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I wonder if Dropbox has the capability of entering the PIM space like G-Suite. I get the feeling that there's room for another custom domain email provider beyo

by 013a 9y ago

I wonder if Dropbox has the capability of entering the PIM space like G-Suite. I get the feeling that there's room for another custom domain email provider beyond the monoculture of Gmail. They had Mailbox at one point. Email is definitely a hard space to get into, but I'd certainly move my domain to it if the price is right and it bundled in a calendar. Paper has been a huge change in the way my team collaborates on documents, between the very easy sharing and super fast interface. I'd love to see what they can do for email and calendars.

inthewoods 9y ago
Paper is interesting but boy have they missed the opportunity so far imho. Paper doesn't come close to what Quip has been able to do, and they failed to capitalize on email. My impression, right or wrong, is that they are very slow at development compared to their competitors. What I think the article gets right is that Dropbox focused on files - which are being abstracted away. At my current company, we have Dropbox and Google Drive, but it's clear that if we're going to use G-Suite then Dropbox needs to go. What they could do: with their new-found public status, they could buy Smartsheet to get a solid Google Sheets competitor. I'm sure they can find a calendar provider. Of course, I'm not confident that they should point their ship into the eye of Office 365 and G-Suite - I just don't see what their other options are.
- dasil003 9y ago
  I can't speak to the business side, but I certainly like Paper much much more than Quip as a product. In general I find integrated multi-function suites to feel janky and half-baked compared to their single-function competitors.
  - inthewoods 9y ago
    Do you use G-Suite or O365 alongside it? I don't see significant improvement over a Google Doc.
    - dasil003 9y ago
      Yes, I use all three. Paper's focus on content vs formatting make Paper feel more elegant and more "meaty" for product development/engineering purposes. Admittedly it's a tough sell over Google Docs for much the same reason that Google Docs was a tough sell of O365 a few years ago—it just doesn't have the functionality to fully replace it. That said, Paper has an elegance about it as a product that reminds me of Facebook vs MySpace ca. 2006, or Slack vs HipChat ca. 2014, where it serves a modern use case in a fundamentally better way, less of a local maximum if you will.
      - danieldk 9y ago
        Paper's focus on content vs formatting make Paper feel more elegant and more "meaty" for product development/engineering purposes. And the support for equations makes it great for sharing research notes as well.
        inthewoods 9y ago
        My team has been using https://jupyter.org/ https://jupyter.org/ for this purpose.
      - inthewoods 9y ago
        Agreed on tough sell - I just don't see enough value in Paper to make it worth it. Same is true for Quip by the way.
- 013a 9y ago
  They've clearly spent a significant amount of product development on building out their enterprise functionality. The functionality there is pretty powerful. Dropbox has a lot going for it. While the concept of a "file" is constantly being abstracted away by The Powers That Be, its still the most general form of data storage and sharing, and its something every power user will always need. Dropbox has proven that they have unique organizational expertise in this area; competitors have had years to come up with something as powerful as Dropbox Sync, and no one has yet. I'd argue Google is the only company close, and its still not as good. I might be in the minority, but I am fine with Dropbox's product development speed. They could go out and buy new companies, but I'm afraid they'd start approaching "Atlassian-style" product development; silos of products that only work together through tightly defined integration paths, bad user experiences, promoting a piecemeal "we use Jira but nothing else because they're not the same product" approach instead of a single "Dropbox Experience". What I'm not fine with is their product direction. Enterprise features are great! But Showcase? Why did they have anyone working on that? They should be focusing on attacking the team collaboration space. Maybe that means building out knowledge base functionality like Quip or Confluence. Maybe that means more Paper-like document types, like powerful spreadsheets or spreadsheet/database hybrids like Airtable. Maybe that means enterprise chat like Slack! Or, maybe foundational PIM tools like email, calendar, contacts, custom domain management, etc. I don't know. But they definitely do feel like they're in a period where they're not sure what direction they should be moving in, and I hope they fix it.
- brightball 9y ago
  I’m a big fan of Paper, personally. I wish they would make it into a Docusign/Ecosign replacement. They have all of the tools needed to do it well.
TarpitCarnivore 9y ago
I think with Paper, Dropbox is going more for a collaboration tool than a full suite replacement. When they were trying to do more with Carousel & Mailbox is when things began to feel like they were losing site. I haven't used Paper, but based on the video it appears to be much more straight forward in team approach than Quip or GDocs. To me Gdocs feels like it's a more full featured replacement to Office and Quip is too simplistic of an approach. Paper seems to perfectly hit the middle ground.
- 013a 9y ago
  GDocs is definitely a full office suite replacement. It could capture the same use case of Paper, but it tends to be too heavy and focuses too much on formatting. Quip is a definite competitor. It tends to do better for knowledge base style collaborations, whereas Paper is better for ephemeral collaboration. But it is lightweight and focused enough to be useful for both. As a sidenote, I really think Google is missing an opportunity here. Drive could really use a Paper-style competitor. Start with the collaboration foundations of Docs, but remove all the cruft. No font changing, no formatting beyond what's in markdown, remove all the menus, streamline the interface, add some integrations like embedding Sheets-style spreadsheets. They'd capture a lot of marketshare that has G-Suite domains, but reaches out to other tools to manage ephemeral collaborations and knowledge bases.
- danieldk 9y ago
  When they were trying to do more with Carousel & Mailbox is when things began to feel like they were losing site. But Carousel was really consumer-focused, whereas Paper is clearly (presented as) a business tool. I think that they realized with Carousel that most Pro users use Dropbox for work, so that is where the money is. As someone who also uses Dropbox for work, I think that they could make Dropbox even more attractive by adding some services. They should not try to compete heads-on with full office suite, but I can imagine that Paper + Calendaring + Chat could really be awesome for work.

by 013a 9y ago

inthewoods 9y ago

Paper is interesting but boy have they missed the opportunity so far imho. Paper doesn't come close to what Quip has been able to do, and they failed to capitalize on email. My impression, right or wrong, is that they are very slow at development compared to their competitors. What I think the article gets right is that Dropbox focused on files - which are being abstracted away. At my current company, we have Dropbox and Google Drive, but it's clear that if we're going to use G-Suite then Dropbox needs to go. What they could do: with their new-found public status, they could buy Smartsheet to get a solid Google Sheets competitor. I'm sure they can find a calendar provider. Of course, I'm not confident that they should point their ship into the eye of Office 365 and G-Suite - I just don't see what their other options are.

dasil003 9y ago
I can't speak to the business side, but I certainly like Paper much much more than Quip as a product. In general I find integrated multi-function suites to feel janky and half-baked compared to their single-function competitors.
- inthewoods 9y ago
  Do you use G-Suite or O365 alongside it? I don't see significant improvement over a Google Doc.
  - dasil003 9y ago
    Yes, I use all three. Paper's focus on content vs formatting make Paper feel more elegant and more "meaty" for product development/engineering purposes. Admittedly it's a tough sell over Google Docs for much the same reason that Google Docs was a tough sell of O365 a few years ago—it just doesn't have the functionality to fully replace it. That said, Paper has an elegance about it as a product that reminds me of Facebook vs MySpace ca. 2006, or Slack vs HipChat ca. 2014, where it serves a modern use case in a fundamentally better way, less of a local maximum if you will.
    - danieldk 9y ago
      Paper's focus on content vs formatting make Paper feel more elegant and more "meaty" for product development/engineering purposes. And the support for equations makes it great for sharing research notes as well.
      - inthewoods 9y ago
        My team has been using https://jupyter.org/ https://jupyter.org/ for this purpose.
    - inthewoods 9y ago
      Agreed on tough sell - I just don't see enough value in Paper to make it worth it. Same is true for Quip by the way.
013a 9y ago
They've clearly spent a significant amount of product development on building out their enterprise functionality. The functionality there is pretty powerful. Dropbox has a lot going for it. While the concept of a "file" is constantly being abstracted away by The Powers That Be, its still the most general form of data storage and sharing, and its something every power user will always need. Dropbox has proven that they have unique organizational expertise in this area; competitors have had years to come up with something as powerful as Dropbox Sync, and no one has yet. I'd argue Google is the only company close, and its still not as good. I might be in the minority, but I am fine with Dropbox's product development speed. They could go out and buy new companies, but I'm afraid they'd start approaching "Atlassian-style" product development; silos of products that only work together through tightly defined integration paths, bad user experiences, promoting a piecemeal "we use Jira but nothing else because they're not the same product" approach instead of a single "Dropbox Experience". What I'm not fine with is their product direction. Enterprise features are great! But Showcase? Why did they have anyone working on that? They should be focusing on attacking the team collaboration space. Maybe that means building out knowledge base functionality like Quip or Confluence. Maybe that means more Paper-like document types, like powerful spreadsheets or spreadsheet/database hybrids like Airtable. Maybe that means enterprise chat like Slack! Or, maybe foundational PIM tools like email, calendar, contacts, custom domain management, etc. I don't know. But they definitely do feel like they're in a period where they're not sure what direction they should be moving in, and I hope they fix it.
brightball 9y ago
I’m a big fan of Paper, personally. I wish they would make it into a Docusign/Ecosign replacement. They have all of the tools needed to do it well.

TarpitCarnivore 9y ago

I think with Paper, Dropbox is going more for a collaboration tool than a full suite replacement. When they were trying to do more with Carousel & Mailbox is when things began to feel like they were losing site. I haven't used Paper, but based on the video it appears to be much more straight forward in team approach than Quip or GDocs. To me Gdocs feels like it's a more full featured replacement to Office and Quip is too simplistic of an approach. Paper seems to perfectly hit the middle ground.

013a 9y ago
GDocs is definitely a full office suite replacement. It could capture the same use case of Paper, but it tends to be too heavy and focuses too much on formatting. Quip is a definite competitor. It tends to do better for knowledge base style collaborations, whereas Paper is better for ephemeral collaboration. But it is lightweight and focused enough to be useful for both. As a sidenote, I really think Google is missing an opportunity here. Drive could really use a Paper-style competitor. Start with the collaboration foundations of Docs, but remove all the cruft. No font changing, no formatting beyond what's in markdown, remove all the menus, streamline the interface, add some integrations like embedding Sheets-style spreadsheets. They'd capture a lot of marketshare that has G-Suite domains, but reaches out to other tools to manage ephemeral collaborations and knowledge bases.
danieldk 9y ago
When they were trying to do more with Carousel & Mailbox is when things began to feel like they were losing site. But Carousel was really consumer-focused, whereas Paper is clearly (presented as) a business tool. I think that they realized with Carousel that most Pro users use Dropbox for work, so that is where the money is. As someone who also uses Dropbox for work, I think that they could make Dropbox even more attractive by adding some services. They should not try to compete heads-on with full office suite, but I can imagine that Paper + Calendaring + Chat could really be awesome for work.