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Dropbox CTO Resigns

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Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#51

Post by notyourday »

ram_rar wrote: post #45

Dropbox has a tough road ahead. With Google Drive, Microsoft Word cloud suite and Box, its definitely getting tough to survive by just doing B2C. With their recent acquisitions they'll probably pivot to DocuSign like model. But they are definitely losing their niche.

B2C is the place to be - it is a niche where an excellent product is going to continue to earn excellent money. Continue to reiterate and continue to improve the product, dont overspend on infrastructure and dont rent super expensive office space in the most expensive cities in the world.

Enterprise is where SaaS companies go to die because they think that Microsofts of the world are just going to let them have the multi million dollar deals. That's a delusion.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#52

Post by cortesoft »

fullshark wrote: post #46
jonknee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs was early, but not wrong about Dropbox being a feature and not a product. I just want a folder that syncs extremely reliably, that's it. They've gone down the corporate rabbithole and now call themselves a "smart workspace" whatever that means.

Well the corporate rabbithole was the only way they could turn it into a business, and not a feature as you say.

Only if they wanted VC expected growth..... they could have just stopped adding new features, only had a few employees, and continued to make money charging a small amount for their single feature.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#53

Post by dole »

petschge wrote: post #42
abakker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you personally recommend any open source solutions that are reasonably plug and play?

syncthing[1] works nicely for me. [1] https://syncthing.net/

For Windows users, SyncThing is normally a local browser app; SyncTrayZor wraps Syncthing into a more familiar SysTray app.

(Made finally ditching Dropbox a lot less daunting so I sing its praises on here when I can.)

https://github.com/canton7/SyncTrayzor

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#54

Post by esoterae »

jeremyjh wrote: post #35
cat199 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but 'app dialogs' and their utility/uselessness are symptomatic of the underlying philosophy and business culture which made them a 'requirement' - so if the app dialog is undesirable, it carries implications about the internal environment in which it was developed, which may prompt someone to leave. alternately: this was the person pushing the undesirable things, and other people pushed that person out a…

alternately: no relationship at all and this whole thread is just people dishing on their pet-peeves with the product.

Where there's smoke, there's fire

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#55

Post by bambax »

jonknee wrote: post #23
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

Steve Jobs was early, but not wrong about Dropbox being a feature and not a product. I just want a folder that syncs extremely reliably, that's it. They've gone down the corporate rabbithole and now call themselves a "smart workspace" whatever that means.

Maybe, but a feature that works is worth more than a product that doesn't. Dropbox always works, everywhere.

I'm old enough to remember a world pre-Drobox (and pre-high bandwidth). I used to work at different places. I kept a laptop in each office, and carried with me Iomega disks that I synced every morning. It was slow and complex and error-prone.

Alternatives from either Apple or MS will never work as well, they will always favor the platform they come from (if they don't eventually drop the others).

It's not an overstatement to say that Dropbox changed my life; here's to hoping it never goes away.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#56

Post by valleyjo »

hellofunk wrote: post #22
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

I find the fairly recent Smart Sync feature to be really nice, has definitely made many things simpler and more flexible.

Onedrive has it for free

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#57

Post by npo9 »

cortesoft wrote: post #52
fullshark wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the corporate rabbithole was the only way they could turn it into a business, and not a feature as you say.

Only if they wanted VC expected growth..... they could have just stopped adding new features, only had a few employees, and continued to make money charging a small amount for their single feature.

It’s very hard to have solid product, engineering, marketing, sales, and support on any scale without taking VC money.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#58

Post by chipotle_coyote »

damnyou wrote: post #13
toxik wrote: post #10

Famously, Steve Jobs once called Dropbox “a feature, not a product.”

Maybe "products" are actually bad when they lock you into an ecosystem like the company Steve Jobs headed does.

It's true, Apple has deviously engineered it so their operating systems only run applications written for those operating systems. It's a good thing nobody else does that!

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#59

Post by r-bryan »

notyourday wrote: post #47
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #18

Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: - Is slow - Demolishes my MBP's battery - Has not gotten simpler to use And worst of all, it is completely out of line with what their competition are charging. They want $12.50-15/mo for their most basic plan when their competition is charging $0-1…

> Dropbox has slowly but surely gone from a product I enjoyed and recommended to one that I actively dislike using. I find it pretty astonishing that such a mature product: That's what happens when the "Enterprise sales" mosquito bites a B2C company.

Sounds like a perfectly classic version of the growth trajectory characterized in "Innovator's Dilemma" (Clayton Christensen). Company grows into a big fat dinosaur, leaving a soft underbelly for a scrappy little mammal to claw at.

Except in this case the scrappy little mammals are big fat dinosaurs themselves.

Re: Dropbox CTO Resigns

#60

Post by mjhagen »

petschge wrote: post #42
abakker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you personally recommend any open source solutions that are reasonably plug and play?

syncthing[1] works nicely for me. [1] https://syncthing.net/

I went to Syncthing as well and it works, but it's still no match for the DropBox of a few years ago.
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