Dropbox has no shortage of fans or users these days — their stellar wins at the Crunchies are proof of that — and now the cloud storage service is leaning on them to test an experimental new build of the Dropbox Android app.

While the thrill of being on the bleeding edge is probably enough for some people to take the plunge, the real meat of the experimental build comes in the form of the new auto upload feature for photos and videos. It’s pretty much exactly what the name implies: as soon as you snap a photo or take a video with your Android device, it automatically gets uploaded to your account. And in usual Dropbox fashion, it just works.

I was actually a bit surprised to see how well the feature worked right out of the gate. Once you breeze through the app’s new splash screens and start taking pictures, it takes only seconds for your shots to start trickling into your account. The 180MB file size limit has been given the axe too, so that Oscar-worthy film you’re putting together on your Galaxy S II should make the transition just fine too.

So what’s in it for you, aside from the ability to immediately shove your media into the cloud? More free storage, that’s what.

For every 500 MB of photos or videos that gets uploaded, another 500 MB will be added to your Dropbox account. Provided you stick with the process long enough, you’ll eventually walk away with 5GB more space than you had coming into it. Not bad Dropbox, not bad at all.

Dropbox just kicked off a similar campaign on their forums to test their slew of desktop clients, but motivated users shouldn’t bother trying to double-dip in attempt to snag 10 GB of storage. If you’re content to do a spot of beta testing in exchange for some nifty features, feel free to download the .apk right here.

Clearly controversy is swirling around web lockers and online storage companies in the wake of the Federal swoop on Megaupload, but if it all goes wrong rest assured that DropBox founder and CEO Drew Houston has a second career to fall back on.

The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (or just “Davos” to those in the know) is a great place for the world’s millionaires and billionaires to loosely affiliate with each-other (as Paul Simon might have put it) and part of that looseness extends to the Piano Bar of the Hotel Europe in the tiny – but 5-star-hotel-packed – village.

A short snow-bound walk past the security checkpoint teaming with soldiers, you can climb the stairs to the hotel bar where Piano singer Barry croons AOR hits most of these magnates will fondly remember. Occasionally he hands the mic over to a willing Karaoke singer, and last night Houston took up the challenge.

His rendition of Rocket Man is pretty good, so we’d like to re-assure anyone concerned that should DropBox find itself shut down by the Feds and Houston’s $400 million net worth (according to Forbes) is decimated by legal fees, Drew can always pick up tips at the Piano Bar in the Hotel Europe.

In a conversation with WIRED UK’s David Rowan on stage at the DLD Conference in Germany, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston acknowledged that he did in fact have a “great meeting” with the late Steve Jobs in 2009.

Houston said about the get-together that Jobs had heard of them and asked to meet with him. Even though he was generally gracious, Houston said, Jobs expressed that he felt Dropbox was more of a feature than a product or business and gave him a “bit of a hard time” about that.

Jobs went on to float an eventual acquisition by Apple, but Houston said he did not name a price, at least not at the time. Forbes reported earlier that Dropbox ended up turning down a “nine-digit acquisition offer” from Apple.

Dropbox now has 50 million+ users saving billions of files daily, and is valued at $4 billion.

Not bad for a company that one of the world’s most brilliant minds ever once called a feature.

Also check out our Founder Stories series featuring Houston:

On Pitching Dropbox: “Tom Cruise In Minority Report Is Not Carrying Around A Thumb Drive”

Drew Houston: “Dropbox Users Save A Billion Files Every Three Days”

How Dropbox Got Its First 10 Million Users

Houston: “In 18 Months, You Are Going To See Little Dropbox Buttons Everywhere”

Update: Tickets are now sold out. Be sure to keep your eye out for ticket giveaways and for when we release our next batch of tickets.

The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.

For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks this year. You’ll also find Best Social App, the NYC-dominated category of Best Shopping App, Best New Startup and the year’s best VC’s and Angel Investors. Newcomers like TaskRabbit’s Leah Busque and Keith Rabois for his angel investments (Airbnb, LinkedIn, Yammer, Path, YouTube) made the list of finalists, as well as industry favorites such as Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Pincus and Ron Conway.

There are some pretty good match-ups this year. Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline for Best Social App, along with the New New Twitter, Instagram, and Path 2.0). The Kindle Fire is competing with the iPad 2 for Best New Device. And Pinterest, Turntable.fm, Nest, Fab, and Codecademy are all vying for Best New Startup (even though two of those were complete pivots). LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is up for Angel of the Year. His seed investment in Zynga is worth 160 times what he paid for it. But AngelList founders Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi are also finalists in the category for helping to democratize angel investing, along with Conway, Rabois, Y Combinator’s Paul Graham, and Kevin Rose (who has a killer portfolio that includes Twitter, Foursquare, Zynga, and Square). Who will win?

Everyone is eligible and encouraged to vote. The rules state that you may vote once per day, per award category, until voting closes on Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:59pm PST. There are 20 award categories open for voting, recognizing the top accomplishments across a variety of fields and roles. If you are one of the finalists, create a badge and get your community excited about this honor and get them to vote for you. Winners will be announced on January 31, live at the Crunchies.

In addition to today’s announcement of the Finalists, we are happy to release our next batch of tickets through Eventbrite. The release begins now, so act fast and get them while you can.

Here are your Finalists:

Best Technology Achievement (2010 winner: Google Self Driving Cars)
Lytro (Related posts)
NFC (Related posts)
OnLive (Related posts)
Siri (Related posts)
Tesla Flat Pack Battery (Related posts)

Best Social Application (2010 winner: DailyBooth)
Facebook Timeline (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Google+ (Related posts)
The New New Twitter (Related posts)
Path 2.0 (Related posts)

Best Shopping Application (2010 winner: Groupon)
Birchbox (Related posts)
Fab (Related posts)
Gilt Groupe (Related posts)
Lot18 (Related posts)
Warby Parker (Related posts)

Best Mobile Application (2010 winner: Google Mobile Maps for Android)
Evernote (Related posts)
Flipboard (Related posts)
Pandora (Related posts)
Spotify (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)
TaskRabbit (Related posts)

Best Location Application (New category for 2011)
Airbnb (Related posts)
Foursquare (Related posts)
Grindr (Related posts)
RunKeeper (Related posts)
Uber (Related posts)

Best Tablet Application (2010 winner: Flipboard)
djay (Related posts)
Eventbrite At the Door (Related posts)
Fotopedia (Related posts)
GarageBand (Related posts)
Netflix (Related posts)
StumbleUpon (Related posts)

Best Design (2010 winner: gogobot)
Gojee (Related posts)
Orchestra (Related posts)
Path 2.0 (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Quora (Related posts)

Best Bootstrapped Startup (2010 winner: addmired)
Github (Related posts)
Imgur (Related posts)
Instapaper (Related posts)
Onesheet (Related posts)
Tap Tap Tap (Camera+) (Related posts)

Best Cloud Service (New category for 2011)
Asana (Related posts)
Box (Related posts)
CloudFlare (Related posts)
Dropbox (Related posts)
Okta (Related posts)
Twilio (Related posts)

Best International Startup (2010 winner: Viki)
Badoo (Related posts)
Klarna (Related posts)
Peixe Urbano (Related posts)
Rovio (Related posts)
SoundCloud (Related posts)
Wonga (Related posts)

Best Clean Tech Startup (2010 winner: SolarCity)
Alta Energy (Related posts)
Array Power (Related posts)
EcoATM (Related posts)
EcoMotors (Related posts)
Hara (Related posts)

Best New Device (2010 winner: iPad)
Galaxy Nexus (Related posts)
iPad 2 (Related posts)
iPhone 4S (Related posts)
Kindle Fire (Related posts)
Nest (Related posts)

Best Time Sink (2010 winner: Cityville)
Modern Warfare 3 (Related posts)
Quora (Related posts)
Skyrim (Related posts)
Turntable.fm (Related posts)
Words With Friends (Related posts)

Biggest Social Impact (New category for 2011)
Charity: Water (Related posts)
Khan Academy (Related posts)
Kickstarter (Related posts)
Practice Fusion (Related posts)
Twitter (Related posts)

Angel of the Year (2010 winner: Paul Graham)
Ron Conway (Related posts)
Paul Graham (Related posts)
Reid Hoffman (Related posts)
Keith Rabois (Related posts)
Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi (AngelList) (Related posts for Naval) (Related posts for Babak)
Kevin Rose (Related posts)

VC of the Year (2010 winner: Yuri Milner)
Marc Andreessen & Ben Horowitz (Related posts for Marc) (Related posts for Ben)
Matt Cohler (Related posts)
Vinod Khosla (Related posts)
Aileen Lee (Related posts)
Yuri Milner (Related posts)
David Sze (Related posts)

Founder of the Year (2010 winner: Mark Pincus)
Leah Busque (Task Rabbit) (Related posts)
Brian Chesky (Airbnb) (Related posts)
Jack Dorsey (Square, Twitter) (Related posts)
Susan Feldman & Ali Pincus (One Kings Lane) (Related posts for Susan) (Related posts for Ali)
Drew Houston (Dropbox) (Related posts)

CEO of the Year (2010 winner: Andrew Mason)
Dick Costolo (Twitter) (Related posts)
Daniel Ek (Spotify) (Related posts)
Phil Libin (Evernote) (Related posts)
Mark Pincus (Zynga) (Related posts)
Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn) (Related posts)

Best New Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Quora)
Codecademy (Related posts)
Fab (Related posts)
Nest (Related posts)
Pinterest (Related posts)
Turntable.fm (Related posts)

Best Overall Startup of 2011 (2010 winner: Twitter)
Dropbox (Related posts)
Instagram (Related posts)
Gilt Groupe (Related posts)
Spotify (Related posts)
Square (Related posts)
Tumblr (Related posts)

5th Annual Crunchies Awards
Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
201 Van Ness Ave.
San Francisco, CA

7:30pm – midnight – Awards Ceremony and After Party
A night of celebration with festive attire.

Our sponsors help make the Crunchies happen, if you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities during the ceremony or after-party, please contact Jeanne Logozzo at jeanne@techcrunch.com.

For press credentials, please fill out this request form and confirmations will be sent separately via email.

The new year is right around the corner, and many of us are in dire need of some organization. Luckily for all you fandroids out there, DropBox 2.0 has finally made its way onto the Android Market. The app has brand new features and a totally revamped layout.

You’ll find a little arrow to the right of each file in the app, which will then lead you to a pop-out menu. From there you can share, delete, and favorite, which is a brand new feature to DropBox. From the main menu, you’ll see three tabs up top including Dropbox, Uploads and the newly added Favorites.

Some files are put into Dropbox simply because they are pictures so cute, or documents so brag-worthy that you need them on all your devices (just in case the opportunity arises to show them off). Once a file is favorited, you can access it even without an internet connection because it’ll be saved straight to the device. That said, I’m willing to bet the Favorites tab will be oft-used.

Dropbox 2.0 also includes the ability to rename files straight from the app, along with bulk upload. Speaking of the Uploads tab, users are now able to upload from and export to local storage, which is a welcome addition.

Past that, you’ll also find a few bug fixes in the update which is pretty standard for a huge roll-out like this, along with support for ICS. (You G-Nex owners were worried there for a second, huh?)

If you’re looking to get more out of your Dropbox then head on over to the Android Market and start updating.

Merry Christmas!

[via IntoMobile]

Very very quietly (there is almost no Google footprint), investment bank and securities firm Goldman Sachs held its “Private Internet Company Conference” this week in Las Vegas. During the two-day conference, which lasted from November 29-30th, a gaggle of companies presented their business models to an elite audience composed of bankers, investors and peers.

Attendees listened to talks given by A16Z‘s Marc Andreessen and Square’s Keith Rabois (who gave the keynote on Tuesday night). SV Angel’s Ron Conway was also there, being himself. All in all the experience was very, very fun I heard. Makes sense.

So why hold a conference for early stage companies if you’re an IPO underwriter? Well, the event basically functions as an extremely foresighted form of lead generation. According to multiple people I spoke to, these are the 30 or so startups Goldman has designated as potential IPO candidates. And it wants to make a relationship as early on as possible, in case some of them actually do and need Goldman’s services in the process.

So who are these white-hot startups then? Well here you go! (I might be missing one or two, so if you’re on this list or know of someone who should be on this list, please email me and I will put you/them on if your story checks out.)

In alphabetical order:

• Airbnb
• Beachmint
• Beauchamp
• Birchbox
• Bluekai
• Badoo
• BOKU
• Box.net
• BranchOut
• Cloudflare
• Coupons.com
• DropBox
• Eventbrite
• Gogobot
• Hipmunk
• Instagram
• Jawbone
• Klout
• Narrative Science
• Ness computing
• Pinterest
• One Kings Lane
• Peixe Urbano
• Polyvore
• Quantcast
• Quora
• Rent The Runway
• Rue la la
• Rovio
• Shopkick
• Specific Media
• Survey Monkey
• Square
• TrialPay
• Trunk Club
• Tumblr
• Uber
• Warby Parker
• WePay
• Xoom
• ZocDoc
• Zoosk

Each startup presented for 30 min to an audience of about 60-80, except for the four or so smaller ones like Gogobot, who presented to all 500 people for 15 minutes. Goldman did a great job of curating the overall list, even though I would have added Spotify to the mix.

But that’s just me.

Update: Screencaps of the full agenda, below. Rumor has that Dropbox was held to be the most likely IPO candidate, by a consensus of conference chatter. And making the list for the Dropbox/IVP party on Tuesday night was a big deal, I’m hearing.

Top image via: Greekshares

By any measure Drew Houston and his Dropbox team are having a hugely successful run. In Houston’s final Founder Stories episode with TechCrunch editor, Erick Schonfeld, Houston says he plans to maintain this momentum by focusing on mobile, and just about everything else.

Houston says Dropbox has secured a new agreement with HTC, where it “is going to be baked into tens-of-millions of [Android] phones” and like Facebook, Dropbox plans to stamp its product on everything. “In 18-months you are going to see little Dropbox buttons everywhere.”

But will Dropbox’s strategy be strong enough to fend off popular sites like Instagram and Twitter, which also store digital content submitted by large user communities? Or put more bluntly “five years from now, will I even need Dropbox?” asks Schonfeld.

Houston believes the answer to both questions is yes.

“We can help you get stuff out of each of those little silos or little boxes and put them all in one place so that all that content can be more useful to you and we can help you share it and we can help you see it on your iPad or see it on your TV.”

We’ll see how it all plays out.

Until then, make sure to watch episodes I, II and III of Schonfeld’s interview with Houston.

Past episodes of Founder Stories featuring Eric Ries, Julia Hartz and Christopher Poole are here.

Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston has one of the hottest startups in the game. With $257.2 million in funding and a $4-billion valuation it’s poised to triple an already impressive user base of 45-millon. So when did Houston know he was sitting on something pretty? Erick Schonfeld finds out in episode III of Drew Houston’s Founder Stories interview.

Houston says there “were a couple of important inflection points.” The first occurred after Dropbox released a demo video that captured Y Combinator’s attention and helped Dropbox secure an invitation to join the exclusive startup program. Milestone two occurred a year later when Dropbox released a separate video on Digg during its private beta launch.

In that second video, Houston says his team layered “easter eggs… aimed at the Digg audience” into the otherwise mainstream presentation. The splash of creativity worked. Within 24-hours Dropbox “had 75,000 people signup for the wait-list.” They were expecting 15,000, tops.

Not wanting to risk testing a buggy product on all 75,000, Dropbox carefully screened who could kick around early versions by extending invites through “a Gmail style closed beta.”  Their strategy paid off. Just seven months after public launch Dropbox hit 1-million users. Roughly a year later they counted 10 million.

With success in hand, Houston offers this advice to founders: “Research what other companies have done” but be cognizant of the fact that “often what works for one company is just completely the wrong thing for another company.”

Make sure to check out the entire video for additional advice and watch episodes I and II of Houston’s interview with Schonfeld.

Past episodes of Founder Stories featuring Alexis Ohanian, Fred Wilson and Kevin Ryan are here.

Episode IV of this interview is coming up.

In episode II of Erick Schonfeld’s Founder Stories interview with Dropbox co-founder, Drew Houston, Houston describes how releasing a demo video to Hacker News during Dropbox’s early days catapulted his company into elite company.

“I hoped that the response would be good so that Paul [Graham] and Y Combinator would see it.” The response was better than good. Houston says the video held the top spot at “Hacker News for a couple of days” and it turns out the right people were watching. One viewer was Arash Ferdowsi, who was so impressed that he paired up with Houston as a partner. Houston also credits the video with helping him receive almost immediate and valuable feedback.

Asked if he was worried about copycats stealing the concept at the time – Houston responds, “It is easy for me to explain the idea, it is actually really hard to do it.”

Below, Houston takes us inside Y Combinator and describes how Paul Graham weighed in with key advice while Houston was under the Y Combinator wing. ”Our first sort of marketing attempt was like throwing spaghetti at a wall …we really struggled in terms of how to articulate this with investors because we had never really done that before, and Paul was really helpful to us in terms of distilling down the idea into a much shorter and sort of more compact presentation.”

Advice in hand, the team went before a room full of investors at Demo Day, where you get “waived like a piece of steak” and hit it out of the park by walking them through an admittedly risky demo that could have wiped-out their entire PowerPoint presentation.

Having survived the high-wire act, Houston says today, “Dropbox users save a billion files every three days.”

Make sure to watch the entire video for additional insights and be sure to catch the first episode of Schonfeld’s interview with Houston here.

Past episodes of Founder stories featuring Eric Ries, Fred Wilson and Dustin Moskovitz are here.

Episode III of this interview is coming up.

Dropbox co-founder, Drew Houston recently sat down with TechCrunch Editor, Erick Schonfeld to discuss the origins of Dropbox – a service that allows users to upload and access their files from virtually any device, anywhere. With $250-million in funding and 45-million users, Dropbox is shaking up the world of digital storage.

The roots of Dropbox were planted when Houston was a student at MIT. “You could sit down at any of tens-of-thousands of computers on campus and not only your files but your whole environment was just in front of you and kind of followed you around.” Then graduation hit and Houston says he was thrown “back to the stone age.” He had just launched a company but didn’t feel secure carrying it around in his jeans on a thumb drive.

Solving his own issue, Houston created Dropbox and pitched it to Y Combinator with the premise that “Tom Cruise in Minority Report is not carrying around a thumb drive.”

He was accepted.

Below, Houston briefly describes how he tested Dropbox – without actually releasing Dropbox. It’s a strategy Eric Ries recently wrote about on TechCrunch. 

Aware that releasing a flawed beta would result in customer backlash, Houston made and posted a video describing his software. “It turns out we got the same feedback from all of our prospective users that we would have gotten from putting code in their hands, except it was a ton less effort.”

Speaking of feedback, when asked about the “file folder structure” of Dropbox, which was created before the iPad, Houston says Dropbox will apply a “post-PC non-file and folder centric approach to everything” it does.

Make sure to check out the full video for additional insights.

Past episodes of Founder Stories, featuring conversations with Eric Ries, Scott Heiferman, and Fred Wilson are here.

Episode II of this interview is coming up.

Despite a couple big-name companies like Groupon and Zynga lining up for IPOs, the demand for private company stock on alternative exchanges keeps rising. Private stock transactions on SecondMarket in the first three quarters of 2011 totaled $435 million, a 73 percent increase over the same period last year. In the third quarter alone, there were $167 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket, up 49 percent from the second quarter.

Who is buying all of these shares? SecondMarket breaks it out in its third quarter report. Wealthy “accredited individuals” made up the largest share of buyers (63 percent by dollar amount), followed by asset managers (22.3 percent of transactions), hedge funds (7.8 percent), and venture capital funds (5.1 percent). VC funds became much more active on SecondMarket in the quarter, accounting for 17.5 percent of the transactions by number. Last quarter, VCs made up less than 1 percent of transactions (and only 0.2 percent by dollar amount).

On the seller’s side, former employees made up the bulk of completed transactions (64.5 percent). But current employees took the No.2 spot with 16.9 percent of transactions , nearly quadruple the 4.4 percent of transactions they represented in the second quarter. The number of transactions with investors selling doubled to 8.4 percent, signaling that secondary markets are becoming a more accepted liquidity valve for current employes and shareholders. Founders represented the smallest amount of transactions, at 3.6 percent, but that is up from 1.9 percent last quarter.

SecondMarket also tracks the “most watched” companies on its service, which is an indication of investor interest. The most watched companies didn’t change from last quarter: (Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga, Foursquare, Dropbox, etc.). But there is a new group of “rising stars.” These include Turntable, Jetsetter, and Klout. And then bubbling up just below the rising stars are the “newbies”: Pinterest, Billfloat, Firstwind, Proofpoint, and Zaarly. Hmm, is there a correlation between how much press a company gets and interest on SecondMarket?

Red-hot startup Dropbox — you know, the file syncing service that just raised $250 million at a $4 billion valuation — has announced something this week that’s getting slightly less attention than its massive funding round, but is exciting all the same: the company has released an improved version of its APIs, making the service better both in native apps (on mobile devices) and web apps alike.

Dropbox first launched its API in May 2010, and it’s been implemented in loads of mobile app since then. But it’s had a few issues that have been remedied with the new version of the API.

For one, it’s now adding support for ‘app folders’. Prior to this update, if you wanted to let a third-party app hook into your Dropbox account, you’d be giving it access to your entire account — which didn’t necessarily make sense for, say, a camera app. Now apps will be able to associate themselves with a single folder (which the user can move and rename as they’d like), without having to hand over the keys to the kingdom.

Likewise, security has now been beefed up using an authentication system that doesn’t require you to enter your credentials within a third party app itself. Instead, when you go to authenticate with an app, you’ll be swapped over to either the mobile web version of Dropbox or your native Dropbox app (Facebook and some other services use a similar mechanism).

The API also gives third party applications access to the versioning/revision system that Dropbox uses, which’ll let users jump back to previous versions of files and undelete them.

Finally, while the original version of the API was made primarily for native mobile apps, this new version works for web apps (including those on the desktop) as well.

Update: A previous version of this post said the security updates and other features applied to only mobile eapps, but they’re actually relevant to any app built using the Dropbox API (including web apps).

As we were reporting the news about Dropbox’s $250 million funding round, Forbes went live with a fascinating story, detailing how co-founders Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston turned down a “nine-digit” acquisition offer from Apple back in late 2009 when the company was only two years old.

The late Steve Jobs, Apple’s iconic co-founder and former CEO, reportedly led the first (actually, only) meeting and apparently told Dropbox’s founders that they should sell because Apple would crush the company with a competing product – the recently debuted iCloud service.

From the Forbes article (and cover story), written by Victoria Barret:

In December 2009 Jobs beckoned Houston (pronounced like the New York City street, not the Texas city) and his partner, Arash Ferdowsi, for a meeting at his Cupertino office. “I mean, Steve friggin’ Jobs,” remembers Houston, now 28. “How do you even prepare for that?” When Houston whipped out his laptop for a demo, Jobs, in his signature jeans and black turtleneck, coolly waved him away: “I know what you do.”

What Houston does is Dropbox, the digital storage service that has surged to 50 million users, with another joining every second. Jobs presciently saw this sapling as a strategic asset for Apple. Houston cut Jobs’ pitch short: He was determined to build a big company, he said, and wasn’t selling, no matter the status of the bidder (Houston considered Jobs his hero) or the prospects of a nine-digit price (he and Ferdowsi drove to the meeting in a Zipcar Prius). Jobs smiled warmly as he told them he was going after their market.

Read the full story here, it’s very much worth your time.

(Image via Flickr user Images_of_Money, with permission)

We knew it was in the works, and now Dropbox has confirmed that it has raised a massive round of funding. The company has landed $250 million in Series B financing (bringing its total of capital raised to $257.2 million). Last we heard the round values Dropbox at $4 billion.

Index Ventures led the round, with participation from a stellar list of new investors (Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners and Valiant Capital Partners). Early backers Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Hadi and Ali Partovi also participated in the round. Founded in 2007, Dropbox was initially jump-started at Y Combinator.

Update: they reportedly turned down Apple, and Steve Jobs himself, who wanted to buy Dropbox for a ‘nine-digit’ sum, back in late 2009.

Dropbox says it now has more than 45 million users saving one billion files every three days, and that it is poised to triple its user base this year.

The fresh money will be used for acquisitions, strategic partnerships and the recruitment of new people, the company said in a statement.

One of Dropbox’s main competitors, Box, also recently raised a monster round of financing, bringing its total capital raised to $162 million.

Dropbox Raises $250 Million in Series B Funding

More than 45 Million Users Saving One Billion Files Every Three Days

Dropbox, a service that lets people bring their documents, photos and videos everywhere and share them easily, announced today that it has completed a $250 million Series B financing. The company will use the funds to accelerate its rapid growth, make acquisitions, pursue strategic partnerships, and grow the team. Dropbox has more than 45 million users saving one billion files every three days, and is on track to triple its user base in 2011.

The financing was led by Index Ventures and includes participation from new investors Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners, RIT Capital Partners, and Valiant Capital Partners. Early investors Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, and Hadi and Ali Partovi also participated. Dropbox has received a total of $257.2 million in funding.

“Our goal has always been to build a service that hundreds of millions of people would love and trust. We’re inspired by the consumers and businesses who depend on Dropbox, and we will continue to make sure that the world’s devices, services, and apps work together seamlessly,” said Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox. “We’re thrilled to have such world-class investors joining forces with us.”

“We are delighted to have led this financing and believe Dropbox has the potential to become an iconic technology company,” said Danny Rimer, general partner at Index Ventures. “Over the past four years, Dropbox’s talented team has created a great service with a very strong business model, and we look forward to helping the company build upon this outstanding foundation.”

About Dropbox

The mission of Dropbox is to simplify life for people around the world. Dropbox lets people bring their docs, photos and videos everywhere and share them easily. The service has more than 45 million users in 175 countries saving one billion files every three days. Dropbox was founded in San Francisco in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi and has received a total of $257.2 million in funding.

A month ago, we revealed that Index Ventures will lead Dropbox’s new, massive funding round, which values the company at $4 billion. Now TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has revealed in a Tweet that venture firms Greylock and Benchmark Capital are also part of the round. We’ve also heard from sources that IVP is part of the round as well. We’re still unclear how large the round will be.

As Michael reported in August, the company was reportedly valued at one point at $5 billion or more. But the uncertainty in the financial markets and Dropbox’s desire to get specific investors on board resulted in a lower valuation.

We’ve also heard there’s a relatively large investor syndicate, so perhaps more firms will be participating in the round. Dropbox previously raised $7.2 million from Y Combinator, Hadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, Pejman Nozad, Accel Partners, and Sequoia.

Dropbox is finally moving to close that massive valuation venture round we’ve been talking about all summer. According to multiple sources, Index Ventures will lead the round, which values Dropbox at around $4 billion.

At some point I hope that the entire story comes out about this round. Nearly everyone in Silicon Valley has taken a look. There was early interest at valuations of $8 billion or more, although one source says that it may have been firms who threw out huge numbers just to get a look at the company’s financials. As of a couple of weeks ago I had “firm” information that the round would close at $5 billion or more.

As far as I can tell, that information was accurate at the time. But the valuation ended up lower. Why?

I’m hearing two reasons. The first is the U.S. government debt uncertainty and general financial market uncertainty, which has spooked VCs. The other reason, say sources, is that Dropbox really wanted the involvement of certain investors, and they needed to drop the price to get them on board.

There’s a relatively large investor syndicate, say our sources, with involvement from a variety of firms beyond Index.

We’ve also spent a lot of time trying to track down Dropbox’s revenue numbers, a closely guarded secret at the company. Speculation was that they’d hit $100 million in revenue this year. Our best guess based on discussions with sources is that revenue will be more like $30 million in 2011. But this is still largely a guess.

More as this develops. Prior to this round, Dropbox had raised just $7.2 million.

If you’re a fan of cloud-based music lockers, it’s a good time to be alive. Back in March, Amazon somewhat surprisingly beat Apple and Google to the music streaming and storage punch with their “Cloud Drive” and “Cloud Player”. Both Google and Apple have since launched cloud music offerings (or betas thereof), and all three continue to improve and evolve as time marches on.

As a music fan, it’s great to see cloud music storage and streaming services moving forward in tandem, even if we all have to admit to having our own personal favorite. Because, frankly, the more competition in this space, the better. Which is why you should be paying attention to a new startup that’s entering stage left: Mecanto. Yes, today, a new cloudy music service enters the arena, promising unlimited music streaming and storage to listeners all over the world — that won’t put a dent in your wallet. (Mecanto is offering TC readers 1,000 free 6-month subscriptions. Huzzah! See below for more info.)

Tel Aviv-based Mecanto is hitting the scene this week with a cloud-enabled music-player and storage service that is easy to set up and features all the things a user wants from their trusty neighborhood music locker: Unlimited storage and streaming, the ability to automatically sync your iTunes library and PC folders with your online account (from multiple PCs), global availability, playlist editing, video, easy browsing, and cross-platform functionality. Also doesn’t hurt that users can find Mecanto on the Web, or go mobile on iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Symbian.

The MeCanto mobile interface is pretty nifty and offers users the ability to easily listen to songs and albums, or create playlists. Songs stream over 3G or WiFi, and users can listen to any song they want without having to worry about how much space the song takes up on their phone. Here’s to you, cloud.

It’s sounds like a great start, right? Sure, but with names like Amazon, Google, Apple, Spotify and umpteen others staring them down, Mecanto definitely has an uphill climb ahead. That being said, right now affordability is a strong selling point for the Israeli music service. Take a look at its competitors: Spotify Unlimited and Premium cost $60 a year and $120 a year, respectively, iCloud comes in at about $25 a year, Amazon’s Cloud Drive and Cloud Player cost at least $20 a year (and unlimited storage may be a limited-time offering).

Google, on the other hand is currently free, but there’s little likelihood that it will stay that way for long. In comparison, at $20 a year, Mecanto is an appealing alternative to the big players, especially as it offers worldwide availability, cross-platform integration, and instant uploads — a suite which its competitors only offer in pieces.

Furthermore, first time Mecanto users get a free month-long trial of the service, at the end of which they can pay $20 for the whole year or split it up at a $2 monthly rate. To begin using, users only have to download a small application to their desktops, which will then upload and sync all of your music automatically. Bada bing, bada boom. The best part: Mecanto’s upload process is accelerated, which means that users can access their music almost instantly, even before the upload is finished. Listeners can access their music right away, or they can choose to upload their files at a slower pace, saving bandwidth without having to worry about delays.

Not wanting to be antisocial in the Age of Facebook, the music service also offers social features, including the ability to add YouTube videos to one’s account and playlists as well as the ability to share those YouTube clips on Facebook and Twitter, Last.fm scrobbling of tracks, sharing current tracks to social networks, multi-desktop sync, and smart categorization of tracks. As to file support? Mecanto works with MP3, M4A, WMA, OGG, FLAC, and most of their derivations.

Mecanto’s so-called “three screens and a cloud” platform really is a great alternative to the big names in the space, and a “Dropbox for music” isn’t an unfair analogy. Sure, it’s design isn’t quite up to par with some of the others, but its affordability, worldwide availability, and cross-platform functionality may just give Mecanto the legs it needs to be taken seriously in a space crowded with familiar names.

So far, the startup has raised $2 million in funding from private angels, but you can be sure the startup will be seeking more cash as it begins to scale and rolls out worldwide.

The Israeli music locker is definitely worth a look, especially under the auspices of a free month-long trial and the fact that the first 1,000 TechCrunch readers that click here will receive free six-month-long trials of the service. I mean, who doesn’t like a music deal? Check it out.

We’ve been tracking the twists and turns of the Dropbox mega funding round feeding frenzy for over a month now. In July Sarah Lacy wrote that they’d be raising $200 million to $300 million at a $5 billion or higher valuation. A week ago MG Siegler wrote that the auction process was over and Dropbox was considering bids as high as $10 billion.

The company has now chosen which investors will lead and participate in the round, we’ve heard from one of our sources. The final valuation will be less than $6 billion, and we’ve heard that the original estimates of a $200 million – $300 million round are still accurate. We do not yet know who’s leading the round or otherwise participating, but that information will probably become available soon.

In the end Dropbox didn’t choose the investor with the highest valuation bid, we’ve heard. Look for the round to close and be announced in the coming weeks.

Dropbox, the startup that makes it super-easy to sync files between your computers, phones, and other devices, is growing. A lot. As in, they’re about to hire hundreds of people — and they’re getting an office that’s eight times larger than their current space to fit them all.

The company has just finalized plans to move from their current office on San Francisco’s Market Street across town to 185 Berry Street in China Basin, just down the street from AT&T Park. Their current office is around 11,000 square feet. Their new home: 87,000. The company plans to move into the new office early next year.

According to real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, this is the second largest tech lease in San Francisco this year, after Twitter’s agreement to lease space in Central Market.

A Dropbox spokesperson declined to comment on our report that the company is in the process of raising $200-300 million in funding at a massive, $5 billion valuation. She did, however, point out that the company is taking in a substantial amount of revenue, and that the lease wouldn’t be predicated on them raising a round of financing. Of course, Dropbox is also planning on going from 65 to around 400 employees — and all of that talent is going to cost a pretty penny as well.

For its part, the city of San Francisco is very excited about the move and the jobs Dropbox will be creating. A quote from San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee:

“While the state and the nation are focused on jobs and the economy, San Francisco’s economy rumbles forward – adding new jobs thanks to the growth of firms like Dropbox. Dropbox’s move is a significant expansion which continues the steady drumbeat of innovative, talent-driven companies which start, stay and grow right here in San Francisco. I want to congratulate Dropbox on their new San Francisco headquarters.”

San Francisco is also happy that Dropbox is renovating the space they’ll be moving into — Dropbox CEO Drew Houston says that it’s looking to turn it into a “creative space for people who love to build things.” The company is currently in the process of revamping the office prior to the move.

Dropbox has had issues recently with security glitches and a minor uproar over some changes to its terms of service, but that obviously hasn’t hampered its growth. The company’s mission of helping users keep their files synced across all of their devices is only becoming more important (services like Apple’s iCloud are constrained to Apple devices, whereas Dropbox is going for a ubiquitous approach). I’m guessing that with the new personnel and as-yet-unconfirmed funding, we’re going to see it integrated into many more CE devices, like cameras and televisions.

Dropbox will be just down the street from TechCrunch headquarters, and is also just a few blocks away from Zynga’s massive new office, which is over 270,000 square feet.

And if you’re curious to see what Dropbox’s current office looks like, make sure to check out our TC Cribs tour.

We’ve heard from multiple sources that Dropbox is finally moving on raising its next venture round and it’s a whopper. They’ve had preliminary conversations with several investors, several solid offers they’ve passed on earlier this year and are meeting with investment banks to handle the offering now. Allen & Co. is said to be in the mix, but we’ve also heard nothing has been finalized.

The real news are the numbers we’re hearing from multiple sources close to the company. Dropbox is looking to raise between $200 million and $300 million according to these sources. In terms of valuation, the company has already had multiple offers at a valuation north of $2 billion range, and recently more informal discussions in the $8 billion-valuation range. Our sources expect the valuation to end up in the $5 billion to $10 billion range.

That’s quite a step up from its previous funding rounds which have totalled a tiny $7.2 million.

There will no doubt be a secondary component to the round, but our sources say it’ll be less than 50% of the total amount raised. We’ll update as soon as we know more.