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What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder (especially if th
by edw519 15y ago
What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder (especially if this takes place before launch.)...
From Dropbox's 2007 YC Application, http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html
I love reading old YC applications. I wonder if someday, they'll become the 21st century version of Harvard Business Review case studies.
- EREFUNDO 15y agoDrew Houston definitely knew the threats to DropBox. I'm sure he already has a plan to counter this. He's been ready since 2007.
- SODaniel 15y agoOf course Google Drive is not a surprise to DropBox but I still feel that a 'One does not simply counter Google' Meme could be appropriate here.
- thpoul 15y agoDrew Houston has an amazing sense of humor. https://twitter.com/#!/drewhouston/status/194837482490179584 https://twitter.com/#!/drewhouston/status/194837482490179584
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- EREFUNDO 15y agohaha.....love that guy!
- redthrowaway 15y agoSome of the responses are downright depressing: Vijay Vasu @gunshotdigital @drewhouston @Dropbox huh what? will people be able to search my files!!! #NOTCOOL
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- kruipen 15y agodropbox presumably pays for s3 slightly less or slightly more (depending on redundancy level) than goog end user price: Over 5000 TB / month $0.055 per GB $0.037 per GB
- sakai 15y agoWell, they're doing pretty heavy de-duping, but point well taken.
- rdl 15y agoThe de-duping is certainly more than the discount off list price, too -- I suspect they de-dupe 10-100x. I really doubt their discount off the lowest public S3 volume price is more than 50%.
- tlb 15y agoPersonal photos take up a large fraction of people's cloud storage, and they are completely non-de-dupable. I doubt it's possible to get more than 3x on average.
- josscrowcroft 15y ago[citation needed]
- apu 15y agoFor which part? That photos take most of the space? Or that they're virtually un-de-dupable? I'm fairly sure about the former (having seen some private numbers that I'm not allowed to share) -- although you can think through it yourself. What other kind of data is as easily and commonly produced as photos/videos and takes up so much space? The latter is definitely true since it's a hard research problem that I've spent some time thinking about myself. There are approaches to lossy-de-duplication of photos that can achieve some significant savings, but the quality loss is too great to be useful at the moment.
- chrisaycock 15y ago> I love reading old YC applications. I wonder if someday, they'll become the 21st century version of Harvard Business Review case studies. I think an accelerator application or business plan would be better than a case study simply because case studies are often written with hindsight. The HBR makes it difficult to honestly assess what real-life people thought before making a particular decision.
- revelation 15y agoThank you so much for digging this up, thats just wonderful. and an 'enterprise' plan that features, well, a really high price
- shek 15y agoSpeaking of Harvard case studies, there is one already (with the YC application in the appendix): http://hbr.org/product/dropbox-it-just-works/an/811065-PDF-ENG http://hbr.org/product/dropbox-it-just-works/an/811065-PDF-E...
- villagefool 15y agoIs there an online open archive of YC applications?