Congratulations to dhouston for being a great example of a startup founder, and for creating a very successful company.
Congrats Dropbox
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Re: Congrats Dropbox
#152Thank 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 :)
I think you handled BrandonM's critiques pretty well, and not immediately getting defensive around the products shortcomings was well played. Congrats to you and your team.
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#153So in those 11 years, did YCombinater make any money on Dropbox? Or is incubating more of a 'long term' investment?
"When we launched 13 years ago, we never imagined that a company that we’d funded would one day go public."
That statement suggests YC was looking more for buyouts than IPO's, which isn't necessarily wrong, but it wasn't a quote I'd have anticipated.
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably around 0.06 * 10,000,000,000 Assuming no subsequent investments, dilution, selling of shares, etc.
So 600M is the upper bound. Drew Houston owns roughly 25% of the company now, and he probably owned ~75% at when YC invested, for a dilution rate of 3. I'd say YC investment probably has dilution rate of 10, for the real amount of 60M. Not bad, but not Whatsapp scale either.
https://equityzen.com/path-to-ipo/dropbox/
24.2% for Drew Houston
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the requisite "why would you do this? it's trivial to instead!"
Ha-ha, but for every one where the criticism turned out to be wrong, how many are there where the criticism was spot on? We laugh at things the HN Dropbox critique and the Slashdot iPod critique, but without people there to criticize and point out potential pitfalls, we’re all just patting each other on the back and telling each other how awesome everything is. Is that how good ideas grow?
Point of order, the iPod went no where until they added syncing with a PC - something everyone point ted out as being necessary on launch.
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#156Thank 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 :)
It's funny how often that comment—which I made as a 22-year-old undergrad—resurfaces. Someone even reached out to me 2 weeks ago because they wanted to use it in an article as an example of "the disconnect between the way users and engineers see software"!
I like to think that I've gained a lot of perspective over the last 11 years; it's pretty clear to me that point #1 was short-sighted and exhibited a lot of tunnel vision. Looking back, though, I still think that thread was a reasonable exchange. My 2nd and 3rd points were fair, and I conceded much of point 1 to you after your reply (which was very high quality).
Obviously, we have the benefit of hindsight now in seeing how well you were able to execute. Kudos on that!
Congrats on your success! I wish you nothing but the best going forward!
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#157My 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.
I assume it did :)
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thin…
Thanks for such a fair evaluation! That's honestly the first time someone has put my comment in context like that... I appreciate it :)
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#159dhouston, what ever happened to the option of "an additional passphrase (or private key) when installing in order to encrypt your data before it leaves your computer." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8889
I don't believe they ever set up a warrant canary.
Re: Congrats Dropbox
#160Thank 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 :)
It's funny how often that comment—which I made as a 22-year-old undergrad—resurfaces. Someone even reached out to me 2 weeks ago because they wanted to use it in an article as an example of "the disconnect between the way users and engineers see software"! I like to think that I've gained a lot of perspective over the last 11 years; it's pretty clear to me that point #1 was short-sighted and exhibited a lot of tunnel…
I think your feelings were shared by hundreds of professional investors that passed them up so dont be too hard on your 22yo self at the time. :)