficult.  In order to address this issue, a solution needs to be accessible from any computer on the web; scalable and able to handle increasing amounts of files and users, and secure enough to protect those files from the prying eyes of competitors.

Needless to say, there are a number of competitive businesses in this space, and more on the way all the time.  One notable competitor is Palo Alto-based Box.net.  In 2005, as a business project, Aaron Levie (CEO) and Dylan Smith (CFO), then students at the University of Washington, decided to create a company that worked in the online collaboration space.  The business was incorporated in April and received angel capital from investor Mark Cuban.  In 2006, the business moved to Palo Alto and received $1.5 million in a Series A round from Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  Anxious to grow quickly, Box.net raised a $6 million Series B round and $7.1 million in a Series C from U.S. Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.  The latest round of financing in 2011 was led by Meritech Capital Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Emergence Capital Partners for $48 million including $10 million in debt financing from Hercules Technology Growth Capital.  In press accounts, CEO Aaron Levie explained that there was “no capital limit and we could’ve raised more.”  True to his word, a September 2011 round raised $50 million from Salesforce, Andreeseen Horowitz and others.

Box.net provides a number of competitive services.  Since December of 2007, Box.net has offered the “OpenBox” platform which connects web-based applications across the web with Box.net’s clients' content.  Box.net integrates many of the most popular services on the web, including Autodesk, Twitter, Salesforce, Google Apps and others.  Box.net also offers an API for developers to create services which manipulate client files.  The company has also won a number of awards, including finalist positions for Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith in Business Week’s “Best Entrepreneurs 25 and Under” rankings in 2009.

Plum Good

It was Plato who once said necessity is the mother of invention. This is very often the case, especially with entrepreneurs who see a product or service missing from the marketplace and strive to fill that hole. For Gigi Lee Chang, this hole was in the baby food market. Chang knew she wanted to make baby food for her son, and sought out only the freshest organic ingredients to encourage a love of healthy eating and an adventurous palette. One problem she encountered when making her son’s food was that it was difficult to make fresh food, especially when she was traveling.

Conversations with other mothers made Chang realize that there weren’t many options in the baby food market, especially for healthy, organic foods. Chang left her job as the vice president of strategic planning for Euro RSCG and began researching the food industry. She started her company in 2005 and launched the Plum Organics brand in 2006. In addition to developing food that was both healthy and delicious, Chang spent quite a bit of time developing the packaging for her new brand. She knew parents weren’t used to shopping in the frozen section for their baby’s food, so she wanted to catch shoppers’s eyes as they walked through the frozen food section.

More recently, Plum Organics has launched a selection of organic baby and toddler foods packaged in environmentally friendly BPA-free pouches rather than in traditional glass jars or plastic tubs. These pouches can be squeezed into a bowl or directly onto a spoon, or babies can just suck the food right out of the pouch, making it a convenient choice anywhere. The company also launched a line of organic puffs and healthy toddler snacks made from organic fruits and vegetables, offering even more variety for parents who want to feed their children healthy, organic food but who don’t have the time to make it themselves.

Method’s Method

While you probably haven’t seen any television commercials or newspaper advertisements for Method cleaning products, you’ve most likely come across them in your local stores. They stand out because of their unique packaging and catchy names. This line of 130 environmentally friendly cleaning and personal hygiene products got its start in the middle of a recession in 2001. Method’s founders, Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, have been friends since high school and are former roommates.

The duo set out to create a line of nontoxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products that work jut as well — or better — than conventional cleaning products that oftentimes contain poisonous chemicals and are bad for the environment. In addition to creating healthier cleaning alternatives, the team wanted to make the packaging attractive enough that people wouldn’t want to hide it, so they brought on designer Karim Rashid to create revolutionary packaging that is attractive, eco-friendly, and recyclable.

Although the company shuns conventional advertising, that hasn’t stopped their growth. Their annual revenue has topped the $100 million mark in less than ten years, a feat that took Seventh Generation, another eco-friendly cleaning brand, almost twenty years to accomplish.

Method’s line of products includes dish soap, dishwasher pods, bathroom cleaners, antibacterial cleaners, and even a reusable mop similar to the Swiffer Sweeper that uses biodegradable corn-based plastic cloths that won’t sit in a landfill until the end of time. Their triple-concentrated laundry detergent comes in a small, easy to carry bottle that is lightweight, yet washes up to fifty loads of laundry. The company has a product for nearly every cleaning job, including gentle cleansers to clean baby’s clothes, as well as baby herself.

YouTube

Founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, YouTube.com revolutionized the way people used the internet. Their video sharing website gave users a richer web experience. It also shifted the balance of importance from text to multi-media content. Although the site is now owned by Google, the foundations laid down by its Chen, Hurley and Karim are still very prevalent today.

The three founders of YouTube were original employees of PayPal, the global electronic payment processor. Chen and Hurley conceptualized the company in the early part of 2005 with Karim helping in its development. The domain name was registered in February 2005, with the website being continually developed and improved over the next few months.

The first video was uploaded on April, 2005 with beta testing beginning the following month. YouTube.com was officially launched in November 2005 and it grew extremely quickly. Its popularity spread from city to city, then from country to country.  In less than a year, the site was receiving 100 million viewers a day. Spotting huge potential in the site, Google announced its acquisition of the site 2006, for a jaw dropping $1.65 billion.

Although YouTube.com is ranked as the third most visited website after Google and Facebook, monetizing the site initially proved challenging, particularly due to encountering many legal problems as a result of users uploading copyrighted content. These issues have since been resolved. By May 2010, more than 14 billion videos had been viewed on the site.

The success of YouTube.com is one of the biggest in Internet history. In just over a year, the founders were able to create $1.65 billion worth of value from not just their own creativity, but that of the YouTube community. Their success is certain to inspire the next generation of would-be Internet entrepreneurs.

Mrs. Fields

Debbi Fields was a young mother without a previous business background when she started Mrs. Fields. A accompany that was to become a highly successful cookie chain with branches all over the world. Field’s passion for baking began in her childhood. was At the age of 13, she used the money earned from her first job to buy vanilla, butter, and chocolate chips,– ingredients to make her cookies.

At the age of 19, she married Randy Fields, a Stanford graduate. However, she felt embarrassed at social gatherings when people asked her what she did for a living. Not content with ‘merely’ being a housewife, Fields felt that she has something more to offer. In 1977, Debbi made the decision to open her first cookie shop in Palo Alto, CA.

The first day was a struggle, passing without the sale of a  single cookie. Undeterred, Debbi started giving out free samples to passersby. Thankfully, many liked her cookies and went inside her store to buy more. Soon, her customers began to request more varieties.

Mrs. Fields Cookies then started offering more flavors although her original chocolate chip recipe remained her biggest hit.

“Good enough” is never good enough for this entrepreneur. Aside from working in her business, creating new recipes, Fields also worked on her business, streamlining business operations through the installation of a brand new  IT system.

The automation process led to increased interests in the business community.  Potential franchisees began inquiring as to the possibility of franchising her cookie shop. In 1993, Field’s accepted an offer on the sale of her business empire, allowing her to spend more time with her family.

Lush

There are hundreds of bath and beauty products in supermarkets, department stores, and health shops. So for a specialty bath and beauty retailer to be successful, it has to offer something unique. This was that daunting challenge that faced Lush.

The company was started by Mark and Mo Constantine. However, they were no strangers to the industry, as they  were already the largest supplier to the Body Shop before deciding to launch their own brand.

Lush is now immediately recognizable by its store design, product concept, and the distinctive “lush” scent that fills your senses as you near their stores. Soaps at the store are partly inspired by chest wedges which are priced according to their weight in Neal’s Yard in London. Bath products, meanwhile, are piled like fruit and other products imitate nature as well. Bath products are displayed in-store to closely resemble baskets of fruit, and their other products are also displayed in ways that are heavily influenced by the natural world.

The company has the same eco-friendly principles as the Body Shop. For example, they never test their products on animals and they avoid using packages which may damage the environment where possible. The Constantines also take pride in their production process. Rather than automating manufacturing, they prefer  their product to be handmade. A trip through the Lush factory reveals machinery more likely to be found in the restaurant industry, such as  muffin makers and other catering equipment. .

To fully understand the path in which Lush found success, it is important to understand its relationship with the Body Shop. Mark Constantine met Body Shop owner Anita Roddick when he was 22. With the opening of the second Body Shop store, Constantine gave Roddick some samples of his products, which Roddick followed up by placing a full order. In the early 90s, the retailer bought out its supplier for an estimated $9 million.

This money was spent on Cosmetics to Go, which turned out to be a failure. Fortunately, the couple decided to start again. In 2001, they conceptualized Lush Cosmetics and the rest, as they say, is history.