Dropbox, the company best known for nearly rescuing a ragtag group of emoji from a teenager’s phone, has filed for an initial public offering.
Dropbox, the company best known for nearly rescuing a ragtag group of emoji from a teenager’s phone, has filed for an initial public offering.
Famously told it was doomed to failure by the late Steve Jobs, Dropbox reportedly began preparing paperwork for its long-rumored IPO back in July, which it kept under wraps until today. Following much the same plan of action, teaser trailers for The Emoji Movie cropped up around December of 2016, seven months ahead of its July 28 wide release.
Dropbox is seeking to raise $500 million—a dollar for each of its registered users—an order of magnitude more than the budget of The Emoji Movie, in which Dropbox was mentioned repeatedly and ham-fistedly, only to have its significance to the plot immediately stripped away by an antagonistic robot who kidnaps the film’s hero, Gene Meh (TJ Miler), from the cloud.
“Life would be a lot better if everyone could access their most important information anytime from any device. Over the past decade, we’ve largely accomplished that mission,” the IPO’s prospectus summary notes, “but along the way we recognized that for most of our users, sharing and collaborating on Dropbox was even more valuable.” That’s a sentiment the protagonists of The Emoji Movie —who learn to work together to accomplish their goals and self-actualize while giving back to the community they exist in—could almost certainly empathize with.
Unlike the profitable Emoji Movie ($86m domestic gross), Dropbox continues to lose money after 10 years in operation, though the company is showing impressive growth of late. Nothing compared to the personal growth of Gene Meh, Jailbreak, and the residents of Textopolis who recognize that just being yourself is what life is all about—but growth nonetheless.
Dropbox’s SEC filing can be read here, and the script of The Emoji Movie (2017), where Dropbox is mentioned by name over half a dozen times, can be read here .
