Box shares started trading today on the New York Stock Exchange, about ten months after the cloud storage and app company filed to go public. Shares rose 65% despite the company's non-existent profitability thanks to high sales and marketing costs.
Box closed the day valued at $2.8 billion.
But everyone was really happy about it! It's 2015's first big tech IPO. Also Box's co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie, who is Silicon-Valley-famous for his twitter quips, (sometimes) big hair, and colorful sneakers.
IPOs: If your stock shoots up, you left money on the table. If it drops, you screwed investors. If it's flat, you're boring.
Tomorrow's Schedule: 7 AM: Wake up, drink lots of coffee 8 AM: Do this and that 10 AM: Work
Thanks to the amazing employees, customers, partners & investors who got us here! Now, I must take a nap.* *Not a forward looking statement
Levie has spent a lot of time at the head of growing, but still private company (Box was founded in 2005), which has won him a lot of goodwill among investors and other tech executives who've gone through the process.
Like Drew Houston, the CEO of Dropbox, the other hot storage startup with that has "Box" in its name.
Congrats @levie and team at $BOX!
Or Y Combinator president Sam Altman
coming out of my twitter blackout for one tweet only to say CONGRATS @levie and @BoxHQ!
And HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah
Congrats, @levie on the IPO. Hope you had a nice nap and got some rest. It's all easy-going from here. :)
And the head of the biggest and most profitable software company of all time, Satya Nadella. (Funny enough, some think Box will get acquired or crushed by Microsoft.)
Congrats @levie on your #BoxIPO!
Speaking of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise business, the head of if, Scott Guthrie, had an unflashy, utiltiarian congratulations.
@levie congrats Aaron!
Former Windows boss Steve Sinofsky spread the congratulations all around to the company's investors.
Congratulations to @dfjjosh. Made the bet when @boxhq was just 3 people!
Best time for messaging? While on the NYSE floor and @SquawkAlley way to go @levie and team.
Venture capitalist and early Twitter investor Chris Sacca got in on the #congratstwitter action
@levie Hell yeah, man. Congratulations have been a long time coming.
Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane, whose company was the hottest enterprise software IPO of last year, wondered what took so long.
@levie about effing time. But welcome to the club. And congrats on a fantastic opening!
Former Facebook executive and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya
This: $BOX. Congrats @levie and @mamoonha
Anthony Noto has seen tech companies face the public market from every angle: he was Twitter's lead banker during its IPO and now serves as its CFO (he also was going to work for the hedge fund that owns a big chunk of Box but joined Twitter instead).
Congrats to Aaron @levie and the $BOX team! Huge milestone to celebrate
.8% of all of Apple CEO Tim Cook's tweets have been for congratulating Aaron Levie and Box.
Congratulations to @levie and the Box team on their IPO and for creating a great company!