Box.net, a web-based file storage and sharing startup I’ve only briefly written about in the past, made an announcement today that they’ve managed to raise $1.5 million in Series A funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Additionally, they claim to have crossed the 500,000 registered user mark (as a quick comparison, Meebo crossed 500,000 users earlier this month as well).
Box.net shares a simple business model which I’m very fond of: the only limitation they’ve set is storage. You can get 1GB for free (as if your 2GB GMail account isn’t enough), 5GB for $50/year, or 15GB for $100/year. With 500,000 users, they must have a fair amount of people paying for extra storage, and this could easily make them profitable.
The round is led by Josh Stein, who will now join the board of Box.net and is also a lead investor in local event startup Eventful. Someone else who can be found on their board is one of their early angel investors Mark Cuban.
For a lifespan of barely 7 months, Box.net has done quite well for itself. While the idea of web-based file storage has circumvented lately and the average consumer is increasingly becoming aware of such technologies, I think this space still has a long way to go.
For starters, the upload speeds offered in consumer broadband plans have to get better, and until then, this is an option which will only be touched by the enterprise and the high-end early adopter consumer market.
[tags]Box.net, Funding, Investments, File Storage[/tags]
