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Congrats Dropbox

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Congrats Dropbox

#161

Post by nodesocket »

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 :)

Next up AirBnb and perhaps Stripe (speculation). Those early YC investments are really paying off huge returns.

Unlike investing in the stock market, where you want to hit lots of singles, angel/startup investing is all about hitting home runs as the vast majority of the time you are going to strikeout.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#162

Post by bbarn »

ragesh wrote: post #27
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.

Why would non-proprietary preclude paying for storage?

Because each of those is trying to profit from it, not just pay for the storage. Thus, branding, and thus, they make them private and proprietary. Is it right? No.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#163

Post by lwf »

gigatexal wrote: post #74

Congrats to dropbox and YC as well. Side note: what does Dropbox use to build the UI for their desktop app? I think it's written in python no? so what UI do they use?

The core UI is Qt 5.5.[1] When I started, it was still wxWidgets (shudder). We take a GTK dependency on Linux for some desktop integration in GNOME.

There's a bit of webviews these days, although there are Qt fallbacks or handoffs to actual browsers for everything important, for both compatibility and accessibility. Screen readers and QTWebViews did not play nice together when we implemented it.

(I work at Dropbox, although not on the client team, I had built some infrastructure that supported client webviews.)

[1]: https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/system-requirements

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#164

Post by myth_buster »

BrandonM wrote: post #156
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 :)

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 see you getting some flak here but for what it's worth, I read it as a very grounded discussion and feedback. I appreciate the fact that you conceded the points that seemed reasonable post Drew's comment.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#166

Post by cyrux004 »

BrandonM wrote: post #156
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 :)

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…

What do you do now Brandon ? edit: nvm, found this https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrandonM

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#167

Post by ChicagoDave »

I was one of the evaluation team members at a large management consulting firm during their review of file sharing services. I got a look at all of them about 3 years ago and it was easy to see that Dropbox's engineers were leading in the space. The company I was at did not select Dropbox, but they had my vote.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#168

Post by BrandonM »

cyrux004 wrote: post #166
BrandonM wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you do now Brandon ? edit: nvm, found this https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=BrandonM

I also spent about 2 years working remotely and traveling with my wife, living in different places in Europe, Asia, and the US for anywhere from a few days to a few months. We have a travel blog and twitter account (all thanks to my wife) that I'm happy to share via email with anyone who's interested.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#169

Post by nhurj »

geofft wrote: post #57
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.

Drew and Arash went to MIT, where their everyday computing environment was UNIX systems with home directories on AFS. For those who haven't used it, AFS is a networked filesystem sort of like NFS, except with a better authentication model and the ability to support failover on the server side. AFS, NFS, Coda, 9P, WebDAV, SMB/CIFS, FTP, Windows roaming profiles, AFP, etc. were all around and (to varying levels) built…

Doesn't seem like a correct characterization from my perspective. File distributions was "hot" from the early 00s until cloud everything of recent years. I think Dropbox is/was clever but not surprising, because that was the sort of things a lot of people were doing (or speculating about) at the time. Especially since most things were based on files and not web like today. The main reason it didn't develop wasn't so much lack of insight as that the Internet become increasingly hostile towards stand alone solutions, including the increase in phones and other different clients.

I definitely think that part of Dropbox bet was that the Internet wouldn't develop much in the future. A bet they aren't alone in making.

Re: Congrats Dropbox

#170

Post by varjag »

staunch wrote: post #146

Drew Houston was rejected by YC when they interviewed him for his previous idea. When they attempted to judge him as a founder, prior to any success, they completely failed to identify one of the best candidates they had ever seen. After another attempt at getting YC's attention, Drew Houston even got shooed out of YC's offices and went home feeling rejected and having "sour grapes" about the situation. He only got i…

You invest your money, you get to decide, it's that simple.
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