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Congrats Dropbox

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Congrats Dropbox

#31

Post by vanderZwan »

bbarn wrote: post #24
amelius wrote: post #20

This is nice from a business-perspective. But, stepping back ... I'm sure that a lot of the folks here would agree that something as basic as file-sync should be a standard part of any OS, and follow a non-proprietary protocol. So whereas they have turned something that should have been a commodity into a profitable business, I'm not sure what we have achieved here.

It pretty much is a standard part of the OS. iCloud, OneDrive, etc. It's the "non-proprietary" part you're not ever going to see. Someone has to pay for storage.

I think that GP's point was that a standard a la HTML or RSS should exist and be embraced by the OS. Something like Syncthing, I guess (just naming one of the first hits I got from searching, I haven't really kept up with what is being tried in this space).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncthing

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#33

Post by mrep »

ryanSrich wrote: post #5
rossdavidh wrote: post #2

I like Dropbox and YCombinator, but this line near the end was odd: "Today is a big milestone for YC. When we launched 13 years ago, we never imagined that a company that we’d funded would one day go public." Really? What were they doing funding it, then? I hadn't realized that wasn't the original idea at YCombinator.

I could be wrong, but wouldn't VCs prefer some type of large acquisition, a la WhatsApp, as opposed to an IPO?

IPO's tend to be bigger paydays even if they are more risky so I would assume they prefer IPO's.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#34

Post by sctb »

inostia wrote: post #22

I think the caption "The Summer 2017 Y Combinator Batch – Jessica Sitting with Dropbox Cofounder, Arash" for the image should be 2007? Or am I wrong?

Thanks! Let's see if we can get it updated.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#36

Post by jshap70 »

jl wrote: post #29

Incidentally, Drew's relationship with the HN community is even older than his relationship with Y Combinator. Two weeks before we interviewed Drew and Arash, Drew posted Dropbox to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

> It does not seem very "viral" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but without charging users for the service, is it reasonable to expect to make money off of this?

lol

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#37

Post by lostlogin »

amelius wrote: post #20

This is nice from a business-perspective. But, stepping back ... I'm sure that a lot of the folks here would agree that something as basic as file-sync should be a standard part of any OS, and follow a non-proprietary protocol. So whereas they have turned something that should have been a commodity into a profitable business, I'm not sure what we have achieved here.

That’s similar to the line Steve Jobs took when negotiating with them. Hard to tell if that was just nasty Steve coming out during a negotiation that wasn’t going favourably, or if that’s what he thought. Given that Steve wanted Dropbox, I’d gues he was just posturing.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/drew-houston-dropbox-stev...

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#38

Post by mattmaroon »

By the way Jessica, you told me that year that if one of us went public you'd do a keg stand. Just let me know in advance when that's going to happen so I can book a flight :)

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#40

Post by sleepychu »

gfodor wrote: post #28
bbarn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pretty much is a standard part of the OS. iCloud, OneDrive, etc. It's the "non-proprietary" part you're not ever going to see. Someone has to pay for storage.

Don't be so sure -- IPFS provides a possible path. We will see if it works.

Someone, somewhere has to pay for the disk.
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