For all that time, it has been best known for coming in handy when you had to send someone an email attachment that was too big for the company email server, or even for Gmail.īut time has moved on, and now there are so many file-sharing services in the cloud - Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and the like - that sending large attachments has kind of become beside the point. Now I want it in the cloud-but I don’t want to give up the control I had on my laptop.It may have been awhile since you’ve thought about YouSendIt, the cloud-based file-sharing service that has been around since the middle of the last decade. It used to be all of my data was on my laptop. I really do believe that people want their cake and they want to eat it, too. There are all kinds of permissions like that. Also, to expire a file after download, or password protect a single file. Our most popular feature is “read receipt”. Security to an end user means control and it means tracking. The number one thing you’ll see more from us is making sure our products go beyond just storage-sharing with professional capabilities that our customers want. What’s next for Hightail? Now that you have a broader company name what other products or features will you add? For Dropbox to continue on the growth trajectory they seek they need to go upmarket, where we and Box have been. We’re going to focus on different aspects of how we go to market and different product features. Are they competitors? Sure, but they’re different. Like Aaron Levie said, three years ago people talked about LinkedIn and Facebook competing with each other in the social networking space. We have focused on the professional use case for many years. Is that something that could work for Hightail? Western Digital Capital led this round, but all existing investors participated.ĭropbox recently announced a more integrated approach to accessing business and personal files. And we are continuing with product differentiation. We also bought a small company called adeptCloud. Internationally we just recently started to invest and hired our first employees in Australia and the U.K. We’ve doubled the size of our enterprise sales team in the last 90 days. It’s been three years since we last raised money. This has been a frothy category, but we’ve tried to be very judicious in how we grow our business, and grow smartly relative to our revenue growth. There was some money in the bank when I got here. This is the first round of funding you’ve raised since taking on the CEO job. There are a bunch of new faces around here. We also have new people on the team, including our new CFO. In a crowded market, it’s critical to differentiate. Control and tracking is an area we had but continue to invest in. E-sign is a capability that we continue to enhance. Switching to unlimited storage was a big change. What other changes have you made since taking on the job? Our rebrand has far exceeded our expectations. YouSendIt was so descriptive-to a fault. When we changed the name we were already offering e-signature and storage and we had 43 million registered users. We will stop using it soon, probably by the end of the year. Fortune caught up with Garlinghouse to find out more about his company’s rebranding efforts, the competition and what he plans to do with $34 million.įortune: At what point will you stop referencing your former name, YouSendIt? At the helm of the company’s efforts to revive itself is newish CEO Brad Garlinghouse, a former Yahoo! ( YHOO ) exec who came on board about 18 months ago.
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