Box projected to double revenue to $200M in 2014

Box ramps up revenue as it nears its IPO

As Box gets closer to its highly anticipated IPO (its secret IPO—shhh), word has it that the company is en route to double its 2013 revenue this year. Unnamed insiders told Bloomberg that the company is on track to rake in $200 million in 2014, after CEO Aaron Levie told AllThingsD in May of last year that the company was projected to top $100 million in 2013.

Box declined to comment on the report.

The news comes just weeks after the company confidentially filed for its IPO under a provision of the JOBS Act that allows companies generating less than $1 billion in annual revenue to file secretly. Those companies don’t have to disclose any information related to their business until 21 days before their roadshow.

Box currently boasts 25 million users and is serving some 200,000 businesses. Late last year, the company raised $100 million in a late-stage round at a valuation of $2 billion. All told, Box has raised $414 million from Mark Cuban, DFJ, US Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Scale Venture Partners, NEA, The Social+Capital Partnership, General Atlantic, and more.

But will Box’s first dibs on IPO pull it out from under big brother Dropbox’s shadow? Dropbox is said to have some 200 million users, which is 10 times that of its 2010 count, along with four million businesses. Additionally, Dropbox is believed to have generated over $200 million in 2013, up 20-fold from the $12 million it was generating in 2010. Last month, Dropbox confirmed that it had raised $350 million in a new round at a $10 billion valuation.

Box CEO Aaron Levie himself said in January of last year that a 2014 IPO was likely, and that it would come after a series of steps to expand Box’s international reach. Box has since opened offices in Germany and France, in addition to London. In September, Levie said Japan is the next major market for Box, along with Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand. Levie also estimated at the time that Box would have 1,000 employees by the end of 2013.

The Box IPO is expected to raise some $500 million.

“Our growth started to rapidly increase in the post-PC era, where these new kinds of applications and new kinds of services became more important than ever,” said Levie at a Bloomberg conference in June 2013.

Box was founded in 2005 by Levie and Dylan Smith, both of whom were still in college at the time. After raising some seed money from Mark Cuban, the two hit the road and moved their operations to Silicon Valley.