Congrats Dropbox • Hacker News Board

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#131

Post by curun1r » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:16 PM UTC

throwaway84742 wrote: post #77

drstewart wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the requisite "why would you do this? it's trivial to instead!"

Classic “less space than a Nomad, lame”. That post did not age well. Even today there’s nothing I can deploy on my own server that would be anywhere near as good.

I think there's another point to be learned from both the Dropbox comment and CmdrTaco's original infamous iPod take. And that's the importance of a really well-designed product that's simple and easy to use. Both Dropbox and the iPod weren't the first to try to solve the problems they were addressing, but they were the most elegant, intuitive solution. Both implementations effectively got out of the way of their users and exposed the underlying function with a little impedance as possible. It's always important to remember that the goal isn't for users to use your product. The goal is for users to get the value your product delivers. That sounds obvious, but a lot of product development teams forget that. Both Dropbox and the original iPod seem to embody that distinction.

As for your "nothing I can deploy on my own server" comment, checkout syncthing or Resilio. Both take a bit more doing than a simple Dropbox install, but I've found syncthing to be pretty bulletproof once it's configured and I've heard a lot of people prefer Resilio.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#132

Post by cwkoss » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:18 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #103

My favorite part of Jessica's memory: "he suggested Drew delete his Demo Day presentation in the middle of giving it, and then recover it from Dropbox and keep going. Usually we don’t suggest gags like this during pitches, but this one made people pay attention."

This is very clever

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#133

Post by sjg007 » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

ryanSrich wrote: post #43

hluska wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would there be a difference? They're both liquidity events.

Both parties have a lot more flexibility with M&A (this includes vested partners) — meaning private deals have far better conditions if the deal isn't a saving grace. IPOs can have lengthy lock up periods and are generally much worse for leadership than acquisition (disclosure of personal information like compensation).

180 day lock up probably for employees mostly.. maybe founders are included in that.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#134

Post by alecb » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

totalZero wrote: post #94

smt88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it drama-free? There was a #DeleteDropbox campaign after they hired Condoleezza Rice, widely considered to be a war criminal (especially outside US conservative circles) and definitely a proponent of domestic spying programs.

> widely I'm not sure you'll find much well-reasoned support for this notion outside of California and college campuses.

Spearheaded a war that resulted in the deaths of 1+ million Iraqis that was started unilaterally on the pretext of fabricated evidence.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#135

Post by bsvalley » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:32 PM UTC

mediaman wrote: post #124

bsvalley wrote: post #54

not the best time to go public :) the stock market is about to take a serious hit.

Wouldn't that be the best time to go public? Before valuations drop? Usually you don't want to sell your stock to the public after it's crashed.

Sure, we call it pump and dump. Awesome for insiders but terrible for investors. I'm talking from an investor perspective. By going public today it might only benefit a few early birds such as founders, angels, founding team, etc. If the market crashes it's terrible for new investors, anyone who bought the IPO. If you IPO after a storm your stock can only go up from the bottom.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#136

Post by wpietri » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

vecinu wrote: post #117

dhouston wrote: post #90

Thank you Paul and Jessica for taking a chance on us — we wouldn’t be here without you and YC :) And thank you HN — I’m pretty sure the upvotes on the original screencast helped us get into YC and on Paul & Jessica’s radar to begin with! Even you BrandonM — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 — my favorite HN comment thread of all time :)

Congratulations to the entire team. I think it's interesting to go back to that thread, look at what the author (BrandonM) has done since then and learn some important lessons about being able to step outside of your own head to see the bigger picture. Looks like he's still working for another company and has an unfinished blog ( http://shebang.brandonmintern.com ) but he seems like a really smart guy. The takeaway I…

Looking at his LinkedIn profile, it seems like he was still in college then. He was wrong, of course, but I think his errors were pretty reasonable given his situation.

It's very easy for tech people to say, "But it's totally easy, you just [long string of steps that they've learned over the course of years]." It takes time to learn that no, easy things for you can be hard for others. If you want them to use the thing, you have to make it dead easy. I note that Apple made a shit-ton of money because so many tech companies (e.g., MP3 player makers) refused to really learn this lesson.

His second point, that USB sticks were still necessary, wasn't bad, just not forward-looking enough. He wrote it before the introduction of the iPhone, after all. But back then, high-quality connectivity was much less common. Then, Dropbox would have worked better for some than others.

And his third point was correct. Charging cash money is important.

So really, it's not a bad comment for a CS student. And it reminds me that I'm very thankful that most of my youthful opinion-spouting happened in offline and pre-web contexts.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#137

Post by jonbarker » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

Dropbox is on my list of reasons why I no longer naysay anything run by technical founders with some product sense. I remember hearing they were just essentially re-selling AWS storage back in the day (before they started building their own data centers). I thought 'why would anyone want to buy marked up AWS storage'. Then a few years later I learned to stop doubting great product focused entrepreneurs ever.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#138

Post by itwy » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #103

My favorite part of Jessica's memory: "he suggested Drew delete his Demo Day presentation in the middle of giving it, and then recover it from Dropbox and keep going. Usually we don’t suggest gags like this during pitches, but this one made people pay attention."

Did it sync? She delivered a joke without the punchline.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#139

Post by sangnoir » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

totalZero wrote: post #94

smt88 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it drama-free? There was a #DeleteDropbox campaign after they hired Condoleezza Rice, widely considered to be a war criminal (especially outside US conservative circles) and definitely a proponent of domestic spying programs.

> widely I'm not sure you'll find much well-reasoned support for this notion outside of California and college campuses.

> I'm not sure you'll find much well-reasoned support for this notion outside of California and college campuses.

Contemporary events for another notion you wouldn't find "outside California and college campuses" succeed in toppling Brendan Eich at Mozilla. The only difference I could tell then was that the Dropbox board put its foot down in support of Ms Rice and Mozilla's board folded.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#140

Post by abritinthebay » Fri, Mar 23, 2018, 6:38 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #118

degenerate wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That web interface is soooooo much easier to understand and use. Makes me sad how unnecessarily complex modern UI is, not just on dropbox, but across the whole web.

Hell, even the menu bar UI on OS X is still terrible; they 'broke' it maybe 5 years ago and it's been the same mess ever since. It used to tell you what % of your dropbox was used, it used to tell you syncing status, it used to tell you all kinds of things. Now it's some weird changelog that looks nothing like anything else in OS X (or Windows, for that matter) from a UX perspective. I mean, I guess I'm glad they did…

It still does tell you those things (they've just moved around a bit).

The % used is seen when you click on the settings. I think because, honestly, they're trying to abstract the idea that you need to do that (the average user just cares that it works not the %).

Get where you're coming from tho - it's not the most clear or clean UI.