14 ms·

Dropbox May Not Be LeBron James, but Is Still in the Game

150 points by es09 11y ago

zyxley 11y ago
People stick with Dropbox for a simple reason: they do the syncing thing faster and more painlessly than anyone else out there. If Apple ever gets their act together and makes iCloud actually fast and reliable a syncing service, Dropbox might be in trouble.
- CptJamesCook 11y ago
  It's a safe bet that 80-90% of dropbox users are on a PC.
  - thinkingkong 11y ago
    Based on what?
    - shampine 11y ago
      Safety. Edit: It was probably a reference to that it is "preinstalled" on retail machines.
    - Toenex 11y ago
      Given Apples 7.6% share of the 'PC' market as reported in 3Q15 (http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617) I wouldn't be suprised that the vast majority of dropbox users are on Windows, simply because the vast majority of computer users are.
      - gaius 11y ago
        It's not about users. Its about paying customers.
  - noam87 11y ago
    (Some of us on Linux)
    - jeorgun 11y ago
      If it's more than 10-20% of Dropbox users, that says pretty bad things about their market share.
- overcast 11y ago
  What's the actual issue with iCloud? It takes three seconds to turn it on, and select what I want to sync. Done. Backing up, syncing calendars, contacts, and notes to all my devices with zero problem.
  - basch 11y ago
    dropbox is so easy, people accidentally install the client on the way to their files. i dont see people accidently installing icloud. i cant see anyone making the case that icloud is EASIER to initialize than dropbox. it just ISNT better at being foolproof. no matter how foolish you are, you cant screw up getting dropbox going.
    - overcast 11y ago
      Dropbox easier to use on Windows, I will give you that. iCloud is DEFINITELY easier to use on Apple products.
      - ssmoot 11y ago
        Ditto. Pretty sure having iCloud on is actually the default in the El Capitan (latest OSX) setup. It integrates really nicely to become the default document storage location for most (non-developer) apps as well. The only trouble I had was to have it replace the "Documents" folder in the Dock so I could just treat it like a cloud version of the regular documents folder.
  - josteink 11y ago
    > What's the actual issue with iCloud? I'll admit I haven't tried yet, but I'm going to hazard a guess that if I try to setup icloud on my Linux machines at home or my Android devices, I'm not going to get very far. With Dropbox I get all the way, everywhere, with no hassles. Thus Dropbox has my business.
    - overcast 11y ago
      That's like saying well I'm not going to get very far running a Playstation 4 game on my Super Nintendo. You can't count software that isn't even supported on a system. Yes, DropBox has a client for many systems, but saying DropBox is better because iCloud doesn't even exist on Linux make no sense.
koralatov 11y ago
Unless I'm reading this wrong, the takeaway from this article is that Dropbox is a reasonably successful company, with enviable brand-recognition and reach, that's `suffering' from being overvalued early on and is simply no longer hot and new. That seems like a reasonably good problem to have, and is certainly better than being a loss-maker.
- tyre 11y ago
  Better than a loss-maker, but that's a low bar. For all of the employees that received options based on the inflated $10bn valuation, not a good problem to have. This is the danger of VCs wanting everyone to be a unicorn, and structuring their firms around that mindset. I agree that a $5bn or $2bn company is fantastic. Until those with capital agree, however, founders are almost required to pitch a fantasy.
  - Retric 11y ago
    A 2bn company is still a unicorn. So, it's only people that got in between ~2bn and 10bn that lost out.
    - abcampbell 11y ago
      seems interesting that everyone is so concerned with the fallen unicorns than the ones that are still riding high with little to no revenue...
  - mattzito 11y ago
    I obviously don't know the specifics of the dropbox option pool, but it's not uncommon to have employee options issued at a 409(a) valuation instead of the fundraising valuation. So even if money was raised at a 10bn valuation based on the expectation of future value, a 409(a) valuation would probably place the company at somewhere closer to 10-40% of that, which puts employees in a much better situation.
    - jalonso510 11y ago
disantlor 11y ago
My dropbox scenario is I have a 2TB HD and 2TB dropbox storage with the 1year packrat service. I record and edit music on the HD and dropbox is always syncing my changes. The next day, when I'm at work, I can pull up the website and listen to the stuff I worked on the previous night. If I go into a studio I connect to dropbox and sync whatever folder(s) that contains the song(s) I'm working on. When I get home the files are there. Once I forgot to disconnect my dropbox and someone at the studio trashed the folders and they were deleted on my home machine. I remotely disconnected their connection from the web interface and restored my folders to the previous checkpoint. I can't imagine a simpler, more efficient mechanism for keeping things organized and backed up. I also have a separate backup service on the same drive of course, just in case. The only annoyance with dropbox I have is there are certain scenarios where you can't play audio from the website and are forced to download it, which is annoying when sharing links. That and I wish I could give them more money for more space.
- jl6 11y ago
  Have you tried asking to pay for more space? I would be willing to pay for a package somewhere between the 1TB pro account and the very expensive Business account.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Not OP, but I've asked for more space and was told the business account was my only option, so now I've hacked together a Dropbox/S3 hybrid.
  - disantlor 11y ago
    Yeah as toomuchtodo mentioned there is no option except business and there is a minimum of, I believe, 5 accounts, so at $15/per user/mo thats $900/yr vs the ~$200/yr I'm currently paying. Maybe worth it as each band member could have their own account, but it's a pretty big leap when I really only need 1-2 TB more.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  Moral of this story is that packrat is really important. It's more or less reckless to use Dropbox without it, because explaining the difference between a syncing service and a backup service seems to be next to impossible. In fact, IMHO they could even rename the company "PackRat." The only annoyance with dropbox I have is there are certain scenarios where you can't play audio from the website and are forced to download it, which is annoying when sharing links. Agreed.... and once they really get their media and file rendering act together, that multi-billion dollar valuation is going to make a lot more sense. Despite what I said earlier about renaming the company, they're not in the "storage" business, but rather the "delivery" business. The latter category has an unbounded upside.
jl6 11y ago
As an otherwise-happy Dropbox customer, it does concern me somewhat that there has been very little innovation in the core product for several years. They seem focused on building a halo of lock-in services instead.
- vlunkr 11y ago
  I don't know, their core product is so solid. It's one of those things I can install and never think about again, it just works. Maybe there's no need to innovate there?
  - nacs 11y ago
    There's need for innovation because Google/MS/Apple and such are integrating cloud-sync right into the operating system (and its only a matter of time before their sync tech is good enough or better than DB's sync tech).
- malka 11y ago
  for once, a product does not get heavier and heavier with discutable features. I'm not gonna complain, it happens rarely.
hspak 11y ago
Only reason I still use Dropbox is because 1password integrates so nicely with it.
- rokhayakebe 11y ago
  Now imagine there are many other people who have this one other reason they still use XYZ. That's how many companies stay in business. I worked at a company where customers would call angrily and shout "The only reason I am still with you guys is because of the designs you guys have, but your service sucks, blah, blah, blah...," and this conversation usually ended with "OK, 4125-5623-8451-XXX...Expiration Date XX-YY... OK, Thank you!"
pyrrhotech 11y ago
I'd be shocked if Dropbox is still in business in 5 years. It's kind of sad because it was the first mover and I loved the service when it was the only one, but now there are a million options that are probably just as good. Not to mention they've never made a dime on me personally or anyone I know (and as I understand it that's true for 95% of their user-base). Our company actually banned Dropbox.com because we decided we'd rather do everything on Google drive for free instead of pay Dropbox for corporate use. The whole industry also has bearish macro outlook as storage continues to get cheaper and yet people's need for it doesn't grow proportionately.
- itsbits 11y ago
  Dropbox will be in business by acquisition. How about Microsoft acquiring dropbox? Their onedrive is not as good as dropbox and will surely help in their cause.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Apple. Please Apple. Replace your iCloud abomination with Dropbox when the time comes.
    - ErikAugust 11y ago
      "In 2009, Steve Jobs wanted to pay more than a hundred million dollars for Dropbox. As Houston later told Forbes’ Victoria Barret, when he politely turned down his hero’s offer, Jobs declared that Dropbox was a feature, not a product." https://pando.com/2012/02/26/steve-jobs-was-right-dropbox-is-a-feature-not-a-product/ https://pando.com/2012/02/26/steve-jobs-was-right-dropbox-is...
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Thanks for the link. I recall when that initially occurred. I'm going to get a chuckle if it ever goes through, vindicating Jobs posthumously.
      - 11y ago
graeme 11y ago
I very happily pay for Dropbox. I haven't found any of the alternatives as easy as Dropbox. The syncing is seamless.
- brk 11y ago
  Me too. Dropbox is fast and simple, it's my "sneakernet" at home. I commonly copy files between a Mac and a PC for some projects I work on. Letting Dropbox handle the sync is the most simplistic way to go about it. Most of the files are 1GB or less, so it really doesn't take much time for them to sync, and I have the added bonus of backup and easy off-site access. My dayjob uses Box, and it works OK, but has just never seemed unique enough to switch over too. I think I have the $100/year or whatever it is Dropbox plan, I honestly don't even know. I don't seem to run out of space, and it doesn't cost very much so I just don't think about it at all. That, to me, is the hallmark of a valuable service.
- cjensen 11y ago
  I agree and I'm also a happy customer of Dropbox. But how long will it be until OneDrive or iCloud Drive catch up? I have 1TB of OneDrive space for "free" with Office. I have plenty of spare space in my iCloud storage plan. If either of those two options catch up to Dropbox's reliability, why would I stay with Dropbox? Long term, why will Dropbox survive?
  - Scarblac 11y ago
    Dropbox is much cheaper than either Office or an Apple device.
    - thesimon 11y ago
      >Dropbox is much cheaper [citation needed] Office: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Personal-Year-Card/dp/B00HV9IM58/ http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Personal-Year-Card/dp... $57 for 1 year of Office + 1 TB of storage Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/plans?trigger=homefoot https://www.dropbox.com/plans?trigger=homefoot $9.99 for 1 month of dropbox with 1TB (=> $120/year)
InvisibleCities 11y ago
Dropbox has the same problem a lot of the moderately successful unicorns have; it's a good product managed by smart people that would be much better off as a right-sized stable lifestyle business a la 37 Signals / Basecamp than as an attempt at a world-beating massive-growth juggernaut like Google or Facebook. Unfortunately for them (and Evernote, and a whole host of others), once you've signed that deal for the huge late-stage VC cash infusion at a fantasy-land valuation, there's no going back.
- sharkweek 11y ago
  The problem being, how many of these businesses would have won any market share without early VC investment enabling the companies to dump money into customer acquisition at a loss? Probably a few of them, but I'm guessing some other company with a similar business model would have come along with VC backing and eaten their lunch (sure, that company might then be in the exact same place as the current over-valued late stage companies). Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
  - ksherlock 11y ago
    "Woe to the VC, for they are like a dog sleeping in the manger of oxen, for neither does he eat nor does he let the oxen eat"
  - InvisibleCities 11y ago
    That's a great question, and one I won't pretend to have the answer to. On one hand, Basecamp has carved out a very profitable niche for themselves despite venture-backed competition from Jira and others, so it's certainly possible. I also think that there is a big difference between taking money when you are small with typical angel / seed-round terms and taking late-stage money with 2x VC liquidation preferences and a private valuation north of $1 billion. Then again, like you said, it can be very tough to turn a profit when you have to compete with companies undercutting you by subsidizing their prices with an enormous reserve of easy VC cash.
    - huac 11y ago
pfarnsworth 11y ago
$5M valuation isn't exactly suffering. The problem is that the failure of Box as a thriving company has put a ceiling on how much Dropbox can make in the public markets. If Dropbox does need more money, if it can't get profitable with the funding it already has, then it will be in for tough times. If it is forced to go public before it's ready, like Square, then its employees will suffer much like Square's employees have with its stock price.
new299 11y ago
In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board (http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ http://www.drop-dropbox.com/). I don't know what their future holds. But personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service. I'd hope their customers are also looking at the security of their data in light of this and seeking out alternatives.
- bad_user 11y ago
  Out of curiosity, what do you use?
  - thestu 11y ago
    Don't know about him, but I use -- https://www.sync.com/ https://www.sync.com/
    - kobayashi 11y ago
      This is the first I'm hearing about Sync. Any comparison with SpiderOak?
      - ZacharyPitts 11y ago
        Ever since drop-dropbox happened due to Rice, I've been happily using SpiderOak on Windows/OSX/Android/iOS systems. Fine interface with customizable options that I need.
        kobayashi 11y ago
        In reading about Sync, I was surprised to see their claim that they never hold the encryption keys, even when signing in from mobile devices. This is in contrast to SpiderOak, which says that if one signs in from a mobile device or on the website, they hold keys in RAM for the session.
- 11y ago
subdane 11y ago
Dropbox really proved out how valuable "it just works" in the cloud can be. Their first few years of execution were phenomenal and the product provided a real value. I remember discovering that I could mock up iPhone apps in photoshop on my desktop, save jpgs to dropbox and open in the app to see what the screens would look like immediately on my phone. Delightful. And then... none of their acquisitions or product initiatives stuck and they added a questionable board member. Anyone have insight in the last couple years of stumble? I'm at a loss.
- vecter 11y ago
  It's not often that companies nail one thing really well ... and then nail a second and third thing. Dropbox is amazing at cloud storage and syncing. Why do people expect them to develop great products beyond that?
ipozgaj 11y ago
It's very hard to be optimistic about their future when their main competitors are Google (Drive), Microsoft (OneDrive), Apple (iCloud), Amazon (CloudDrive), Box etc. Virtually every single one of big players nowadays offers cloud storage. I cannot see Dropbox succeeding in the long run, especially with the amount of innovation they've put in their product in the past two years (close to none).
- bluedino 11y ago
  For my uses, DropBox is the best solution by far out of all of those.
Spooky23 11y ago
> Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease. Honest question: WTF are they doing?
- zer0defex 11y ago
  Nail on the head right here. The only thing Dropbox has these days is consumer confidence in it's syncing process. Beyond that, they trail every competitor feature-wise and frankly, they are succeeding despite their management, not because of it. Recent product enhancements have been, let's be honest, mediocre at best across the board and show no signs of that changing anytime soon. They exist now solely due to brand recognition when it comes to cloud file sync'ing and the moment one of their competitors cracks the consumer confidence equation with the brand image to match, Dropbox is done.
  - malchow 11y ago
    What if -- hold your breath! -- Dropbox is simply a medium-sized, privately held, profit-generating company that will end up satisfying a certain customer segment and paying dividends to investors? The horror!
    - tholmes 11y ago
      Companies like that don't usually hire 600 people in 12 months, though. Buuut I guess they could. I guess it just kind of looks like the explosive hiring you see sometimes when a company has projected huge growth but then falls flat and realizes it has way too many employees :(
      - gerbilly 11y ago
        >Companies like that don't usually hire 600 people in 12 months, though. Maybe, are those 600 people there to fight fires and work on tickets, or adding product features?
jonathanpeterwu 11y ago
Actually really love using Paper for simple product specs, cleaner simpler than google docs and uses markdown.
- Numberwang 11y ago
  I really really wanted to like it. But it feels so cluttery and disorganized.
bobby_9x 11y ago
The problem is that Dropbox isn't that complicated. They were able to win in the beginning because they were a novel idea. Now that they have proven the business model, it will invite competitors (which has already happened). A bigger company with more resources will eventually be able to put them out of business. It would have been better to cash out. Unless they truly have something proprietary with a higher barrier to entry, it will be a difficult road ahead.
tdkl 11y ago
I wish they had more choice regarding purchasing more space. I'm not interested in 1TB and find 10$ per month too much if I wont even use 10% of it. Although if there is a cloud provider I'd trust that sync would never fuck up, I'd be Dropbox. Google Drive still thinks it's normal to re-download the cloud folder instead of letting me install Drive in the same location after a system reinstall, where all the files already exist. And to trust them 1TB with that behaviour ? Hahaha.
- T-hawk 11y ago
  Your first concern often comes up in Dropbox threads. Of course they could easily offer a plan at 0.5TB / $5 or some such. They just don't want to. They'd lose more revenue from existing customers dropping from $10 to $5 than they'd gain by new customers going from $0 to $5. It's not that Dropbox can't offer less space, it's that they're not interested in making the baseline price anything lower than $10. Put another way, Dropbox is perfectly happy to get along without customers who think the difference between $5 and $10 is something to care about.
- math0ne 11y ago
  You can get your free account up to 22gb using ehem methods, that's enough for quite a few use cases.
- dontblink 11y ago
  Your latter statement is just plain incorrect. Google Drive app will recognize your old files and re-associate them with the cloud counterparts. Its had this capability for over a year now.
rikkus 11y ago
Reasons it's still in the game: 1. It works, with fewer problems than any other sync / cloud storage that I've used. 2. It has enough people using it outside of work that it's getting paying business customers (the Linux effect?) If either of these falters (if 1 falters, 2 does too) then they'll be gone. There are plenty of competitors and some even do sync well enough that people will use them. I'm rather upset that they've dropped Carousel, as it's probably the app my girlfriend and I use most on our phones, but I'd only leave Dropbox if they didn't fold enough of the Carousel features back into the Dropbox client - or there wasn't a third party app that could provide similar functionality using our Dropbox storage.
- jkmcf 11y ago
  3. Integration They were the first dominant syncing solution. Practically everything needing this feature has integrated DB. Beyond DB, the competition is a mix of Google Drive and iCloud, and maybe something else. Maybe if iOS and Android had centralized the interface to these types of features, DB would have gone away years ago, or adapted to the market.
- isaiahg 11y ago
  I agree. I actually use Dropbox, Drive, and OneDrive. I've only used OneDrive once to share some download links once. The only real reason I use Drive is because of Google Docs. For everything else I use DropBox because I trust them more. I've never ever had a problem with it. Also DropBox hasn't had major scandals and for the most part stays out of the news. When a company is basically holding your private stuff for you that's a huge plus.
  - appleflaxen 11y ago
    Hiring Condeleza Rice was scandalous to me, since I care about privacy. Obviously, this is a non-issue for the general public, but it's a bit tone-deaf for "power users".
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
vlucas 11y ago
I really don't understand all the negative Dropbox sentiment these days. Who cares if the investors aren't getting a 10x return? How does that materially affect you as a customer? Why are you even cheering for that anyways? I am a very happy paying Dropbox customer. It's a solid product that does the job very well and isn't stuffed with a bunch of other useless features I don't need. It's pretty much perfect.
- x1024 11y ago
  Companies that don't satisfy their investors' expectations... they often resort to moves of desperation. And those moves are more often than not anti-consumer and even anti-business.
- tootie 11y ago
  My last two companies invested heavily in dropbox and both ditched it for box.com within 2 years. Dropbox is "growing" their business while they're getting beaten on value by more than one competitor.
- subsection1h 11y ago
  End-to-end encryption is useless?
bigbadgoose 11y ago
online consumer storage businesses are dead-ends; consumers will own data appliances in their homes that are as easy to use as a fridge, with massive symmetric piping, port control, redundancy, etc.
nassirkhan 11y ago
Completely commoditized service with a few core parterships scattered here and there. Not able to take on the better capitalized players i.e Microsoft, Google, Apple, heck even facebook. Long term odds are not great, unless they merge with a complete ecosystem player like the above
zekevermillion 11y ago
I have used Egnyte, almost since their beginning. Surprised no mention here. Pretty good enterprise offering, including hybrid cloud or self-hosted options. The only complaint I've had is they unilaterally tried to double my subscription price to match their competition. I negotiated a compromise and now I have some weird custom tier.
gizi 11y ago
I stopped using Dropbox after the Snowden revelations broke loose. Dropbox does not use end-to-end encryption. You have to encrypt by yourself. That is not particularly hard, but it still means that you are storing your files in a honeypot from which the NSA regularly draws a juicy feed. Especially users outside the USA should never use a cloud service that lacks automatic end-to-end encryption. As a non-American, you would also reveal your identity (along with your data) to a host of American surveillance agencies by paying by credit card. So, that is another non-starter. Along with unencrypted data, that is just an accident waiting to happen. They would store your dropbox data alongside Angela Merkel's digitized private phone calls to her husband. "I love you honey!". Seriously, I pay for cloud services only with bitcoin.
inthewoods 11y ago
I think they missed their opportunity - namely what they're doing with Paper now. I like Dropbox a lot, but most people I know work with Google Drive/Docs. The whole idea of "files", to me, is becoming more and more abstract and remote. I'd probably find more use for Dropbox if I was using Office 365, but then there is OneDrive for that. Bottomline, I have less need for Dropbox outside of backing up photos. And there are any number of services for backing up photos that are frankly better from a usage PoV (though not from a syncing PoV where they are clearly better). I have an iPhone - I used iCloud to download the pictures to my MBP and then have Google Sync running to push them to Google Photos. iCloud's photo service is still pretty terrible - but using this method I get all the goodness of Google Photos (e.g. let me find all the pictures of my dog or my kid).
teambob 11y ago
Not to mention the top reason I dropped Dropbox: with Condolezza Rice on the board I feel they are a bit too chummy with the government and the NSA.
yyin 11y ago
I use rdiff as an open source, simpler alternative to Dropbox for syncing files across a network. Dropbox uses the same library of functions as rdiff: librsync.
gedrap 11y ago
>>> Dropbox signed up 13 large companies with more than 1,000 users each So let's say the average employee count is 2k and they negotiated to pay $100/user/year. 13 * 2000 * 100 = $2.6M. Even if we double the average employee count and assume they pay standard $150/yr, it's $7.8M. Assuming that business offering is their strongest bet to get as strong as some investors might like (i.e. justify the valuation), how many of these do you need to justify $10B valuation? And how big is the market? I am not sure that it all adds up.

150 points by es09 11y ago

People stick with Dropbox for a simple reason: they do the syncing thing faster and more painlessly than anyone else out there. If Apple ever gets their act together and makes iCloud actually fast and reliable a syncing service, Dropbox might be in trouble.

CptJamesCook 11y ago
It's a safe bet that 80-90% of dropbox users are on a PC.
- thinkingkong 11y ago
  Based on what?
  - shampine 11y ago
    Safety. Edit: It was probably a reference to that it is "preinstalled" on retail machines.
  - Toenex 11y ago
    Given Apples 7.6% share of the 'PC' market as reported in 3Q15 (http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617) I wouldn't be suprised that the vast majority of dropbox users are on Windows, simply because the vast majority of computer users are.
    - gaius 11y ago
      It's not about users. Its about paying customers.
- noam87 11y ago
  (Some of us on Linux)
  - jeorgun 11y ago
    If it's more than 10-20% of Dropbox users, that says pretty bad things about their market share.
overcast 11y ago
What's the actual issue with iCloud? It takes three seconds to turn it on, and select what I want to sync. Done. Backing up, syncing calendars, contacts, and notes to all my devices with zero problem.
- basch 11y ago
  dropbox is so easy, people accidentally install the client on the way to their files. i dont see people accidently installing icloud. i cant see anyone making the case that icloud is EASIER to initialize than dropbox. it just ISNT better at being foolproof. no matter how foolish you are, you cant screw up getting dropbox going.
  - overcast 11y ago
    Dropbox easier to use on Windows, I will give you that. iCloud is DEFINITELY easier to use on Apple products.
    - ssmoot 11y ago
      Ditto. Pretty sure having iCloud on is actually the default in the El Capitan (latest OSX) setup. It integrates really nicely to become the default document storage location for most (non-developer) apps as well. The only trouble I had was to have it replace the "Documents" folder in the Dock so I could just treat it like a cloud version of the regular documents folder.
- josteink 11y ago
  > What's the actual issue with iCloud? I'll admit I haven't tried yet, but I'm going to hazard a guess that if I try to setup icloud on my Linux machines at home or my Android devices, I'm not going to get very far. With Dropbox I get all the way, everywhere, with no hassles. Thus Dropbox has my business.
  - overcast 11y ago
    That's like saying well I'm not going to get very far running a Playstation 4 game on my Super Nintendo. You can't count software that isn't even supported on a system. Yes, DropBox has a client for many systems, but saying DropBox is better because iCloud doesn't even exist on Linux make no sense.

koralatov 11y ago

Unless I'm reading this wrong, the takeaway from this article is that Dropbox is a reasonably successful company, with enviable brand-recognition and reach, that's `suffering' from being overvalued early on and is simply no longer hot and new. That seems like a reasonably good problem to have, and is certainly better than being a loss-maker.

tyre 11y ago
Better than a loss-maker, but that's a low bar. For all of the employees that received options based on the inflated $10bn valuation, not a good problem to have. This is the danger of VCs wanting everyone to be a unicorn, and structuring their firms around that mindset. I agree that a $5bn or $2bn company is fantastic. Until those with capital agree, however, founders are almost required to pitch a fantasy.
- Retric 11y ago
  A 2bn company is still a unicorn. So, it's only people that got in between ~2bn and 10bn that lost out.
  - abcampbell 11y ago
    seems interesting that everyone is so concerned with the fallen unicorns than the ones that are still riding high with little to no revenue...
- mattzito 11y ago
  I obviously don't know the specifics of the dropbox option pool, but it's not uncommon to have employee options issued at a 409(a) valuation instead of the fundraising valuation. So even if money was raised at a 10bn valuation based on the expectation of future value, a 409(a) valuation would probably place the company at somewhere closer to 10-40% of that, which puts employees in a much better situation.
  - jalonso510 11y ago

disantlor 11y ago

My dropbox scenario is I have a 2TB HD and 2TB dropbox storage with the 1year packrat service. I record and edit music on the HD and dropbox is always syncing my changes. The next day, when I'm at work, I can pull up the website and listen to the stuff I worked on the previous night. If I go into a studio I connect to dropbox and sync whatever folder(s) that contains the song(s) I'm working on. When I get home the files are there. Once I forgot to disconnect my dropbox and someone at the studio trashed the folders and they were deleted on my home machine. I remotely disconnected their connection from the web interface and restored my folders to the previous checkpoint. I can't imagine a simpler, more efficient mechanism for keeping things organized and backed up. I also have a separate backup service on the same drive of course, just in case. The only annoyance with dropbox I have is there are certain scenarios where you can't play audio from the website and are forced to download it, which is annoying when sharing links. That and I wish I could give them more money for more space.

jl6 11y ago
Have you tried asking to pay for more space? I would be willing to pay for a package somewhere between the 1TB pro account and the very expensive Business account.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Not OP, but I've asked for more space and was told the business account was my only option, so now I've hacked together a Dropbox/S3 hybrid.
- disantlor 11y ago
  Yeah as toomuchtodo mentioned there is no option except business and there is a minimum of, I believe, 5 accounts, so at $15/per user/mo thats $900/yr vs the ~$200/yr I'm currently paying. Maybe worth it as each band member could have their own account, but it's a pretty big leap when I really only need 1-2 TB more.
CamperBob2 11y ago
Moral of this story is that packrat is really important. It's more or less reckless to use Dropbox without it, because explaining the difference between a syncing service and a backup service seems to be next to impossible. In fact, IMHO they could even rename the company "PackRat." The only annoyance with dropbox I have is there are certain scenarios where you can't play audio from the website and are forced to download it, which is annoying when sharing links. Agreed.... and once they really get their media and file rendering act together, that multi-billion dollar valuation is going to make a lot more sense. Despite what I said earlier about renaming the company, they're not in the "storage" business, but rather the "delivery" business. The latter category has an unbounded upside.

jl6 11y ago

As an otherwise-happy Dropbox customer, it does concern me somewhat that there has been very little innovation in the core product for several years. They seem focused on building a halo of lock-in services instead.

vlunkr 11y ago
I don't know, their core product is so solid. It's one of those things I can install and never think about again, it just works. Maybe there's no need to innovate there?
- nacs 11y ago
  There's need for innovation because Google/MS/Apple and such are integrating cloud-sync right into the operating system (and its only a matter of time before their sync tech is good enough or better than DB's sync tech).
malka 11y ago
for once, a product does not get heavier and heavier with discutable features. I'm not gonna complain, it happens rarely.

hspak 11y ago

Only reason I still use Dropbox is because 1password integrates so nicely with it.

rokhayakebe 11y ago
Now imagine there are many other people who have this one other reason they still use XYZ. That's how many companies stay in business. I worked at a company where customers would call angrily and shout "The only reason I am still with you guys is because of the designs you guys have, but your service sucks, blah, blah, blah...," and this conversation usually ended with "OK, 4125-5623-8451-XXX...Expiration Date XX-YY... OK, Thank you!"

pyrrhotech 11y ago

I'd be shocked if Dropbox is still in business in 5 years. It's kind of sad because it was the first mover and I loved the service when it was the only one, but now there are a million options that are probably just as good. Not to mention they've never made a dime on me personally or anyone I know (and as I understand it that's true for 95% of their user-base). Our company actually banned Dropbox.com because we decided we'd rather do everything on Google drive for free instead of pay Dropbox for corporate use. The whole industry also has bearish macro outlook as storage continues to get cheaper and yet people's need for it doesn't grow proportionately.

itsbits 11y ago
Dropbox will be in business by acquisition. How about Microsoft acquiring dropbox? Their onedrive is not as good as dropbox and will surely help in their cause.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Apple. Please Apple. Replace your iCloud abomination with Dropbox when the time comes.
  - ErikAugust 11y ago
    "In 2009, Steve Jobs wanted to pay more than a hundred million dollars for Dropbox. As Houston later told Forbes’ Victoria Barret, when he politely turned down his hero’s offer, Jobs declared that Dropbox was a feature, not a product." https://pando.com/2012/02/26/steve-jobs-was-right-dropbox-is-a-feature-not-a-product/ https://pando.com/2012/02/26/steve-jobs-was-right-dropbox-is...
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Thanks for the link. I recall when that initially occurred. I'm going to get a chuckle if it ever goes through, vindicating Jobs posthumously.
    - 11y ago

graeme 11y ago

I very happily pay for Dropbox. I haven't found any of the alternatives as easy as Dropbox. The syncing is seamless.

brk 11y ago
Me too. Dropbox is fast and simple, it's my "sneakernet" at home. I commonly copy files between a Mac and a PC for some projects I work on. Letting Dropbox handle the sync is the most simplistic way to go about it. Most of the files are 1GB or less, so it really doesn't take much time for them to sync, and I have the added bonus of backup and easy off-site access. My dayjob uses Box, and it works OK, but has just never seemed unique enough to switch over too. I think I have the $100/year or whatever it is Dropbox plan, I honestly don't even know. I don't seem to run out of space, and it doesn't cost very much so I just don't think about it at all. That, to me, is the hallmark of a valuable service.
cjensen 11y ago
I agree and I'm also a happy customer of Dropbox. But how long will it be until OneDrive or iCloud Drive catch up? I have 1TB of OneDrive space for "free" with Office. I have plenty of spare space in my iCloud storage plan. If either of those two options catch up to Dropbox's reliability, why would I stay with Dropbox? Long term, why will Dropbox survive?
- Scarblac 11y ago
  Dropbox is much cheaper than either Office or an Apple device.
  - thesimon 11y ago
    >Dropbox is much cheaper [citation needed] Office: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Personal-Year-Card/dp/B00HV9IM58/ http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Personal-Year-Card/dp... $57 for 1 year of Office + 1 TB of storage Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/plans?trigger=homefoot https://www.dropbox.com/plans?trigger=homefoot $9.99 for 1 month of dropbox with 1TB (=> $120/year)

InvisibleCities 11y ago

Dropbox has the same problem a lot of the moderately successful unicorns have; it's a good product managed by smart people that would be much better off as a right-sized stable lifestyle business a la 37 Signals / Basecamp than as an attempt at a world-beating massive-growth juggernaut like Google or Facebook. Unfortunately for them (and Evernote, and a whole host of others), once you've signed that deal for the huge late-stage VC cash infusion at a fantasy-land valuation, there's no going back.

sharkweek 11y ago
The problem being, how many of these businesses would have won any market share without early VC investment enabling the companies to dump money into customer acquisition at a loss? Probably a few of them, but I'm guessing some other company with a similar business model would have come along with VC backing and eaten their lunch (sure, that company might then be in the exact same place as the current over-valued late stage companies). Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
- ksherlock 11y ago
  "Woe to the VC, for they are like a dog sleeping in the manger of oxen, for neither does he eat nor does he let the oxen eat"
- InvisibleCities 11y ago
  That's a great question, and one I won't pretend to have the answer to. On one hand, Basecamp has carved out a very profitable niche for themselves despite venture-backed competition from Jira and others, so it's certainly possible. I also think that there is a big difference between taking money when you are small with typical angel / seed-round terms and taking late-stage money with 2x VC liquidation preferences and a private valuation north of $1 billion. Then again, like you said, it can be very tough to turn a profit when you have to compete with companies undercutting you by subsidizing their prices with an enormous reserve of easy VC cash.
  - huac 11y ago

pfarnsworth 11y ago

$5M valuation isn't exactly suffering. The problem is that the failure of Box as a thriving company has put a ceiling on how much Dropbox can make in the public markets. If Dropbox does need more money, if it can't get profitable with the funding it already has, then it will be in for tough times. If it is forced to go public before it's ready, like Square, then its employees will suffer much like Square's employees have with its stock price.

new299 11y ago

In my mind Dropbox became a company not worth supporting when Rice joined Dropbox's board (http://www.drop-dropbox.com/ http://www.drop-dropbox.com/). I don't know what their future holds. But personally, with a board member who advocates warrentless surveillance it seems unlikely that we share similar views on the security of my data, and I wont be using their service. I'd hope their customers are also looking at the security of their data in light of this and seeking out alternatives.

bad_user 11y ago
Out of curiosity, what do you use?
- thestu 11y ago
  Don't know about him, but I use -- https://www.sync.com/ https://www.sync.com/
  - kobayashi 11y ago
    This is the first I'm hearing about Sync. Any comparison with SpiderOak?
    - ZacharyPitts 11y ago
      Ever since drop-dropbox happened due to Rice, I've been happily using SpiderOak on Windows/OSX/Android/iOS systems. Fine interface with customizable options that I need.
      - kobayashi 11y ago
        In reading about Sync, I was surprised to see their claim that they never hold the encryption keys, even when signing in from mobile devices. This is in contrast to SpiderOak, which says that if one signs in from a mobile device or on the website, they hold keys in RAM for the session.
11y ago

subdane 11y ago

Dropbox really proved out how valuable "it just works" in the cloud can be. Their first few years of execution were phenomenal and the product provided a real value. I remember discovering that I could mock up iPhone apps in photoshop on my desktop, save jpgs to dropbox and open in the app to see what the screens would look like immediately on my phone. Delightful. And then... none of their acquisitions or product initiatives stuck and they added a questionable board member. Anyone have insight in the last couple years of stumble? I'm at a loss.

vecter 11y ago
It's not often that companies nail one thing really well ... and then nail a second and third thing. Dropbox is amazing at cloud storage and syncing. Why do people expect them to develop great products beyond that?

ipozgaj 11y ago

It's very hard to be optimistic about their future when their main competitors are Google (Drive), Microsoft (OneDrive), Apple (iCloud), Amazon (CloudDrive), Box etc. Virtually every single one of big players nowadays offers cloud storage. I cannot see Dropbox succeeding in the long run, especially with the amount of innovation they've put in their product in the past two years (close to none).

bluedino 11y ago
For my uses, DropBox is the best solution by far out of all of those.

Spooky23 11y ago

> Dropbox is not laying off workers or shrinking; it hired nearly 500 people last year, 75 since the start of this year, and it plans to soon move into a sprawling, custom-designed office building for which it has signed a long-term lease. Honest question: WTF are they doing?

zer0defex 11y ago
Nail on the head right here. The only thing Dropbox has these days is consumer confidence in it's syncing process. Beyond that, they trail every competitor feature-wise and frankly, they are succeeding despite their management, not because of it. Recent product enhancements have been, let's be honest, mediocre at best across the board and show no signs of that changing anytime soon. They exist now solely due to brand recognition when it comes to cloud file sync'ing and the moment one of their competitors cracks the consumer confidence equation with the brand image to match, Dropbox is done.
- malchow 11y ago
  What if -- hold your breath! -- Dropbox is simply a medium-sized, privately held, profit-generating company that will end up satisfying a certain customer segment and paying dividends to investors? The horror!
  - tholmes 11y ago
    Companies like that don't usually hire 600 people in 12 months, though. Buuut I guess they could. I guess it just kind of looks like the explosive hiring you see sometimes when a company has projected huge growth but then falls flat and realizes it has way too many employees :(
    - gerbilly 11y ago
      >Companies like that don't usually hire 600 people in 12 months, though. Maybe, are those 600 people there to fight fires and work on tickets, or adding product features?

jonathanpeterwu 11y ago

Actually really love using Paper for simple product specs, cleaner simpler than google docs and uses markdown.

Numberwang 11y ago
I really really wanted to like it. But it feels so cluttery and disorganized.

bobby_9x 11y ago

The problem is that Dropbox isn't that complicated. They were able to win in the beginning because they were a novel idea. Now that they have proven the business model, it will invite competitors (which has already happened). A bigger company with more resources will eventually be able to put them out of business. It would have been better to cash out. Unless they truly have something proprietary with a higher barrier to entry, it will be a difficult road ahead.

tdkl 11y ago

I wish they had more choice regarding purchasing more space. I'm not interested in 1TB and find 10$ per month too much if I wont even use 10% of it. Although if there is a cloud provider I'd trust that sync would never fuck up, I'd be Dropbox. Google Drive still thinks it's normal to re-download the cloud folder instead of letting me install Drive in the same location after a system reinstall, where all the files already exist. And to trust them 1TB with that behaviour ? Hahaha.

T-hawk 11y ago
Your first concern often comes up in Dropbox threads. Of course they could easily offer a plan at 0.5TB / $5 or some such. They just don't want to. They'd lose more revenue from existing customers dropping from $10 to $5 than they'd gain by new customers going from $0 to $5. It's not that Dropbox can't offer less space, it's that they're not interested in making the baseline price anything lower than $10. Put another way, Dropbox is perfectly happy to get along without customers who think the difference between $5 and $10 is something to care about.
math0ne 11y ago
You can get your free account up to 22gb using ehem methods, that's enough for quite a few use cases.
dontblink 11y ago
Your latter statement is just plain incorrect. Google Drive app will recognize your old files and re-associate them with the cloud counterparts. Its had this capability for over a year now.

rikkus 11y ago

Reasons it's still in the game: 1. It works, with fewer problems than any other sync / cloud storage that I've used. 2. It has enough people using it outside of work that it's getting paying business customers (the Linux effect?) If either of these falters (if 1 falters, 2 does too) then they'll be gone. There are plenty of competitors and some even do sync well enough that people will use them. I'm rather upset that they've dropped Carousel, as it's probably the app my girlfriend and I use most on our phones, but I'd only leave Dropbox if they didn't fold enough of the Carousel features back into the Dropbox client - or there wasn't a third party app that could provide similar functionality using our Dropbox storage.

jkmcf 11y ago
3. Integration They were the first dominant syncing solution. Practically everything needing this feature has integrated DB. Beyond DB, the competition is a mix of Google Drive and iCloud, and maybe something else. Maybe if iOS and Android had centralized the interface to these types of features, DB would have gone away years ago, or adapted to the market.
isaiahg 11y ago
I agree. I actually use Dropbox, Drive, and OneDrive. I've only used OneDrive once to share some download links once. The only real reason I use Drive is because of Google Docs. For everything else I use DropBox because I trust them more. I've never ever had a problem with it. Also DropBox hasn't had major scandals and for the most part stays out of the news. When a company is basically holding your private stuff for you that's a huge plus.
- appleflaxen 11y ago
  Hiring Condeleza Rice was scandalous to me, since I care about privacy. Obviously, this is a non-issue for the general public, but it's a bit tone-deaf for "power users".

deleted 11y ago

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vlucas 11y ago

I really don't understand all the negative Dropbox sentiment these days. Who cares if the investors aren't getting a 10x return? How does that materially affect you as a customer? Why are you even cheering for that anyways? I am a very happy paying Dropbox customer. It's a solid product that does the job very well and isn't stuffed with a bunch of other useless features I don't need. It's pretty much perfect.

x1024 11y ago
Companies that don't satisfy their investors' expectations... they often resort to moves of desperation. And those moves are more often than not anti-consumer and even anti-business.
tootie 11y ago
My last two companies invested heavily in dropbox and both ditched it for box.com within 2 years. Dropbox is "growing" their business while they're getting beaten on value by more than one competitor.
subsection1h 11y ago
End-to-end encryption is useless?

bigbadgoose 11y ago

online consumer storage businesses are dead-ends; consumers will own data appliances in their homes that are as easy to use as a fridge, with massive symmetric piping, port control, redundancy, etc.

nassirkhan 11y ago

Completely commoditized service with a few core parterships scattered here and there. Not able to take on the better capitalized players i.e Microsoft, Google, Apple, heck even facebook. Long term odds are not great, unless they merge with a complete ecosystem player like the above

zekevermillion 11y ago

I have used Egnyte, almost since their beginning. Surprised no mention here. Pretty good enterprise offering, including hybrid cloud or self-hosted options. The only complaint I've had is they unilaterally tried to double my subscription price to match their competition. I negotiated a compromise and now I have some weird custom tier.

gizi 11y ago

I stopped using Dropbox after the Snowden revelations broke loose. Dropbox does not use end-to-end encryption. You have to encrypt by yourself. That is not particularly hard, but it still means that you are storing your files in a honeypot from which the NSA regularly draws a juicy feed. Especially users outside the USA should never use a cloud service that lacks automatic end-to-end encryption. As a non-American, you would also reveal your identity (along with your data) to a host of American surveillance agencies by paying by credit card. So, that is another non-starter. Along with unencrypted data, that is just an accident waiting to happen. They would store your dropbox data alongside Angela Merkel's digitized private phone calls to her husband. "I love you honey!". Seriously, I pay for cloud services only with bitcoin.

inthewoods 11y ago

I think they missed their opportunity - namely what they're doing with Paper now. I like Dropbox a lot, but most people I know work with Google Drive/Docs. The whole idea of "files", to me, is becoming more and more abstract and remote. I'd probably find more use for Dropbox if I was using Office 365, but then there is OneDrive for that. Bottomline, I have less need for Dropbox outside of backing up photos. And there are any number of services for backing up photos that are frankly better from a usage PoV (though not from a syncing PoV where they are clearly better). I have an iPhone - I used iCloud to download the pictures to my MBP and then have Google Sync running to push them to Google Photos. iCloud's photo service is still pretty terrible - but using this method I get all the goodness of Google Photos (e.g. let me find all the pictures of my dog or my kid).

teambob 11y ago

Not to mention the top reason I dropped Dropbox: with Condolezza Rice on the board I feel they are a bit too chummy with the government and the NSA.

yyin 11y ago

I use rdiff as an open source, simpler alternative to Dropbox for syncing files across a network. Dropbox uses the same library of functions as rdiff: librsync.

gedrap 11y ago

>>> Dropbox signed up 13 large companies with more than 1,000 users each So let's say the average employee count is 2k and they negotiated to pay $100/user/year. 13 * 2000 * 100 = $2.6M. Even if we double the average employee count and assume they pay standard $150/yr, it's $7.8M. Assuming that business offering is their strongest bet to get as strong as some investors might like (i.e. justify the valuation), how many of these do you need to justify $10B valuation? And how big is the market? I am not sure that it all adds up.