DropBox : the next big thing ?

Silicon Valley has never been this optimistic at the same time careful in financially upgrading out of box ideas. Recently when Valley pundits predicted the over cash flow and irregular distribution of financial support to the ventures, it only turned out to be hoax call as valley is growing organically.

Here is one more promising web-sharing (not web hosting) company which is being seen as the potential venture and in simple words a money maker, through the eyes of PE firms and VCs. According to the company, Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, two MIT students tired of emailing files to themselves to work from more than one computer.

Today, more than 25 million people across every continent use Dropbox to always have their stuff at hand, share with family and friends, and work on team projects. the company is in expansion mode and hiring technical guys at the lightning pace.

Dropbox is expected to make $100 million in revenue this year and Fortune valuated the company somewhere between $1-2 Billion.

Dropbox provides free hosting till 2GB and is having clear revenue model which makes it even more promising venture.

Thogh dropbox needs to be cautious at certain fields. First of all Dropbox's paid service would get tough competition from the free hosting services. Besudes this Dropbox emphasizes on "Sharing" but unfortunately its multimedia file could be not be shared with social media platforms as there is no sync available.

Groupon valuation : a bubble ?

Analysts are questioning the $20bn-plus valuation being attached to Groupon, the loss making discount site that has announced its plans to go public.

Groupon confirmed on Thursday its plans to go public, raising an estimated $750m on the US stock markets at a price that could value it at potentially over $20bn (£12.23bn). The company will become the latest social media firm to go public, feeding an investor frenzy for new technology companies.

But after looking over the financial details released this week, some analysts are sceptical about the long-term prospects for the shares. "It's just not a rational valuation," said Sucharita Mulpuru, analyst at Forrester Research. "It's not based on logic, it's based on whatever the highest bidder will pay for the company."

David Menlow, founder and president of IPOfn Online, said: "At some point there is going to be a clear separation between fact and fiction. At the moment, investors can't get past the fiction." Menlow added that investors were making decisions based on "emotion" but that reality would eventually set in.

Groupon, a three-year-old Chicago-based start-up, released some figures with its filing announcement. In 2009, Groupon's first full year of business, the firm brought in $30.47m in revenues. In 2010 revenues reached $713.4m, according to its IPO filing.

The company sells coupons offering discounts to local businesses, taking a cut in any money the business makes. It has 83m subscribers across 43 countries, according to its filing, and has 7,000 employees – half of which are in sales. But for all its huge revenues, Groupon is loss-making and candidly admits it intends to continue losing more money. The company recorded a loss of $413.4m last year, and lost another $113.9m in the first quarter of 2011.

Last December, Google offered $6bn for Groupon, a figure many analysts described as absurd at the time. Now it looks set to be valued at more than three times that figure.

Mulpuru said Groupon has "spent $1bn to make $700m. How do they expect to make $2bn? None of their competition has gone away."

Alan Patrick, co-founder of analyst Broadsight, said Groupon's value was based on a belief that it could dominate the market for online discounts. "Neither of these capabilities are proven, both are risky, the long-term market is a low margin one – but right now is bubble time."

Groupon founder, Andrew Mason, made clear the risks the company faces in a letter to "potential shareholders". Mason warned that Groupon's path will have "twists and turns, moments of brilliance and other moments of sheer stupidity". The company may make financial sacrifices in pursuit of "ambitious bets on our future". Mason wrote: "Life is too short to be a boring company."

Tech guys valuation

Its not surprising that the valuation of tech companies are ranging in millions of dollars within a short period of time. But the geeks behind these ventures are making big moolahs too and their personal stake in those ventures are sky-rocketing. Gone are the days when you needed to complete education to make it big in the industry. The wealth of colllege dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, are in billions of dollars have become the prominent examples of this fact.

Last few years saw many new ventures making it big in the internet and services sector. Companies like "Facebook" and "twitter" revolutionised the social networking, while "digg", "stumble upon" and "delicious" have organised the user's internet activities.

Here is the list of few tech companies with their per founder wealth.