Box hires team behind data analytics startup Wagon; Wagon app to shut down October 3
Cloud file syncing and sharing software company Box today announced that it has acquired the team from Wagon Analytics, a startup that built an application analysts could use to query and analyze their data.
Context & Ripple Effects
Box's acquisition of the Wagon Analytics team is the second move in a platform-building arc that began with the launch of Box Platform in September 2015, when the company added new services and developer-facing tools on top of its core file-sharing business. Hiring a team whose product let analysts query and analyze their data points at where Box wants its platform to go next.
The deal also fits a pattern among cloud storage rivals of absorbing small teams while retiring their consumer-facing apps: just months earlier, Dropbox announced it would shut down Mailbox and Carousel, folding those efforts back into the core product. Wagon's own app gets the same treatment, with a shutdown date of October 3.
First-order effects
- Wagon users lose their analytics tool on October 3, when the app shuts down following the team's move to Box.
- The Wagon Analytics team joins Box immediately, adding in-house data query and analysis capability that did not previously exist there.
Second-order effects
- Box can now fold analytics into the platform strategy it laid out with Box Platform, giving enterprise customers a reason to keep more of their workflow inside Box rather than pairing it with third-party analysis tools.
- Rivals like Dropbox, which chose to cut side apps rather than acquire analytics teams, face pressure to match Box's platform depth or concede the higher-value enterprise workloads.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, small data-tool startups increasingly exit through acqui-hires by storage and collaboration platforms rather than building independent products, concentrating analytics capability inside a few content clouds.
- File-sharing vendors are structurally shifting from selling standalone apps to competing as platforms, a trajectory Box later doubled down on with acquisitions like Progressly and, years on, the Crooze deal Aaron Levie framed around AI and workflow automation.
The trend: Cloud storage companies are consolidating from standalone apps into platform businesses, using acqui-hires of small analytics and workflow teams to buy the capabilities their platforms lack.