$12 billion Dropbox has an unusual company value that inspired employees to show up to Times Square in silly hats on IPO day
- Dropbox's New York City team surprised their San Francisco colleagues on the day of the IPO by showing up outside the New York Stock Exchange wearing silly hats.
- Dropbox says that it was representative of one of the company's more unusual company values: "Cupcake."
- To Dropbox, "Cupcake" means to "surprise and delight," whether its customers or colleagues.
When Dropbox's San Francisco-based team showed up at the NASDAQ on Friday for the company's very successful initial public offering, they were in for a surprise.
Staffers from the company's New York City offices were waiting just outside in Times Square, all wearing matching Dropbox beanies, to celebrate with their colleagues on the big day. And if you ask Dropbox why those employees did it - or at least, why they chose to wear those beanies - you get an unusual response: "Cupcake."
To Dropbox, "Cupcake" means "surprise and delight," and "finding creative ways to make our users (and each other) smile." And it's one of the company's core values, to the point where Dropbox considers "Cupcake" to be critical to its success.
Here's how Dropbox's S-1 filing describes "Cupcake:"
Surprise and delight each other and our users. Cupcake is about adding an authentic, human touch to everything we do. But more than that, it's about finding creative ways to make our users (and each other) smile-whether it's our quirky illustrations, or bringing a roving ice cream cart to the office to celebrate a product launch. We believe that the magic we create together as Dropboxers translates into magic for our users.
This "surprise and delight" attitude is an integral part of Dropbox's culture, chief operating officer Dennis Woodside told Business Insider while recounting the event on Friday afternoon.
"'Cupcake' is, as [CEO Drew Houston] says, whatever you make of it," Woodside told Business Insider in the hours after first trade - and the surprise appearance of the NYC office. "It's like that kind of surprise. We didn't expect it. We didn't know they were going to be there. It's like surprise and delight, I would say, is part of Cupcake," he said.
The official filing actually includes a clip-art of a smiling cupcake to illustrate the point. It looks like this:
Including clip-art in an official SEC filing, it turns out, is not common practice.
"Apparently it was revolutionary for the SEC. They didn't know how to handle it," a spokesperson for Dropbox said about the image.
Dropbox is currently valued at around $12 billion, following a pop on its first day of trading.