Former Nike CFO Don Blair joins Dropbox’s board of directors

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As Dropbox continues its inevitable march toward an IPO, it’s going to look to bring in people with a lot of experience handling the operations of larger public companies — and it’s getting one today.

Dropbox today said it is adding former Nike CFO Don Blair to the company’s board of directors. Blair will be joining the audit committee, the company said, and comes in with a lot of experience beyond just Nike. He was CFO of PepsiCo Japan, and prior to that the CFO of Pepsi-Cola International’s Asia Division. With a lot of experience in consumer packaged goods and working with big brands, he will likely have the kind of expertise Dropbox needs to sell itself to Wall Street.

“The brand stands for simple, powerful tools that help teams unleash their creativity, and I’m impressed by the way that mission inspires everything they do,” Blair said in a statement. “Their products already reach hundreds of millions of users and the company continues to drive innovation. I look forward to being part of their continuing growth story.”

One of Dropbox’s biggest selling points is that even as it looks to expand into larger enterprises, which may offer more lucrative sources of revenue, it started off as a consumer product and built its brand off that. The company says it has more than 500 million registered users and also said it hit a $1 billion revenue run rate in January this year. The company has been widely pegged as a big impending IPO.

And some of the signals of a coming IPO are starting to roll in. There were reports in July that Dropbox began working with banks to prepare potential IPO documents, an early step in the process of eventually going public. Part of the process of going public is figuring out how to fully disclose its business to potential investors, who will be looking to see if it has the signs of a healthy growing business before putting money into its IPO.

“Don knows how to build a sustainable business for the long-term, and we’re looking forward to drawing on his expertise as we continue to grow and scale our company,” CEO Drew Houston said in a blog post.

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