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Thank you Paul and Jessica for taking a chance on us — we wouldn’t be here without you and YC :) And thank you HN — I’m pretty sure the upvotes on the original

Thank you Paul and Jessica for taking a chance on us — we wouldn’t be here without you and YC :) And thank you HN — I’m pretty sure the upvotes on the original screencast helped us get into YC and on Paul & Jessica’s radar to begin with! Even you BrandonM — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 — my favorite HN comment thread of all time :)

FredrikMeyer 9y ago
Here's a link to the actual presentation https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dropbox.com:80/u/2/screencast.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dro...
- degenerate 9y ago
  That web interface is soooooo much easier to understand and use. Makes me sad how unnecessarily complex modern UI is, not just on dropbox, but across the whole web.
  - rconti 9y ago
    Hell, even the menu bar UI on OS X is still terrible; they 'broke' it maybe 5 years ago and it's been the same mess ever since. It used to tell you what % of your dropbox was used, it used to tell you syncing status, it used to tell you all kinds of things. Now it's some weird changelog that looks nothing like anything else in OS X (or Windows, for that matter) from a UX perspective. I mean, I guess I'm glad they didn't pull a Google and break it in new and exciting ways every 6 months, but really, it should have been changed back a week after they screwed it up. Big congrats to the Dropbox team, though -- I use their product personally because it Just Works. Interviewed there back in 2011 when the office was (next to?) the old Fry's in Palo Alto.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      It still does tell you those things (they've just moved around a bit). The % used is seen when you click on the settings. I think because, honestly, they're trying to abstract the idea that you need to do that (the average user just cares that it works not the %). Get where you're coming from tho - it's not the most clear or clean UI.
      - ReverseCold 9y ago
        A "power user" toggle in most apps would be great. PayPal's site kinda does this with a "classic mode" toggle.
- tomerbd 9y ago
  which presentation is it to whom? to get into ycombinator?!?!
- tomerbd 9y ago
  The response when he shared the file on his messenger was "why are you sending me this crap" :)) so funny if this was part of the original presentation of what would become dropbox.
joering2 9y ago
On point 1, he failed to understand that 99.9% of population is not IT savvy, not to mention how much time such setup would take and then maintain to run smoothly with all security patches, etc. 2. He misunderstood initial description of Drop; that the files will reside locally even if you lose internet connection you still can access those. 3. He was wrong about "viral" but right about inability to "make money off of this" :) Congrats on listing!
kalid 9y ago
Congrats Drew and Arash, amazing job! I still remember meeting you at Startup school and wear account #27 with pride :).
dvt 9y ago
What a classic and inspiring YC story :) Big congrats!
vecinu 9y ago
Congratulations to the entire team. I think it's interesting to go back to that thread, look at what the author (BrandonM) has done since then and learn some important lessons about being able to step outside of your own head to see the bigger picture. Looks like he's still working for another company and has an unfinished blog (http://shebang.brandonmintern.com http://shebang.brandonmintern.com) but he seems like a really smart guy. The takeaway I got from the thread is "Don't be afraid to try something and finish it". You guys had a lot of courage and perseverance to take an idea that people trivialized, have a working implementation, build a company around it and then IPO.
- wpietri 9y ago
  Looking at his LinkedIn profile, it seems like he was still in college then. He was wrong, of course, but I think his errors were pretty reasonable given his situation. It's very easy for tech people to say, "But it's totally easy, you just [long string of steps that they've learned over the course of years]." It takes time to learn that no, easy things for you can be hard for others. If you want them to use the thing, you have to make it dead easy. I note that Apple made a shit-ton of money because so many tech companies (e.g., MP3 player makers) refused to really learn this lesson. His second point, that USB sticks were still necessary, wasn't bad, just not forward-looking enough. He wrote it before the introduction of the iPhone, after all. But back then, high-quality connectivity was much less common. Then, Dropbox would have worked better for some than others. And his third point was correct. Charging cash money is important. So really, it's not a bad comment for a CS student. And it reminds me that I'm very thankful that most of my youthful opinion-spouting happened in offline and pre-web contexts.
  - BrandonM 9y ago
    Thanks for such a fair evaluation! That's honestly the first time someone has put my comment in context like that... I appreciate it :)
    - wpietri 9y ago
      Hah! Very welcome. The people we really should be raking over the coals are the VCs who didn't invest. Spotting good products is their job.
sinzone 9y ago
As they say, don't listen to the naysayers... and you did not! Congrats.
izzygomez 9y ago
Congrats Drew! One of the highlights of my MIT experience was going to your ~yearly tech talks that you did at the beginning of the fall semester. I’m excited to see Dropbox continue to grow as a company. :)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nick007 9y ago
Love that Drew posted this from the stock exchange floor this morning
S_A_P 9y ago
I think you handled BrandonM's critiques pretty well, and not immediately getting defensive around the products shortcomings was well played. Congrats to you and your team.
BrandonM 9y ago
It's funny how often that comment—which I made as a 22-year-old undergrad—resurfaces. Someone even reached out to me 2 weeks ago because they wanted to use it in an article as an example of "the disconnect between the way users and engineers see software"! I like to think that I've gained a lot of perspective over the last 11 years; it's pretty clear to me that point #1 was short-sighted and exhibited a lot of tunnel vision. Looking back, though, I still think that thread was a reasonable exchange. My 2nd and 3rd points were fair, and I conceded much of point 1 to you after your reply (which was very high quality). Obviously, we have the benefit of hindsight now in seeing how well you were able to execute. Kudos on that! Congrats on your success! I wish you nothing but the best going forward!
- jaequery 9y ago
  I think your feelings were shared by hundreds of professional investors that passed them up so dont be too hard on your 22yo self at the time. :)
- myth_buster 9y ago
  I see you getting some flak here but for what it's worth, I read it as a very grounded discussion and feedback. I appreciate the fact that you conceded the points that seemed reasonable post Drew's comment.
  - freehunter 9y ago
    To be honest I like seeing some posts like that where the entire concept of the idea is being challenged from the ground up, especially if the creator has to step in and defend it. Oftentimes I get more perspective into a product from the defense of its perceived shortcomings than I do from any marketing material.
- cyrux004 9y ago
  What do you do now Brandon ? edit: nvm, found this https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrandonM https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrandonM
nodesocket 9y ago
Next up AirBnb and perhaps Stripe (speculation). Those early YC investments are really paying off huge returns. Unlike investing in the stock market, where you want to hit lots of singles, angel/startup investing is all about hitting home runs as the vast majority of the time you are going to strikeout.
confiscate 9y ago
well you can't be too hard on Brandon if every Brandon out there was able to see the big picture, Dropbox would have had A LOT more competition, when Dropbox was still in the early stages. It would have made it a lot harder for Dropbox to succeed, right? So in a way, the fact that the millions of Brandon's out there who think curlftpfs is the best, and are not capable of seeing the true value of Dropbox--perhaps that was a positive thing for Dropbox, right? Otherwise they might have tried to make a similar product and competed with you years ago :)
FSharper 9y ago
This is a problem with Linux users in general. They dismiss everything as just a simple script in Linux. I get told by Linux people that I'm a fool for using Synologies because I could use Linux and ZFS, or I'm an idiot for having a Drobo because I could use MythTV, etc. I'm glad I'm not FTP and CURLing files around and that I have a cloud storage solution that someone else worries about.
forgot-my-pw 9y ago
It's too bad the original screencast page is gone: http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html Edit: someone posted an archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dropbox.com:80/u/2/screencast.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dro...
jasonwilk 9y ago
Congrats Drew. I remember seeing the TechCrunch 40 pitch and writing about you guys. You inspired me to do YC myself. Congrats on the IPO my friend.
jodrellblank 9y ago
Seems like BrandonM's quote comes up all the time, but Joel Spolsky wrote in 2008: “Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about.” Wait a minute. Something smells fishy here. Isn’t that exactly what Hailstorm [2001] was supposed to be? I smell an architecture astronaut. And what is this Windows Live Mesh? It’s a way to synchronize files. Jeez, we’ve had that forever. When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I’m sorry. It seems like it should be. But it’s not. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astronauts-take-over/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astro... Has he made any public comment on synchronizing files / killer app in the intervening years?

FredrikMeyer 9y ago

Here's a link to the actual presentation https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dropbox.com:80/u/2/screencast.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dro...

degenerate 9y ago
That web interface is soooooo much easier to understand and use. Makes me sad how unnecessarily complex modern UI is, not just on dropbox, but across the whole web.
- rconti 9y ago
  Hell, even the menu bar UI on OS X is still terrible; they 'broke' it maybe 5 years ago and it's been the same mess ever since. It used to tell you what % of your dropbox was used, it used to tell you syncing status, it used to tell you all kinds of things. Now it's some weird changelog that looks nothing like anything else in OS X (or Windows, for that matter) from a UX perspective. I mean, I guess I'm glad they didn't pull a Google and break it in new and exciting ways every 6 months, but really, it should have been changed back a week after they screwed it up. Big congrats to the Dropbox team, though -- I use their product personally because it Just Works. Interviewed there back in 2011 when the office was (next to?) the old Fry's in Palo Alto.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    It still does tell you those things (they've just moved around a bit). The % used is seen when you click on the settings. I think because, honestly, they're trying to abstract the idea that you need to do that (the average user just cares that it works not the %). Get where you're coming from tho - it's not the most clear or clean UI.
    - ReverseCold 9y ago
      A "power user" toggle in most apps would be great. PayPal's site kinda does this with a "classic mode" toggle.
tomerbd 9y ago
which presentation is it to whom? to get into ycombinator?!?!
tomerbd 9y ago
The response when he shared the file on his messenger was "why are you sending me this crap" :)) so funny if this was part of the original presentation of what would become dropbox.

joering2 9y ago

On point 1, he failed to understand that 99.9% of population is not IT savvy, not to mention how much time such setup would take and then maintain to run smoothly with all security patches, etc. 2. He misunderstood initial description of Drop; that the files will reside locally even if you lose internet connection you still can access those. 3. He was wrong about "viral" but right about inability to "make money off of this" :) Congrats on listing!

kalid 9y ago

Congrats Drew and Arash, amazing job! I still remember meeting you at Startup school and wear account #27 with pride :).

dvt 9y ago

What a classic and inspiring YC story :) Big congrats!

vecinu 9y ago

Congratulations to the entire team. I think it's interesting to go back to that thread, look at what the author (BrandonM) has done since then and learn some important lessons about being able to step outside of your own head to see the bigger picture. Looks like he's still working for another company and has an unfinished blog (http://shebang.brandonmintern.com http://shebang.brandonmintern.com) but he seems like a really smart guy. The takeaway I got from the thread is "Don't be afraid to try something and finish it". You guys had a lot of courage and perseverance to take an idea that people trivialized, have a working implementation, build a company around it and then IPO.

wpietri 9y ago
Looking at his LinkedIn profile, it seems like he was still in college then. He was wrong, of course, but I think his errors were pretty reasonable given his situation. It's very easy for tech people to say, "But it's totally easy, you just [long string of steps that they've learned over the course of years]." It takes time to learn that no, easy things for you can be hard for others. If you want them to use the thing, you have to make it dead easy. I note that Apple made a shit-ton of money because so many tech companies (e.g., MP3 player makers) refused to really learn this lesson. His second point, that USB sticks were still necessary, wasn't bad, just not forward-looking enough. He wrote it before the introduction of the iPhone, after all. But back then, high-quality connectivity was much less common. Then, Dropbox would have worked better for some than others. And his third point was correct. Charging cash money is important. So really, it's not a bad comment for a CS student. And it reminds me that I'm very thankful that most of my youthful opinion-spouting happened in offline and pre-web contexts.
- BrandonM 9y ago
  Thanks for such a fair evaluation! That's honestly the first time someone has put my comment in context like that... I appreciate it :)
  - wpietri 9y ago
    Hah! Very welcome. The people we really should be raking over the coals are the VCs who didn't invest. Spotting good products is their job.

sinzone 9y ago

As they say, don't listen to the naysayers... and you did not! Congrats.

izzygomez 9y ago

Congrats Drew! One of the highlights of my MIT experience was going to your ~yearly tech talks that you did at the beginning of the fall semester. I’m excited to see Dropbox continue to grow as a company. :)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

nick007 9y ago

Love that Drew posted this from the stock exchange floor this morning

S_A_P 9y ago

I think you handled BrandonM's critiques pretty well, and not immediately getting defensive around the products shortcomings was well played. Congrats to you and your team.

BrandonM 9y ago

It's funny how often that comment—which I made as a 22-year-old undergrad—resurfaces. Someone even reached out to me 2 weeks ago because they wanted to use it in an article as an example of "the disconnect between the way users and engineers see software"! I like to think that I've gained a lot of perspective over the last 11 years; it's pretty clear to me that point #1 was short-sighted and exhibited a lot of tunnel vision. Looking back, though, I still think that thread was a reasonable exchange. My 2nd and 3rd points were fair, and I conceded much of point 1 to you after your reply (which was very high quality). Obviously, we have the benefit of hindsight now in seeing how well you were able to execute. Kudos on that! Congrats on your success! I wish you nothing but the best going forward!

jaequery 9y ago
I think your feelings were shared by hundreds of professional investors that passed them up so dont be too hard on your 22yo self at the time. :)
myth_buster 9y ago
I see you getting some flak here but for what it's worth, I read it as a very grounded discussion and feedback. I appreciate the fact that you conceded the points that seemed reasonable post Drew's comment.
- freehunter 9y ago
  To be honest I like seeing some posts like that where the entire concept of the idea is being challenged from the ground up, especially if the creator has to step in and defend it. Oftentimes I get more perspective into a product from the defense of its perceived shortcomings than I do from any marketing material.
cyrux004 9y ago
What do you do now Brandon ? edit: nvm, found this https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrandonM https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrandonM

nodesocket 9y ago

Next up AirBnb and perhaps Stripe (speculation). Those early YC investments are really paying off huge returns. Unlike investing in the stock market, where you want to hit lots of singles, angel/startup investing is all about hitting home runs as the vast majority of the time you are going to strikeout.

confiscate 9y ago

well you can't be too hard on Brandon if every Brandon out there was able to see the big picture, Dropbox would have had A LOT more competition, when Dropbox was still in the early stages. It would have made it a lot harder for Dropbox to succeed, right? So in a way, the fact that the millions of Brandon's out there who think curlftpfs is the best, and are not capable of seeing the true value of Dropbox--perhaps that was a positive thing for Dropbox, right? Otherwise they might have tried to make a similar product and competed with you years ago :)

FSharper 9y ago

This is a problem with Linux users in general. They dismiss everything as just a simple script in Linux. I get told by Linux people that I'm a fool for using Synologies because I could use Linux and ZFS, or I'm an idiot for having a Drobo because I could use MythTV, etc. I'm glad I'm not FTP and CURLing files around and that I have a cloud storage solution that someone else worries about.

forgot-my-pw 9y ago

It's too bad the original screencast page is gone: http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html http://www.getdropbox.com/u/2/screencast.html Edit: someone posted an archived link: https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dropbox.com:80/u/2/screencast.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100817162301/http://dl-web.dro...

jasonwilk 9y ago

Congrats Drew. I remember seeing the TechCrunch 40 pitch and writing about you guys. You inspired me to do YC myself. Congrats on the IPO my friend.

jodrellblank 9y ago

Seems like BrandonM's quote comes up all the time, but Joel Spolsky wrote in 2008: “Imagine all your devices—PCs, and soon Macs and mobile phones—working together to give you anywhere access to the information you care about.” Wait a minute. Something smells fishy here. Isn’t that exactly what Hailstorm [2001] was supposed to be? I smell an architecture astronaut. And what is this Windows Live Mesh? It’s a way to synchronize files. Jeez, we’ve had that forever. When did the first sync web sites start coming out? 1999? There were a million versions. xdrive, mydrive, idrive, youdrive, wealldrive for ice cream. Nobody cared then and nobody cares now, because synchronizing files is just not a killer application. I’m sorry. It seems like it should be. But it’s not. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astronauts-take-over/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astro... Has he made any public comment on synchronizing files / killer app in the intervening years?