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Show HN : Dropbox [0] It's a rare insight into a first product launch to the world with comments on a focused community. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item

Show HN : Dropbox [0] It's a rare insight into a first product launch to the world with comments on a focused community. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

imheretolearn 6y ago
I remember hearing Drew on some podcast talking about this. It's great to actually see the original post. Thank you for your submission!
- lihaciudaniel 6y ago
  It's amazing how one website post can make someone into a billionaire over night
ExactActuation 6y ago
It's hilarious to see Mr. "I have a few qualms with this app" as the first comment. "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" Oh, thanks bro.
- dang 6y ago
  That is probably the most cited HN comment of all time (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=9224&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Entire rants have been written about it, and not nice ones. Fortunately the commenter has been a good sport about this over the years, given that it's hindsight fallacy. Edit: I think I want to add a bit more. Could you please not post like that to HN? Your snarky comment is worse than the comment/commenter you're putting down; he was obviously trying to be helpful and responded sweetly to Drew's reply in the original thread. His real mistake was being unlucky enough to have people posting internet-jerk comments about it 13 years later. People don't remember this now, but before Dropbox succeeded it was widely taken for granted that file synchronization was pointless to work on because no one would ever make a business of it. Joel Spolsky wrote a famous post mocking the idea: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astronauts-take-over/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astro... ("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.") In 2007, it was common 'knowledge' that most consumers wouldn't want such a thing and technical people would just roll their own, so a viable business couldn't be created out of it. In Brandon's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224), the word "app" referred to YC application, not software apps, and you can see in his point #3 the widespread assumption that no one would ever pay money for this. The surprise was that Dropbox proved the common knowledge wrong, but that didn't happen till later. When YC funded Dropbox, it was because they believed in Drew, not file synchronization, which is also information that wasn't available till later. So if we are to look at that thread fairly, in context, we should see it as a successful conversation with a graceful ending, rather than mocking someone for not knowing the future.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
scarface74 6y ago
This is the HN equivalent of Slashdot’s most famous post. https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...
- huhtenberg 6y ago
  HN tie-in, featuring the OP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19447152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19447152
  - scarface74 6y ago
    And yet people never learn. Ed Colligan CEO of Palm on rumors of Apple releasing a phone. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” The main things Taco complained about: No wireless - the iPod was already popular before the iPod Touch Less space than the Nomad - even though later iPods had up to 160GB of storage, the most popular ones were the Shuffle and the Nano that had little storage.

imheretolearn 6y ago

I remember hearing Drew on some podcast talking about this. It's great to actually see the original post. Thank you for your submission!

lihaciudaniel 6y ago
It's amazing how one website post can make someone into a billionaire over night

ExactActuation 6y ago

It's hilarious to see Mr. "I have a few qualms with this app" as the first comment. "you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" Oh, thanks bro.

dang 6y ago
That is probably the most cited HN comment of all time (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=9224&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). Entire rants have been written about it, and not nice ones. Fortunately the commenter has been a good sport about this over the years, given that it's hindsight fallacy. Edit: I think I want to add a bit more. Could you please not post like that to HN? Your snarky comment is worse than the comment/commenter you're putting down; he was obviously trying to be helpful and responded sweetly to Drew's reply in the original thread. His real mistake was being unlucky enough to have people posting internet-jerk comments about it 13 years later. People don't remember this now, but before Dropbox succeeded it was widely taken for granted that file synchronization was pointless to work on because no one would ever make a business of it. Joel Spolsky wrote a famous post mocking the idea: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astronauts-take-over/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2008/05/01/architecture-astro... ("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.") In 2007, it was common 'knowledge' that most consumers wouldn't want such a thing and technical people would just roll their own, so a viable business couldn't be created out of it. In Brandon's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224), the word "app" referred to YC application, not software apps, and you can see in his point #3 the widespread assumption that no one would ever pay money for this. The surprise was that Dropbox proved the common knowledge wrong, but that didn't happen till later. When YC funded Dropbox, it was because they believed in Drew, not file synchronization, which is also information that wasn't available till later. So if we are to look at that thread fairly, in context, we should see it as a successful conversation with a graceful ending, rather than mocking someone for not knowing the future.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

scarface74 6y ago

This is the HN equivalent of Slashdot’s most famous post. https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

huhtenberg 6y ago
HN tie-in, featuring the OP - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19447152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19447152
- scarface74 6y ago
  And yet people never learn. Ed Colligan CEO of Palm on rumors of Apple releasing a phone. “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone, PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” The main things Taco complained about: No wireless - the iPod was already popular before the iPod Touch Less space than the Nomad - even though later iPods had up to 160GB of storage, the most popular ones were the Shuffle and the Nano that had little storage.