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.