4 ms·

See the Dropbox HN argument. Polish.

by the-dude 9y ago

thisisandyok 9y ago
Infamous Dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- levimaes 9y ago
  Holy hell, that's Drew Houston!
- zerr 9y ago
  To be honest - dropbox is still burning investors money, right? AFAIK they are not profitable even today.
  - drgath 9y ago
    They’re about to IPO. Doesn’t mean they’re profitable, but it does mean their finances are healthy enough that they can be publicly traded.
    - TomV1971 9y ago
      They already IPO’d. :-)
hitekker 9y ago
Excellent shorthand.
jxub 9y ago
It would be even better if BrandonM also commented here ;)
- zerr 9y ago
  Not OP, but even today I still don't understand why is Dropbox different except for hype and media coverage - there were many similar services back then (including integrating as a virtual drive on Windows) and we have literally tons of these services now.
  - the-dude 9y ago
    > there were many similar services back then Citations please.
    - thisisandyok 9y ago
      I read a quote of Drew's a while back that stuck with me. Just googled and found it: "When Dropbox was getting off the ground in 2007, there were hundreds of small storage companies. It was almost a cliche, the way that many people believe mobile photo sharing is a cliche now, he says. “The important thing was, I would keep asking people if they used any one of these hundred options, and they all said no. These are my favorite problems to solve. You can’t focus on what everyone else is doing — it has to be about what’s really broken and what you can do to fix it.”" http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Founder-a-Drew-Houston-Manifesto/ http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Foun...
      - zerr 9y ago
        He should've said what he did differently - seamless integration (aka virtual drive in Windows) was a selling point, but again, other services also had this.
    - zerr 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchronization_software#Commercial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchroniza... You can find when each of these companies were founded by following the links... Don't remember the name, but I remember similar service even in late 90s, when dial-up was popular. You'd pay for some amount of storage hosted on their servers (no "cloud" term back then) and they had Windows client integrated as a drive. Not sure if they had "freemium", maybe dropbox differentiated with this business model.
fastball 9y ago
Oh god. I was so confused by your comment because this guy is on a Polish accelerator and I was trying to figure out how that was relevant.
- the-dude 9y ago
  I noticed directly after posting, decided to keep it.
  - kirubakaran 9y ago
    No pun in ten did get upvotes though.

See the Dropbox HN argument. Polish.

thisisandyok 9y ago

Infamous Dropbox comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

levimaes 9y ago
Holy hell, that's Drew Houston!
zerr 9y ago
To be honest - dropbox is still burning investors money, right? AFAIK they are not profitable even today.
- drgath 9y ago
  They’re about to IPO. Doesn’t mean they’re profitable, but it does mean their finances are healthy enough that they can be publicly traded.
  - TomV1971 9y ago
    They already IPO’d. :-)

hitekker 9y ago

Excellent shorthand.

jxub 9y ago

It would be even better if BrandonM also commented here ;)

zerr 9y ago
Not OP, but even today I still don't understand why is Dropbox different except for hype and media coverage - there were many similar services back then (including integrating as a virtual drive on Windows) and we have literally tons of these services now.
- the-dude 9y ago
  > there were many similar services back then Citations please.
  - thisisandyok 9y ago
    I read a quote of Drew's a while back that stuck with me. Just googled and found it: "When Dropbox was getting off the ground in 2007, there were hundreds of small storage companies. It was almost a cliche, the way that many people believe mobile photo sharing is a cliche now, he says. “The important thing was, I would keep asking people if they used any one of these hundred options, and they all said no. These are my favorite problems to solve. You can’t focus on what everyone else is doing — it has to be about what’s really broken and what you can do to fix it.”" http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Founder-a-Drew-Houston-Manifesto/ http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Win-as-a-First-Time-Foun...
    - zerr 9y ago
      He should've said what he did differently - seamless integration (aka virtual drive in Windows) was a selling point, but again, other services also had this.
  - zerr 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchronization_software#Commercial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_synchroniza... You can find when each of these companies were founded by following the links... Don't remember the name, but I remember similar service even in late 90s, when dial-up was popular. You'd pay for some amount of storage hosted on their servers (no "cloud" term back then) and they had Windows client integrated as a drive. Not sure if they had "freemium", maybe dropbox differentiated with this business model.

fastball 9y ago

Oh god. I was so confused by your comment because this guy is on a Polish accelerator and I was trying to figure out how that was relevant.

the-dude 9y ago
I noticed directly after posting, decided to keep it.
- kirubakaran 9y ago
  No pun in ten did get upvotes though.