Shares in Box jumped strongly in their first day of trading reaching as much as 77% above the $14 initial pricing to $24.73 and a valuation of about $3 billion. It closed at $23.23, up 66%.

The strong showing confounded some skeptics who pointed to Box's very high marketing costs, which eclipse revenues by a huge margin resulting in a net loss of $121.5 million on $153.8 million in revenues for the nine months ending October 31, 2014.

Investors are betting that Box will bring its marketing costs down and under control while increasing its revenue growth.

Cloud-based data storage services have become widely accepted in the corporate IT largely due to staff using consumer data storage services such as Dropbox. Box says it offers enterprise security and audit capabilities that corporations need to maintain privacy and meet regulatory compliance.

The strong "pop" on Box's first day of trading will be encouraging news to enterprise IT startups waiting in the wings to file their S-1 and raise capital from public markets.

Tanya Agrawal at Reuters reports:

The stock's enthusiastic reception also underscored healthy investor appetite for technology stocks after the blockbuster debut of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in September.

U.S. IPOs, which have been on a tear since 2013, raised more than $93 billion last year, the most since 2000.