Dropbox has quietly hired two enterprise sales veterans, part of a broader push to gain big corporations as customers.

IPO growth-stage party round, Investors work understanding SAAS business, but do not understand it 110%. "Our growth is dependent on the level of investment (sales, marketing) we put into, we have no head ceiling. [...] Investors go, after explaining for 30 minutes, from IBM cash flow investors to a16z type doubling down [invest more in user acquisition due to lock-in and LTV for SAAS. [...] Box's disruption playbook via lots of layers/stacks (integrated, worry free) for enterprise; loss prevention, security, search, clouds storage, audit & compliance (ie HIPPA). [...] Marrying a frictionless consumer experience best practices (phablet, smart phone, tablet, desktop) with Enterprise 2.0/SAAS feature set, enabling lift of productivity and connectedness. Turning themselves into a strategic layer for Fortune 500 companies and ousting Oracle, IBM and MSFT (legacy infrastructure, see Sony hack). Box is pitching a modern architecture, not just cloud. [...] Building what customer asks for.

[ COMPETITION 4 HOT DEAL, Private Market (Private Equity) highest bidder wins. Thus to get in, people make compromises. ] "It’s the best time ever in the history of the world, or at least the tech industry, to raise money. Will it get better? It’s possible. Six months from now, we might say darn it, we should have waited," Butterfield told me. "On the other hand it’s a pretty amazing deal. In a certain respect it would have been irresponsible not to take it for five-ish percent of the company on clean terms." For those not familiar with venture capital, Butterfield means he only had to give up a small percentage of the ownership in Slack to get this new funding, and that the deal didn't come with a bunch of crazy terms which favored the new investors. [...] [ also mentioned 20-30% rise in HR cost compared to last year! << SF/SV becomes prohibitive for bootstrapping & even for Seed/Angel backed start-ups w 2-5m. Run out of time (MVP fit) bc run out of cash bc high local burn rate. ]

Aims 2 raise up2 $500M at $3B+ valuation; Zenefits prev said it expected $100M ARR by '15; expects GAAP rev of $50M+ this yr; prev raised $83.6M // Free SAAS, makes money by receiving commissions from insurers. [NEEDS SALES & MARKETING hires to sustain growth trajectory and justification of valuation multiple.] By the end of 2014, Zenefits had around 500 employees, according to sources, but that number is expected to quadruple by the end of 2015. Last year, the company said it wanted to hire around 1,300 employees over the next 3 years. [Capturing Marketshare USA/Canada - hitting it with the baseball bat.] // youtu.be/KporpXG0XK8 min6 direct marketing/e-mail/hustle/hands on sales pitch > COO/Accounting/HR // youtu.be/7KmjzfK3f38 min 11 Start-up struggle, figuring it out along the way but having a sense // (2015) youtu.be/8DwlS_6jLAo "Hyperscaling Inside Sales" &! YC W2013 application video - youtu.be/-S83fysRwn4

min 35:40 - Freemium in the business space is even cooler than in the consumer space. min 39 - Marc Andreessen "how much do you need to win in this space? how fast do you need to grow, to win." [cost of customer acquisition (freemium, and or Bounty Model from Paypal) and retention]. and define what is winning, what scenario? what measure? ... key accounts long-term commitment? ad spend from key accounts? customer happiness - retention? resellers, dominating sales channels to a vertical of business type and SME/SMB's? min 53 - new playbook is now Get Big, then turn on revenue. disrupt the ecosystem/existing business model, winner takes all. min 54 - how you go from a small shop with profit to raising $+100m round telling than that they get multiples back in their investment, that comes when you live a time here in Palo Alto/Silicon Valley. (crunchbase.com/organization/box) + follow-up "having a playbook." + war for talent: 1 disenfranchised 2 ppl wnt 2 create value, 3 business model

It would not be easy for Lenovo turn around the server unit, however. IBM's low-margin server business has posted seven quarters of losses as clients move to the cloud. "To generate costs synergy, Lenovo will need to move most of the manufacturing from IBM's existing facility in Virginia to Asia while keeping some R&D in the U.S.," Lau said. The server business being sold by IBM, which produced low-cost x86 servers, competes with Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell but lags both in market share. + http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-23/lenovo-to-buy-ibm-server-unit-for-2-3-billion-amid-pc-slump.html "[S]egment’s gross margin -- the percentage of sales remaining after taking out production costs -- also is getting squeezed. It fell 3.5 percentage points to 36 percent last year. That compares with an 89 percent margin for its software business."

The market, the free market rewards virtue, entrepreneurship, the effort to better one self.

Spillover effect

eWeek Europe reports that in a survey of consumers conducted by enterprise software maker Sybase, one of the questions asked respondents which tasks they would be most likely to perform if they owned a tablet device such as the iPad. More than half (52 percent) said that they’d use it for conducting work, while another 20 percent said they’d use it for business presentations.

Nearly three-quarters of the smartphone users surveyed said they believed smartphones and devices such as the iPad led to greater productivity at work and, overall, expressed a desire for greater access to productivity-enhancing tools.

Enterprise Collaborative Networking