By Acquiring This Company You Never Heard Of, Aaron Levie Just Punched Dropbox In The Gut
 Box |
In his second-ever acquisition, Box CEO Aaron Levie snatched up Crocodoc.
You probably never heard of Crocodoc. It's a seven-person startup and class of 2007 Y-Combinator alum that raised a little over $1 million.
Terms of the acquisition were not announced but we bet the team made a pretty penny. That's because, despite its small size, Crocodoc had a handful of huge customers including Box rival Dropbox.
It also named Microsoft's Yammer, LinkedIn, education site Edmodo and SAP as customers.
Crocodoc offers HTML5 technology that lets you embed documents into websites. When you see a Crocodoc document, it looks similar to Scribd where you view the document inside a window.
All seven members will join Box. Founder Ryan Damico will become Box's new Director of Platform. Levie will integrate Crocodoc into the basic Box platform.
UPDATED: Box does not intend to shut down Crocodoc, the company told Business Insider:
"The Crocodoc technology will become a core part of the Box platform, and we'll continue to serve all their existing customers while also investing heavily in the roadmap to bring in new ones. It is very likely, however, that the branding of Crocodoc will change," a company spokesperson said.
Even so, this was a brilliant way to leapfrog Dropbox. Dropbox must now use tech owned by one of its biggest competitors or go in search of a replacement.
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