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這是 Economist Espresso 欄目的第45篇精選文章：

Opening the box: Dropbox goes public

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Opening the box: Dropbox goes public

This week the cloud-storage company is expected to stage its initial public offering. The ten-year-old company is one of Silicon Valley’s highest-profile “unicorns”—the herd of startups privately valued at over $1bn.

Dropbox’s IPO is significant for two reasons. First, it will show whether investors’ appetite for loss-making tech firms is strong. Last year several, including Snap, Cloudera and Blue Apron, went public but underperformed the broader market. Dropbox might list with a market value of around $7.5bn, below its last private valuation of $10bn.

It will also test whether a startup can truly compete with giants. Dropbox has grown impressively, with sales of more than $1.1bn in 2017. But it is in the shadow of huge tech firms like Apple and Google, which are busily bulking up their own cloud businesses.

Tech-watchers have speculated that a giant might bid for Dropbox. That depends on how the company performs in the year ahead.

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