For a growing company, there's arguably no day bigger than its initial public offering. After all that work establishing your brand and building up value, it's finally time for the market to decide what your company is actually worth. Over the years we've seen plenty of tech firms take their companies public (with varying degrees of success), and it was just about this time last year when we witnessed Snap start its IPO with a bang—even if today's price is now below where it started. In 2018, though, all eyes have been on Dropbox and its own plans to go public. With the first day of trading underway, the Dropbox IPO is off to a healthy start, as stock prices climb over 40 percent.
Dropbox stock debuted priced at $21 yesterday. As trading got started today, under the symbol DBX, the stock opened at $29, and while it's been up and down in the hours since, it's still in the mid-$29 range. That represents just over 40 percent growth from the initial price, and gives the company a valuation of over $12.5 billion.
Of course, these IPOs are such exciting times for investors that they can (and often do) get a little carried away with themselves, and in the weeks and months that follow we could see the market correct that price down to a more stable figure. But for the moment, at least, Dropbox is off to a very respectable start, and has investors talking positively about tech IPOs again.
Drew Houston (left) and Arash Ferdowsi (right)
Co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi have shared a public letter (on what else? Dropbox) where they talk a bit about where they'd like to see their company go from here, focusing not just on file storage, but rethinking how users find and access the data in those files. It's all with the goal of removing unnecessary hurdles towards getting work done, and becoming a one-stop solution for creating and managing documents.