Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
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Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
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Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#2Here's the video: http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262672510
The rest of the videos from this conference are good too: http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/videos
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#3One and only reason I started using Dropbox was because of their desktop app. It was there, available for Linux, simple and easy to install. One click to create an account and I'am a happy user since then, since the beginning.
Dropbox is great.
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#4Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290303
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#5I learned about Dropbox exactly the way slide 28 shows - heard about it from random source, tested, felt happy and started forcing my friends to use it (ie. to coordinate work for university projects). And the funny thing about those "Dozens and dozens of cloud storage companies" that existed prior to Dropbox (as slides 6 and 7 tell)... personally I don't know anyone who knew about any of those companies. I didn't know any of them untill today and for years I was pretty sure that Dropbox guys were the first ones to get that idea (or at least to get it working). And they did a great job with it.
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#6One and only reason I started using Dropbox was because of their desktop app. It was there, available for Linux, simple and easy to install. One click to create an account and I'am a happy user since then, since the beginning. Dropbox is great.
One important factor for me is that they went beyond the call of duty on Linux. Dropbox itself had some Python scripts available that made it possible to install and run the application, even if you weren't running one of the major two desktops – or even no X11 at all. It was a bit hackish (stubs for non-present GUI libraries instead of a proper non-GUI daemon), but it got things running.
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#7Ironically it's more grief to get access to a download for the slides than it is to sign up for Dropbox.
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#8Great slides and great job extending Hotmail/PayPal viral growth formula.
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#9Hm. I guess it works for Enterprise etc, but not for small groups. I've got a high school club, 12 members. We use(d) Dropbox until we "ran out of space". Its $9.99/mo to "upgrade" and we ALL have to pay it.
So the business model (from our point of view) is: pay nothing until you're hooked, then its $1,400/year. Ouch! We have to find a different solution.
And what is that money paying for? Of course from Dropbox's point of view its "what the market will bear". But from the customer point of view?
They say its to "increase your space". But its MY disk drive, I already bought it. So that seems phoney right off.
Maybe for all the network transfer costs? Hm, we have 1Gb, to copy it all every week between all of our computers would annualize to a few dollars, not $1400.00.
I know they seem successful, but they're still leaving some folks out in the cold with this business model.
Re: Dropbox Startup Lessons Learned
#10I learned about Dropbox exactly the way slide 28 shows - heard about it from random source, tested, felt happy and started forcing my friends to use it (ie. to coordinate work for university projects). And the funny thing about those "Dozens and dozens of cloud storage companies" that existed prior to Dropbox (as slides 6 and 7 tell)... personally I don't know anyone who knew about any of those companies. I didn't kn…
I too assumed they were just the first ones with the idea. I've come up with a thousand and one amazing ideas only to find out that they've already been done--I actually invented the internet... It's encouraging seeing an example like this where quality matters.