Here’s how Dropbox stock is reacting after CEO Drew Houston announces departure

Apple’s Tim Cook isn’t the only well-known tech CEO stepping away from the chief executive role this year. Now, Dropbox, Inc. (Nasdaq: DBX) founder and CEO Drew Houston has announced he, too, is departing the company he is synonymous with. Here’s what you need to know about Houston’s departure and how investors are reacting to the news. What happened? Today, Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston announced he will be retiring from the chief executive role at the company. Houston has been with the cloud storage provider in the role since he founded Dropbox in 2007. It’s hard to understate how revolutionary a cloud storage solution like Dropbox was 19 years ago, when Houston brought online cloud storage to the masses. Before Dropbox, the standard way most users transferred files between their devices was by using external hard drives, USB sticks, or emailing files to themselves. Dropbox proved there was an easier way to transfer files: using the burgeoning cloud. The technology was also simple and reliable to use: simply add a file to your Dropbox, and it was available nearly instantly on all your devices. That ease quickly made Dropbox a Silicon Valley darling and a platform that quickly became popular with ordinary, everyday internet users. Of course, since then, online storage and file sharing have become integrated into nearly every major internet platform, with Dropbox now facing stiff competition from the likes of Google Drive, Apple iCloud, and Microsoft OneDrive. Still, the progenitor of the online storage and file-sharing space has a large user base even today. The company says that Dropbox currently has 700 million global registered users, of which more than 18 million are paid users. For its most recent quarter ending March 31, Dropbox reported $629.5 million in total revenue. Why is Dropbox’s founder leaving? It should be noted that Houston is not departing his CEO role yet. Though the Dropbox founder announced his departure from his chief executive role tod