2/24/2018 S-1 Table of Contents BUSINESS Our Business Our modern economy runs on knowledge. Today, knowledge lives in the cloud as digital content, and Dropbox is a global collaboration platform where more and more of this content is created, accessed, and shared with the world. We serve more than 500 million registered users across 180 countries. Dropbox was founded in 2007 with a simple idea: 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—but along the way we recognized that for most of our users, sharing and collaborating on Dropbox was even more valuable than storing files. Our market opportunity has grown as we’ve expanded from keeping files in sync to keeping teams in sync. Today, Dropbox is well positioned to reimagine the way work gets done. We’re focused on reducing the inordinate amount of time and energy the world wastes on “work about work”— tedious tasks like searching for content, switching between applications, and managing workflows. We want to free up our users to spend more of their time on the work that truly matters. Our mission is to unleash the world’s creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working. We believe the need for our platform will continue to grow as teams become more fluid and global, and content is increasingly fragmented across incompatible tools and devices. Dropbox breaks down silos by centralizing the flow of information between the products and services our users prefer, even if they’re not our own. By solving these universal problems, we’ve become invaluable to our users. The popularity of our platform drives viral growth, which has allowed us to scale rapidly and efficiently. We’ve built a thriving global business with over 11 million paying users. Our revenue was $603.8 million, $844.8 million, and $1,106.8 million in 2015, 2016, and 2017, respectively, representing an annual growth rate of 40% and 31%, respectively. We generated net losses of $325.9 million, $210.2 million, and $111.7 million in 2015, 2016, and 2017, respectively. We also generated positive free cash flow of $137.4 million and $305.0 million in 2016 and 2017, respectively, compared to negative free cash flow of $63.9 million in 2015. Our Users We’re constantly inspired by the diverse ways people use Dropbox to bring their ideas to life and achieve their missions faster. Here are just a few examples: • Nobel Prize­winning researchers sync data with collaborators to speed development of new scientific breakthroughs. • Designers for a sustainable apparel company iterate on new designs and coordinate store openings. • A commercial construction company shares blueprints with subcontractors on job sites and sends bids to prospective clients. • A Fortune 500 online travel company keeps its global workforce connected with business partners around the world. • Pro bono lawyers at a refugee assistance organization collect and share information across continents to save lives. 92 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1467623/000119312518055809/d451946ds1.htm 100/235