Big bet on a promising Internet company run

Some research-savvy venture capitalists are making a big bet on a promising Internet company run by a 26-year-old college dropout in Palo...

Big bet on a promising Internet company run

SAN FRANCISCO — Some innovation-savvy venture capitalists are making a big bet on a promising Internet company run by a 26-year-old college dropout in Palo Alto, Calif. Only this time, the object of their financial affection isn't Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

Box is based in Palo Alto, as Facebook has been for near seven years. Its CEO, Aaron Levie, is 26 years old, like Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard University afterwards his sophomore year in 2004 and moved to Silicon Valley to focus on building what turned into the Internet's biggest social-networking site.

Since at the time, Box has raised about $80 million, including the $48 million round of financing announced Thursday. Its backers are convinced that the company's service has a good chance to become an indispensable business tool.

Box users upload various documents and other content to the company's computer centers. Storing information this way, a concept often called "cloud computing," means it can be called up on any device with an Internet connection. That makes it easier to share with co-workers and other people.

Box's focus on the enterprise market makes it seem more mundane than some of the other investments that Andreessen Horowitz has made in more widely used Internet services — a group that, otherwise Facebook, includes Twitter, Zynga, Skype and Groupon. It as well means there probably won't be any Oscar-nominated movies made about Box, as Zuckerberg got with "The Social Network," and Levie seems unlikely to be named Time magazine's person of the year, as Zuckerberg was last year.

Without providing specifics, Box says its revenue tripled last year. Levie thinks Box's current payroll of 140 employees will double within the then 18 months.