Drew Houston is the CEO of cloud storage company Dropbox. He's about to become Silicon Valley's newest hotshot when his company goes public. Dropbox recently filed the S-1 paperwork for its long awaited IPO. In the documents, it was revealed that Houston, who will turn 35 on March 4th, made $110 million in cash and stock in 2017.
Houston's total compensation package breaks down to $400,000 in base salary and a cash bonus of $260,000. The bulk of Houston's salary came from a restricted stock grant. The 15.5 million share grant was valued at $109.6 million by Dropbox. That gives each share a price of roughly $7.07. Houston stands to gain a lot by holding onto the shares in the grant as they will vest in the next four to 10 years, depending on when the company's stock hits certain prices.
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Houston could see some of the cash from that grant by next year. About 3.1 million of Houston's shares will vest after January 1st (once the lock-up period on insider selling ends) if Dropbox's shares hit $20. That would be roughly $62 million for Houston.
The highest share price targeted in the grant is $60 a share. If Houston hits that target – and hangs onto all of the shares he was given, that would amount to $930 million. Houston also holds 127 million shares of Class B stock in addition to the grant. Class B stock offers more voting power than the Class A shares that will be sold to the public. Class B shares were valued at $7.01 each at the end of last year. That puts them worth $891 million.
Basically, Houston stands to gain a lot by hanging onto those shares and keeping Dropbox a hot company. The S-1 filing shows that while Dropbox's annual performance has been improving, it is still not a profitable company. Dropbox lost $11 million on $1.1 billion in 2017.
Other high profile names that stand to win big in the Dropbox IPO include co-founder Arash Ferdowski, venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Accel, the board of directors – which includes former HP CEO Meg Whitman and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Drew Houston has a net worth of $1.2 billion.
