11 ms·

How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

191 points by scriptstar 8y ago

marzipan 8y ago
I used Dropbox from 2009 through last month or so. Switched over to Syncthing. I was a little bit worried about stability but soon after I sampled it I felt convinced that it was the right move. I was previously using Dropbox as a kind of makeshift backup as well as a sync tool, but now I have a desktop again and run automated backups on that using Backblaze, so I'm a little bit more in control over the data by doing my own syncing.
- rckclmbr 8y ago
  Somewhat related, ive been a very happy resilio sync user since it was launched as bittorrent sync. I have similar backups -- it backs up to my 2 personal computers, and one of those is backing up to backblaze. My (nontechnical) wife is happy with this for storing all her phone and camera pictures.
henryaj 8y ago
The fact that they were strangers is super surprising, especially given how YC seems to discourage that kind of "founder dating", suggesting instead you found companies only with people you trust deeply.
- adpirz 8y ago
  OTOH, the fact that dhouston was able to convince a current MIT student and otherwise total stranger to drop out and follow him on this journey in just a few hours' conversation is telling of both his and the product's prowess.
  - dxhdr 8y ago
    That narrative doesn't quite align with the article stating that "for various reasons none of his friends were able to join the business." In retrospect all of Houston's friends made a huge mistake! Maybe Ferdowsi was tired of MIT and joined him on a lark? I am curious to hear the story from his perspective.
    - whymauri 8y ago
      Ferdowsi says joining was like scratching an itch here.[0] I've heard from alumni he spent a lot of time coding in his room, like more than average compared to your friendly neighborhood MIT student; I can imagine the prospect of high-risk, high-reward coding for 18 hours/day was very appealing. [0] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/how-two-guys-that-barely-knew-each-other-build-one-of-the-biggest-cloud-storage-companies-in-the-c41c383a952e https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/how-two-guys-that-barel...
      - plinkplonk 8y ago
        from the article (medium, not BBC) "The pair worked tirelessly for three months in a cramped office in Cambridge, waking up everyday at noon and working till dawn the next day. “I think we started like most of these tech companies begin. Just a couple of guys in their boxers coding in a dark room,” Houston says. “We just kept our heads down and built.”"
- abalone 8y ago
  Yeah but the thing YC discourages even more than that is solo founders.
adventured 8y ago
After watching the popular opionion about Dropbox for most of its early years, that it was a product (or worse just a feature) and not a sustainable independent company/business, I'm always glad to see them continuing to grow and thrive. Hats off to Drew and the Dropbox team.
_bxg1 8y ago
When Google Drive and iCloud and One Drive all cropped up, copying the same service with the addition of deeper integration into different devices and software, I was worried Dropbox would be unable to compete. But they've hung in there, and I remain a happy customer.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive
  - GeekyBear 8y ago
    I used Dropbox in the early days because of the ability to place a file in your public folder and allow others to download a copy of that file using a standard URL. You could share a file with your colleagues by simply emailing a URL to the file. No other service was as straightforward at the time. When that feature was later removed, I stopped using Dropbox.
    - rpearl 8y ago
      (Used to work there; haven't in several years.) Such a feature was a pretty bad phishing and social engineering vector, particularly when you could render html out of that folder, but even when html was dropped that there were social engineering attacks a bad actor could pull relying on the user's trust of a dropbox url. You could also guess other files in the public folder based on the url, which was a privacy concern. Multiple years before support was dropped, shared links were added, which fix these concerns. You can set ?dl=1 to get a raw link. `curl/wget` (set to follow redirects) still get you the raw contents even if you don't set ?dl=1.
    - xzel 8y ago
      They removed the public folder but you can still share a file(s) via url via their website.
joering2 8y ago
Still available online :) https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox/ https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox/
- FullyFunctional 8y ago
  There is so much gold in that link, thank you! A random pick: "The concept that I'm most excited about is that the core technology in Dropbox -- continuous efficient sync with compression and binary diffs" * Andrew Tridgell of course created rsync (which is referenced elsewhere) and pioneered the binary delta model which has inspired so much progress. Dropbox's sync in clearly directly influenced by this. Outstanding achievement! * "efficient sync with compression and binary diffs" is key here but astonishingly appears to be a secondary concern for many (most?) competitors which is why they su^H^Haren't as good.
sigjuice 8y ago
I for one no longer trust Dropbox to behave on my computer after this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338
- saagarjha 8y ago
  They now have a kernel extension as part of their app, supposedly to stop people from dragging files out of shared folders.
  - sigjuice 8y ago
    That’s even worse.
ebikelaw 8y ago
I noticed the word "profit" doesn't appear anywhere in the article. Will Dropbox ever make money?
- B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
  Also, will they ever encrypt files on the client side? (Hey, it's been only nine or ten years evading that question ...)
  - Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
    For every user wanting client-side encryption so that Dropbox can't see the content of the files you're storing, there's another user wanting server-side text searching, which isn't possible with client-side encryption. The answer, of course, is to make client-side encryption an option.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Exactly. It kills me that the definition of a successful company is rarely - being able to deliver a product profitably.
  - 101km 8y ago
    They provided a spreadsheet on their investor relations page: https://dropbox.gcs-web.com/static-files/105a910a-1026-4056-912c-1b806b964843 https://dropbox.gcs-web.com/static-files/105a910a-1026-4056-... Losses last three years are: ~300m, ~200m, ~100m. They are going to be profitable by 2020 and their margin is growing, so I don't get this negativity.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      They can predict a lot of things. But in the B2B market, they are competing with much larger companies that can offer the same amount of storage plus a lot more - Google and Microsoft. In the consumer market, they are competing with Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Would you really want to compete against the three most valuable companies in the US where as Steve Jobs said “you’re not a product you’re a feature”?
kapauldo 8y ago
Have they ever made a profit?
matte_black 8y ago
How many schools allow you to recontinue your education again if you drop out to start a company but it fails? Seems like if I had this option I would have dropped out at least once.
- k__ 8y ago
  Some remote universities, I guess. I'm studying a MCompSci for 7 years now and it only costs me 11€ when I don't do any courses in a semester. I got all courses done, just need time for the thesis, hehe
  - sebastienrocks 8y ago
    Is your university remote? Can you provide a link by chance?
    - k__ 8y ago
      sure https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/ https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/
trfflhntr 8y ago
I once used a variety of services, but now use Dropbox (free version) exclusively. It does what I need and I prefer their privacy based model (in comparison to other set-it-and-forget-it solutions).
madengr 8y ago
Still fathoms me that Dropbox is worth billions of $ for the same functionality as FTP.
- briandear 8y ago
  And that’s exactly why they’re billionaires and you probably aren’t. It isn’t about functionality, it’s about ease of use. It’s the same argument used when MS-DOS was being replaced by the GUI. Explain FTP to your Aunt Edna. Get FTP working where everything on all devices is in sync automatically. Comment on a file via FTP. Send a link to a file they can consume on a mobile device — including playing audio or video without downloading the file. Create access lists for folders. Sure you could do it using FTP. Now do it cheaply at scale and make it work everywhere and then convince your non tech friends to use it. Why bother with GPS when we could all use a map and compass? Dropbox made file syncing accessible to everyone cheaply and securely.
  - berbec 8y ago
    That is a genius reply. This should be what people think every time they say no to a new idea with "put isn't this just xxxx, but a little simpler?". A little simpler can be very broad and Dropbox has done just what the founder envisioned - made a web-based flash drive.
    - amorphid 8y ago
      I was joking to myself earlier today that "All you gotta do is..." is an alias for "I have not thought about it, and I'm encouraging you to do the same."
  - blub 8y ago
    Oh boy, someone believes in the startup myth. A massive part of the success of such startups are connections, connections, connections. The product itself doesn't matter that much, considering all the pivoting. Nor does making a profit, considering all the startups still burning VC money. Yes, there is certainly an amount of skill necessary, but the scrappy startup that suceeds against all odds is a fairytale. Luck, connections and moral flexibility play an equally or more important part.
kwijibob 8y ago
I love my Dropbox. Except one thing. They still don't support SmartSync on their Linux client. For all the people that commend Dropbox for supporting Linux, they now treat the Linux client as inferior. To add insult to injury, they promote the SmartSync feature inside the preferences of the Linux client.
- yzmtf2008 8y ago
  It might not be as good as its windows and macOS counter part, but it’s much better than other vendor’s Linux clients. The sheer fragmentation of Linux space makes something as complicated as smart sync not a very financially viable product to support.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
Slightly off topic, but I discovered the other day that shared folders count towards the disk quota for each account it's shared to. I had several GB of photos shared with me on Dropbox, and it blew right over my free limit, despite the fact that none of them were actually mine. The photos also count towards the quota of the account sharing with me. That's soured me quite a lot on Dropbox.
- kornish 8y ago
  That's probably done to prevent people from creating many free accounts and sharing folders with each other to simulate having more storage space.
  - ValentineC 8y ago
    Google Drive seems to have done this right — the file only counts towards the storage quota of the creator/"owner" of the file. That particular approach does have some other issues though.
    - israrkhan 8y ago
      What is wrong about Google Drive is that they count your email and drive storage in same quota. Few months ago, I exceeded my quota on Drive, and Gmail started giving me warning that I am running out of space, and will stop receiving emails if I do not upgrade, or free-up space.
      - xyzzyz 8y ago
        What is wrong about it? Would you prefer to have 2 GB shared quota, or separate quota of 1 GB each? With shared quota you have more flexibility as to what service you prefer to use more.
        tjoff 8y ago
        Email is a critical service. Loosing emails because a misclick or uploaded a too big of file is not acceptable UX.
samfisher83 8y ago
I wonder how those friends who turned him down feel. That would an interesting article to write. I am sure they are mostly super successful, but would still make an interesting article to read.
brian-armstrong 8y ago
Did anyone ever figure out what came of bringing a Bush cabinet member on board? Contract for mining data for NSA/FBI?
- test1235 8y ago
  I'd forgotten all about this ... I'm surprised she's still there: https://www.dropbox.com/about https://www.dropbox.com/about and this page still exists: http://www.drop-dropbox.com http://www.drop-dropbox.com I have to say, I've not heard any mention of her in relation to dropbox since she was appointed tho'.
vanderZwan 8y ago
My current Dropbox set-up: three hard drives, two of which are SSDs, each of which have a different OS (Windows and Linux respectively) and one really big HDD with NTFS to share data between the two of them. Which also is the Dropbox folder. In practice I only reboot to Windows to defragment the NTFS drive drive, but sometimes it's useful for develpoment. Makes it quite easy to migrate to a new computer, or do a fresh install if I want to clean up the OS. The only hassle is that Dropbox doesn't let you link an already existing Dropbox folder in Linux. Which is fixed by renaming the folder, "creating" a new one, moving all hidden files to the renamed folder and renaming it back. I'm considering moving to another service, but it's just so convenient and the price is OK.
ralfd 8y ago
> ...as he sat down in his seat, Mr Houston realised that he had forgotten the memory stick that contained all the files. "I was so frustrated because I felt like this kept happening," he says. "I never wanted to have the problem again, so having nothing else to do... I started writing some code [to find a solution], having no idea what it would become." What Mr Houston came up with was the idea for Dropbox - remote storage that users can access online wherever they may be. Within two weeks he had created the prototype, and come up with the name. Funny. I (and I guess countless people before) would have come up with a remote login via dyndns to my home computer or using ftp to some server. The idea of dropbox seems so obvious in hindsight but we were all blind.
- laumars 8y ago
  I wouldn't say obvious. The reason you and I would have engineered the kinds of solutions you described (albeit I'd use HTTP(S) rather than FTP(S) because FTP needs to die) is because we would have designed something that didn't require installing additional software on the client machine (I mean other than what you'd normally expect on said machines). Dropbox was originally scorned on HN because they took a different approach yet history has now proven they had a good idea. So I wouldn't say it was obvious at all.
- inapis 8y ago
  When Dropbox was first demonstrated on HN, people made very similar comments. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
gadders 8y ago
OffTopic: How did this story get let through when I submitted the same story with the same url ten hours before? Should the second submission have been caught?
merinowool 8y ago
I think there is still space for open source on premise competitor. I don't trust Dropbox or other services, but I'd love to run something like this myself for full control.
tinyhouse 8y ago
I like Dropbox but I think they now focus more on enterprise and forgot individual users which led them to where they are today. First is the price. If you need more space than the free option provides, the cheapest upgrade is $100/year. The competition is about $25/year. The $100 doesn't even contain basic features like full text search when searching your Dropbox folder in the browser. You need to pay more for that. I'm sure most companies don't mind paying the extra cost for a better service, but individual users are much more likely to go with the significantly cheaper option even if that means inferior product. I totally understand that for the big tech companies it's easier to lower prices and even lose money to gain market share. Dropbox will need to find a way to fight back.
- microdrum 8y ago
  Regular paying user here. I agree that it's overpriced. They need to fight back on features. They'll never win on price alone.
- kbyatnal 8y ago
  Individual users are definitely no longer their focus, and it makes sense why. You could see their individual focus for a long time (ex. developing Mailbox and Carousel) and in an ideal (and theoretical) world, it sounds wonderful to have a consumer-SaaS company focused on delivering amazing software to the masses and making money directly from it. But at the end of the day, you can't ignore the real world and the messy side of business. I (and I'm sure a big chunk of the HN population) would love to support a company like this, but there just aren't enough of us. Drew & team probably found out how difficult getting people to pay for stuff (especially productivity software) really is. This enterprise shift is necessary for Dropbox's survival.
  - FullyFunctional 8y ago
    Annecdata, but I would gladly pay iff they were a zero-knowledge company (they should never see cleartext), but they aren't and I must assume that will limit enterprise adoption as well. I have _literally_ looked for an alternative for more than a decade, but nobody can touch Dropbox on a really wide range of metrics and the trend amount competitors seems to move away from the hyper-simple file system abstraction. I think I have tried most commercial options and practically all open source alternatives. I had high hopes for Syncthing, but I found high load and erratic syncing (was testing with 320 GB). Also no iOS client and no partial sync :(
misiti3780 8y ago
is anyone else surprised he was able to build a prototype in two weeks? what technology did it use?

191 points by scriptstar 8y ago

I used Dropbox from 2009 through last month or so. Switched over to Syncthing. I was a little bit worried about stability but soon after I sampled it I felt convinced that it was the right move. I was previously using Dropbox as a kind of makeshift backup as well as a sync tool, but now I have a desktop again and run automated backups on that using Backblaze, so I'm a little bit more in control over the data by doing my own syncing.

rckclmbr 8y ago
Somewhat related, ive been a very happy resilio sync user since it was launched as bittorrent sync. I have similar backups -- it backs up to my 2 personal computers, and one of those is backing up to backblaze. My (nontechnical) wife is happy with this for storing all her phone and camera pictures.

henryaj 8y ago

The fact that they were strangers is super surprising, especially given how YC seems to discourage that kind of "founder dating", suggesting instead you found companies only with people you trust deeply.

adpirz 8y ago
OTOH, the fact that dhouston was able to convince a current MIT student and otherwise total stranger to drop out and follow him on this journey in just a few hours' conversation is telling of both his and the product's prowess.
- dxhdr 8y ago
  That narrative doesn't quite align with the article stating that "for various reasons none of his friends were able to join the business." In retrospect all of Houston's friends made a huge mistake! Maybe Ferdowsi was tired of MIT and joined him on a lark? I am curious to hear the story from his perspective.
  - whymauri 8y ago
    Ferdowsi says joining was like scratching an itch here.[0] I've heard from alumni he spent a lot of time coding in his room, like more than average compared to your friendly neighborhood MIT student; I can imagine the prospect of high-risk, high-reward coding for 18 hours/day was very appealing. [0] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/how-two-guys-that-barely-knew-each-other-build-one-of-the-biggest-cloud-storage-companies-in-the-c41c383a952e https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/how-two-guys-that-barel...
    - plinkplonk 8y ago
      from the article (medium, not BBC) "The pair worked tirelessly for three months in a cramped office in Cambridge, waking up everyday at noon and working till dawn the next day. “I think we started like most of these tech companies begin. Just a couple of guys in their boxers coding in a dark room,” Houston says. “We just kept our heads down and built.”"
abalone 8y ago
Yeah but the thing YC discourages even more than that is solo founders.

adventured 8y ago

After watching the popular opionion about Dropbox for most of its early years, that it was a product (or worse just a feature) and not a sustainable independent company/business, I'm always glad to see them continuing to grow and thrive. Hats off to Drew and the Dropbox team.

_bxg1 8y ago

When Google Drive and iCloud and One Drive all cropped up, copying the same service with the addition of deeper integration into different devices and software, I was worried Dropbox would be unable to compete. But they've hung in there, and I remain a happy customer.

anoncoward111 8y ago
Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive
- GeekyBear 8y ago
  I used Dropbox in the early days because of the ability to place a file in your public folder and allow others to download a copy of that file using a standard URL. You could share a file with your colleagues by simply emailing a URL to the file. No other service was as straightforward at the time. When that feature was later removed, I stopped using Dropbox.
  - rpearl 8y ago
    (Used to work there; haven't in several years.) Such a feature was a pretty bad phishing and social engineering vector, particularly when you could render html out of that folder, but even when html was dropped that there were social engineering attacks a bad actor could pull relying on the user's trust of a dropbox url. You could also guess other files in the public folder based on the url, which was a privacy concern. Multiple years before support was dropped, shared links were added, which fix these concerns. You can set ?dl=1 to get a raw link. `curl/wget` (set to follow redirects) still get you the raw contents even if you don't set ?dl=1.
  - xzel 8y ago
    They removed the public folder but you can still share a file(s) via url via their website.

joering2 8y ago

Still available online :) https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox/ https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/dropbox/

FullyFunctional 8y ago
There is so much gold in that link, thank you! A random pick: "The concept that I'm most excited about is that the core technology in Dropbox -- continuous efficient sync with compression and binary diffs" * Andrew Tridgell of course created rsync (which is referenced elsewhere) and pioneered the binary delta model which has inspired so much progress. Dropbox's sync in clearly directly influenced by this. Outstanding achievement! * "efficient sync with compression and binary diffs" is key here but astonishingly appears to be a secondary concern for many (most?) competitors which is why they su^H^Haren't as good.

sigjuice 8y ago

I for one no longer trust Dropbox to behave on my computer after this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12463338

saagarjha 8y ago
They now have a kernel extension as part of their app, supposedly to stop people from dragging files out of shared folders.
- sigjuice 8y ago
  That’s even worse.

ebikelaw 8y ago

I noticed the word "profit" doesn't appear anywhere in the article. Will Dropbox ever make money?

B1FF_PSUVM 8y ago
Also, will they ever encrypt files on the client side? (Hey, it's been only nine or ten years evading that question ...)
- Sohcahtoa82 8y ago
  For every user wanting client-side encryption so that Dropbox can't see the content of the files you're storing, there's another user wanting server-side text searching, which isn't possible with client-side encryption. The answer, of course, is to make client-side encryption an option.
scarface74 8y ago
Exactly. It kills me that the definition of a successful company is rarely - being able to deliver a product profitably.
- 101km 8y ago
  They provided a spreadsheet on their investor relations page: https://dropbox.gcs-web.com/static-files/105a910a-1026-4056-912c-1b806b964843 https://dropbox.gcs-web.com/static-files/105a910a-1026-4056-... Losses last three years are: ~300m, ~200m, ~100m. They are going to be profitable by 2020 and their margin is growing, so I don't get this negativity.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    They can predict a lot of things. But in the B2B market, they are competing with much larger companies that can offer the same amount of storage plus a lot more - Google and Microsoft. In the consumer market, they are competing with Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Would you really want to compete against the three most valuable companies in the US where as Steve Jobs said “you’re not a product you’re a feature”?

kapauldo 8y ago

Have they ever made a profit?

matte_black 8y ago

How many schools allow you to recontinue your education again if you drop out to start a company but it fails? Seems like if I had this option I would have dropped out at least once.

k__ 8y ago
Some remote universities, I guess. I'm studying a MCompSci for 7 years now and it only costs me 11€ when I don't do any courses in a semester. I got all courses done, just need time for the thesis, hehe
- sebastienrocks 8y ago
  Is your university remote? Can you provide a link by chance?
  - k__ 8y ago
    sure https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/ https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/english/

trfflhntr 8y ago

I once used a variety of services, but now use Dropbox (free version) exclusively. It does what I need and I prefer their privacy based model (in comparison to other set-it-and-forget-it solutions).

madengr 8y ago

Still fathoms me that Dropbox is worth billions of $ for the same functionality as FTP.

briandear 8y ago
And that’s exactly why they’re billionaires and you probably aren’t. It isn’t about functionality, it’s about ease of use. It’s the same argument used when MS-DOS was being replaced by the GUI. Explain FTP to your Aunt Edna. Get FTP working where everything on all devices is in sync automatically. Comment on a file via FTP. Send a link to a file they can consume on a mobile device — including playing audio or video without downloading the file. Create access lists for folders. Sure you could do it using FTP. Now do it cheaply at scale and make it work everywhere and then convince your non tech friends to use it. Why bother with GPS when we could all use a map and compass? Dropbox made file syncing accessible to everyone cheaply and securely.
- berbec 8y ago
  That is a genius reply. This should be what people think every time they say no to a new idea with "put isn't this just xxxx, but a little simpler?". A little simpler can be very broad and Dropbox has done just what the founder envisioned - made a web-based flash drive.
  - amorphid 8y ago
    I was joking to myself earlier today that "All you gotta do is..." is an alias for "I have not thought about it, and I'm encouraging you to do the same."
- blub 8y ago
  Oh boy, someone believes in the startup myth. A massive part of the success of such startups are connections, connections, connections. The product itself doesn't matter that much, considering all the pivoting. Nor does making a profit, considering all the startups still burning VC money. Yes, there is certainly an amount of skill necessary, but the scrappy startup that suceeds against all odds is a fairytale. Luck, connections and moral flexibility play an equally or more important part.

kwijibob 8y ago

I love my Dropbox. Except one thing. They still don't support SmartSync on their Linux client. For all the people that commend Dropbox for supporting Linux, they now treat the Linux client as inferior. To add insult to injury, they promote the SmartSync feature inside the preferences of the Linux client.

yzmtf2008 8y ago
It might not be as good as its windows and macOS counter part, but it’s much better than other vendor’s Linux clients. The sheer fragmentation of Linux space makes something as complicated as smart sync not a very financially viable product to support.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

Slightly off topic, but I discovered the other day that shared folders count towards the disk quota for each account it's shared to. I had several GB of photos shared with me on Dropbox, and it blew right over my free limit, despite the fact that none of them were actually mine. The photos also count towards the quota of the account sharing with me. That's soured me quite a lot on Dropbox.

kornish 8y ago
That's probably done to prevent people from creating many free accounts and sharing folders with each other to simulate having more storage space.
- ValentineC 8y ago
  Google Drive seems to have done this right — the file only counts towards the storage quota of the creator/"owner" of the file. That particular approach does have some other issues though.
  - israrkhan 8y ago
    What is wrong about Google Drive is that they count your email and drive storage in same quota. Few months ago, I exceeded my quota on Drive, and Gmail started giving me warning that I am running out of space, and will stop receiving emails if I do not upgrade, or free-up space.
    - xyzzyz 8y ago
      What is wrong about it? Would you prefer to have 2 GB shared quota, or separate quota of 1 GB each? With shared quota you have more flexibility as to what service you prefer to use more.
      - tjoff 8y ago
        Email is a critical service. Loosing emails because a misclick or uploaded a too big of file is not acceptable UX.

samfisher83 8y ago

I wonder how those friends who turned him down feel. That would an interesting article to write. I am sure they are mostly super successful, but would still make an interesting article to read.

brian-armstrong 8y ago

Did anyone ever figure out what came of bringing a Bush cabinet member on board? Contract for mining data for NSA/FBI?

test1235 8y ago
I'd forgotten all about this ... I'm surprised she's still there: https://www.dropbox.com/about https://www.dropbox.com/about and this page still exists: http://www.drop-dropbox.com http://www.drop-dropbox.com I have to say, I've not heard any mention of her in relation to dropbox since she was appointed tho'.

vanderZwan 8y ago

My current Dropbox set-up: three hard drives, two of which are SSDs, each of which have a different OS (Windows and Linux respectively) and one really big HDD with NTFS to share data between the two of them. Which also is the Dropbox folder. In practice I only reboot to Windows to defragment the NTFS drive drive, but sometimes it's useful for develpoment. Makes it quite easy to migrate to a new computer, or do a fresh install if I want to clean up the OS. The only hassle is that Dropbox doesn't let you link an already existing Dropbox folder in Linux. Which is fixed by renaming the folder, "creating" a new one, moving all hidden files to the renamed folder and renaming it back. I'm considering moving to another service, but it's just so convenient and the price is OK.

ralfd 8y ago

> ...as he sat down in his seat, Mr Houston realised that he had forgotten the memory stick that contained all the files. "I was so frustrated because I felt like this kept happening," he says. "I never wanted to have the problem again, so having nothing else to do... I started writing some code [to find a solution], having no idea what it would become." What Mr Houston came up with was the idea for Dropbox - remote storage that users can access online wherever they may be. Within two weeks he had created the prototype, and come up with the name. Funny. I (and I guess countless people before) would have come up with a remote login via dyndns to my home computer or using ftp to some server. The idea of dropbox seems so obvious in hindsight but we were all blind.

laumars 8y ago
I wouldn't say obvious. The reason you and I would have engineered the kinds of solutions you described (albeit I'd use HTTP(S) rather than FTP(S) because FTP needs to die) is because we would have designed something that didn't require installing additional software on the client machine (I mean other than what you'd normally expect on said machines). Dropbox was originally scorned on HN because they took a different approach yet history has now proven they had a good idea. So I wouldn't say it was obvious at all.
inapis 8y ago
When Dropbox was first demonstrated on HN, people made very similar comments. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

gadders 8y ago

OffTopic: How did this story get let through when I submitted the same story with the same url ten hours before? Should the second submission have been caught?

merinowool 8y ago

I think there is still space for open source on premise competitor. I don't trust Dropbox or other services, but I'd love to run something like this myself for full control.

tinyhouse 8y ago

I like Dropbox but I think they now focus more on enterprise and forgot individual users which led them to where they are today. First is the price. If you need more space than the free option provides, the cheapest upgrade is $100/year. The competition is about $25/year. The $100 doesn't even contain basic features like full text search when searching your Dropbox folder in the browser. You need to pay more for that. I'm sure most companies don't mind paying the extra cost for a better service, but individual users are much more likely to go with the significantly cheaper option even if that means inferior product. I totally understand that for the big tech companies it's easier to lower prices and even lose money to gain market share. Dropbox will need to find a way to fight back.

microdrum 8y ago
Regular paying user here. I agree that it's overpriced. They need to fight back on features. They'll never win on price alone.
kbyatnal 8y ago
Individual users are definitely no longer their focus, and it makes sense why. You could see their individual focus for a long time (ex. developing Mailbox and Carousel) and in an ideal (and theoretical) world, it sounds wonderful to have a consumer-SaaS company focused on delivering amazing software to the masses and making money directly from it. But at the end of the day, you can't ignore the real world and the messy side of business. I (and I'm sure a big chunk of the HN population) would love to support a company like this, but there just aren't enough of us. Drew & team probably found out how difficult getting people to pay for stuff (especially productivity software) really is. This enterprise shift is necessary for Dropbox's survival.
- FullyFunctional 8y ago
  Annecdata, but I would gladly pay iff they were a zero-knowledge company (they should never see cleartext), but they aren't and I must assume that will limit enterprise adoption as well. I have _literally_ looked for an alternative for more than a decade, but nobody can touch Dropbox on a really wide range of metrics and the trend amount competitors seems to move away from the hyper-simple file system abstraction. I think I have tried most commercial options and practically all open source alternatives. I had high hopes for Syncthing, but I found high load and erratic syncing (was testing with 320 GB). Also no iOS client and no partial sync :(

misiti3780 8y ago

is anyone else surprised he was able to build a prototype in two weeks? what technology did it use?