​Dropbox A/NZ chief exits to launch start-up

Charlie Wood

Charlie Wood has vacated his role as country manager and managing director of Dropbox in Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ), departing the cloud-based file sharing service after almost three years.

After taking the reins in August 2014, Wood exits the vendor to launch a start-up, under the name of CheckIn Safe.

With details of the new venture unclear at this stage, ARN can confirm that Wood’s last day at Dropbox was on Friday 5 May.

“Earlier this year I decided that I would leave Dropbox and go and build a new company / product / category,” stated Wood, via a social media post.

“I’d like to say a hearty thanks to all the Dropbox people I’ve had the pleasure to work with over these last few years. Good luck with the next phase folks.”

Prior to running the Dropbox business locally, Wood held regional director roles at Salesforce and Avanade, following ten years at Microsoft, as well as founding Social2CRM in 2009.

"When Dropbox came looking for their leader in this part of the world, they were looking for Microsoft, Salesforce or entrepreneurial experience... this is my sweet spot," Wood told the Sydney Morning Herald in September 2015.

During his time at Dropbox, Wood established the company’s channel presence locally, after striking a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro in April 2016.

As reported by ARN, Ingram Micro made the platform available on its cloud marketplace 12 months ago, helping recruit partners for the cloud-based storage vendor.

Within the first three months, the distributor recruited over 200 new partners in Australia, as the channel capitalised on early market momentum.

Globally, Dropbox has more than 500 million personal users of the product worldwide, with eight million businesses using its cloud storage platform.