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Jessica is awesome. That said, this part near the beginning, where Sam says... >>Sometimes they create a small success, and sometimes they create these compani
by enraged_camel 10y ago
Jessica is awesome. That said, this part near the beginning, where Sam says...
>>Sometimes they create a small success, and sometimes they create these companies that really transform the world, and YC has been very fortunate to be involved in a lot of these, Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, the list goes on.
I mean... really? OK, I'll grant you Airbnb, but Dropbox "transformed" the world?
- asolove 10y agoRemember to translate out of startup-speak: "change the world" means "make a lot of money for our investors".
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoWell, "make a lot of money by selling something that enough people want badly enough that they'll voluntarily give us their money" is somewhat closer to "change the world".
- vidoc 10y agoNote that they're always careful not to say whether the world is changed in a positive or negative way :D
- nojvek 10y agoIf my Dropbox gets hacked, I would seriously get very worried. If my Facebook gets hacked, I'd be merely annoyed.
- asperous 10y agoMaybe not directly, but I think it did have a cultural influence: * Helped people trust the "cloud" and inspired other cloud services to do similar things * This might have help improve the foundation for remote workers to become more common.
- harryh 10y agoI dunno. Before Dropbox I didn't really use a general purpose file store in the cloud for anything. I stored pictures on flickr and documents on Google Docs but nothing general purpose. Now I store my entire home directory, all of my financial & legal documents, and quite a few other things (some in Dropbox some elsewhere). I dunno if that's transforming the world or not but it's made a pretty big difference to me personally.
- adamnemecek 10y agoHave you bought any flash drives recently?
- revelation 10y agoPlenty, you can get killer USB3 flash drives now. USB3 really is the Dropbox moment for flash drives.
- nibs 10y agoAgreed. It takes <60 seconds to back-up all my personal files to a reformatted USB3 thumb drive I can stash in a safe. I only ever use them from one PC. Dropbox is good for collaborating but I think the "use from any device" benefits are a little bit overplayed. How many PCs and cell phones do people really do work on?
- theOnliest 10y agoI have a desktop and a laptop that I use regularly, plus a work laptop. And I teach in a classroom that has a PC in it, so I regularly access Dropbox from 4 separate machines, not counting mobile devices.
- icebraining 10y agoMany people don't even know you can plug in a thumb drive on a phone or tablet, so if you're going to transfer files back-and-forth between just two devices, you pretty much need a syncing software.
- adamnemecek 10y agoIt's funny, until I read your comment I didn't realize I would ever actually consider buying flash drive again.
- sotojuan 10y agoFor printing stuff in college or sharing files with someone near you nothing beats a USB. Quick and easy.
- dwaxe 10y agorsync for normal people turns out to be a pretty big deal
- utefan001 10y agoStripe has transformed the world. In 1999, I was asked to look into how to setup credit card processing for our company. I contacted Authorize.net for technical help. They just asked me to fax some information to them. Two months later my boss receives a bill for $3,000 claiming we had signed a contract agreeing to that fee. I think Stripe has made CC processing a lot easier for everyone.
- mgkimsal 10y agolot of time passed between 199 and stripe. a little thing called paypal had a pretty huge impact on opening up credit card payments for folks too.
- mgkimsal 10y ago(obviously 1999, not 199!)
- wott 10y agoAh. OK. Transformed the world, no less. I don't even know what it is.
- rgbrenner 10y agoI setup credit card processing with authorize.net in 2003. Used authorize.net's API docs. Didn't have any significant problems. I like(d) their API less than Stripe's.. but I wouldn't pay a premium for Stripe just for that. Interesting how much difference 4 years makes.