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Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
- bentoner 16y agoHere's the video: http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262672510 http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262672510 The rest of the videos from this conference are good too: http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/videos http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/videos
- hanula 16y agoOne and only reason I started using Dropbox was because of their desktop app. It was there, available for Linux, simple and easy to install. One click to create an account and I'am a happy user since then, since the beginning. Dropbox is great.
- mhd 16y agoOne important factor for me is that they went beyond the call of duty on Linux. Dropbox itself had some Python scripts available that made it possible to install and run the application, even if you weren't running one of the major two desktops – or even no X11 at all. It was a bit hackish (stubs for non-present GUI libraries instead of a proper non-GUI daemon), but it got things running.
- staunch 16y agoPrevious discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290303 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290303
- TeMPOraL 16y agoI learned about Dropbox exactly the way slide 28 shows - heard about it from random source, tested, felt happy and started forcing my friends to use it (ie. to coordinate work for university projects). And the funny thing about those "Dozens and dozens of cloud storage companies" that existed prior to Dropbox (as slides 6 and 7 tell)... personally I don't know anyone who knew about any of those companies. I didn't know any of them untill today and for years I was pretty sure that Dropbox guys were the first ones to get that idea (or at least to get it working). And they did a great job with it.
- mparr4 16y agoI too assumed they were just the first ones with the idea. I've come up with a thousand and one amazing ideas only to find out that they've already been done--I actually invented the internet... It's encouraging seeing an example like this where quality matters.
- msy 16y agoIronically it's more grief to get access to a download for the slides than it is to sign up for Dropbox.
- chris123 16y agoGreat slides and great job extending Hotmail/PayPal viral growth formula.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoHm. I guess it works for Enterprise etc, but not for small groups. I've got a high school club, 12 members. We use(d) Dropbox until we "ran out of space". Its $9.99/mo to "upgrade" and we ALL have to pay it. So the business model (from our point of view) is: pay nothing until you're hooked, then its $1,400/year. Ouch! We have to find a different solution. And what is that money paying for? Of course from Dropbox's point of view its "what the market will bear". But from the customer point of view? They say its to "increase your space". But its MY disk drive, I already bought it. So that seems phoney right off. Maybe for all the network transfer costs? Hm, we have 1Gb, to copy it all every week between all of our computers would annualize to a few dollars, not $1400.00. I know they seem successful, but they're still leaving some folks out in the cold with this business model.
- reddot 16y agoCan't you have everyone sign into the same account?
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoUsing multiple accounts has been very unpleasant; I don't know if that has been fixed. As I said, we had to quit using Dropbox for the club. And many folks already used Dropbox for other things, so normally are logged into their own account.
- unexpected 16y agoAs for another solution - wouldn't a private github repository work for your needs? You could do this for $25 a month, and would do the same thing you're doing now, wouldn't it?
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoSure, we can do any number of things - Dropbox just isn't one of them. That's my point.
- Simucal 16y agoIt isn't just your disk drive. They keep a copy of all your data on their servers. Not just a copy, but the change history of every file so you can revert to previous revisions of individual files.
- nodata 16y agoThe reason I don't recommend dropbox, is that it's not clear from the homepage how someone can send a big file with it. I can watch a video or sign in to an account. Great, but the people I am recommending this to want to share a file: why is there no file upload widget on the homepage?
- soyelmango 16y agoPerhaps you should be recommending yousendit.com or similar
- nodata 16y agoI do recommend yousendit instead. For me, the "sending big files to someone" is a great hook to get them using the rest of dropbox' features. Judging by the downvotes, I guess nobody agrees with me :)
- ekanes 16y agoI don't know if Dropbox has a limit on file size, but whether or not they can do that, it's not their positioning. They're all about "sharing files", but to say "we let you share big files!" would be too narrow, and turn off or confuse more people than it would attract.
- blantonl 16y agosearch is a way to harvest demand, not create it This is indeed an incredibly important lesson learned.
- Nemisis7654 16y agoCool slides. I definitely enjoyed reading those. The fact that I heard about Dropbox exactly how he explained made it that much better.