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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 capital

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.

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.