[barleyworth]

Box has a negative P/E, so I'll assume you're talking about P/S here.

You seem to be suggesting that companies within an industry should all have the same price-to-sales multiple. (Or at least they'd "better have" the same multiple. Or else?) This is because, while all the companies have different quantitative and qualitative aspects, the mutual competition "effectively cancels out" those differences when it comes to valuation.

Snark aside, here are things that actually matter for valuing these sorts of companies:

* cost to acquire a customer (Box's S-1 notoriously had sales+marketing which was greater than their revenue)

* customer churn, or relatedly, lifetime value per customer

* subscriber growth

* margins (i.e. storage costs)

Perhaps your conclusion about the relative values of these companies is correct, but the fact that you're not mentioning any of the points above means that it's very difficult to give any credibility to your argument.

[mankash666]

Fair points. Though if Dropbox were significantly better at any of the metrics you enumerate, they would've drummed up the media. And, they'd be in a hurry to go public.