Dropbox co-founders Drew Houston (left) and Arash Ferdowski. (Dropbox Photo)

Dropbox, one of the first cloud-based file-storage services to gain traction among consumers and businesses, has filed to go public with the release of its S-1 statement Friday. It is currently looking to raise $500 million.

The filing, which comes weeks after Dropbox initially filed for an IPO under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s confidential process, reveals that Dropbox revenue has grown strongly over the last three years, from $604 million at the end of 2015 to $1.1 billion at the end of last year. The company now has 11 million paying customers, up from 6.5 million paying customers at the end of 2015.

Dropbox is still losing money. It recorded a net loss of $112 million during 2017, but that’s a significant improvement upon the $326 million loss it recorded in 2015. The company is generating cash, however, recording $305 million in free cash flow during 2017.

Dropbox will probably always be compared with Box, its file-storage rival with roots on Mercer Island that went public in 2015. Box had $124 million in 2014 yearly revenue before it went public, but lost $169 million that year. Box’s stock has been down ever since that IPO in early 2015, but in recent weeks has caught up to its opening-day price.

Some high-level stats:

  • Dropbox has over 500 million registered users across 180 countries.
  • In 2017, the average revenue per paying user was $111.91.
  • Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO, owns the single-largest stake in Dropbox at 25.3 percent.
  • Sequoia Capital has the largest non-executive stake in the company at 23.2 percent. Accel Partners and T. Rowe Price are the other named institutional investors with large stakes.
  • Dropbox posted a 90 percent retention rate across individuals and business customers in 2017.

And, in honor of the event, here’s what some Hacker News dude said about Dropbox 11 years ago:

Editor’s note: This post was updated several times Friday afternoon as more information became available.

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