Dropbox has added high-profile Silicon Valley exec Meg Whitman to its board, according to a blog post by the cloud storage company.
Meg Whitman is joining Dropbox’s board
The HPE exec was recently in the running for Uber CEO.
The CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise was most recently in the news as a possible candidate to run Uber — a job that ultimately went to former Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.
Whitman had also been under consideration for the car-sharing company’s board, but has opted to become a director at Dropbox, which is more in line with her current focus on the enterprise business. Last year, Dropbox partnered with HPE to build its cloud infrastructure and the company is also a customer.
“Meg is a true business titan and has been a trusted friend and advisor to me for years,” wrote Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, who also noted that her “fly fishing analogies” made an impression on him. “Her experience and judgment will be invaluable to Dropbox as we continue to grow and scale.”
How it does that going forward will need experienced execs like Whitman. Dropbox has been moving toward an eventual IPO. Whitman — who also grew eBay into a giant — will certainly help it in that direction. While an early market leader in the consumer cloud storage arena, the San Francisco-based company has faced increasingly stiff competition from giants like Google, Microsoft and others, underscoring a need for more heft on its board.
Other board members include former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Qualcomm executive chairman Paul Jacobs and former Priceline CFO Bob Mylod.
Despite worries about a down-round valuation — Dropbox’s most recent round put its price at $10 billion, after raising $600 million — it has managed to grow its enterprise-focused market share and announced last year that it was free cash flow positive. It’s also been mentioned as an acquisition target of many of its main competitors.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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