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Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

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Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#11

Post by kerneltime »

fermienrico wrote: post #3
pmart123 wrote: post #2

They really did seem to be firing on all cylinders early on. Prior to their IPO, I thought it was weird they were spending time to migrate off of AWS versus continuing to build around their core offering. As it stands now, they could still target consumers with a higher end offering (lots of caching, etc.) if order to at least offer a superior experience to Google Drive, Microsoft, etc.

I love Dropbox as a product and happily pay for it. It always works. No fuss. No conflicts, it just works. Something to be said about tools you forget that you’re even paying for, they silently make your life better. Lately, they’re getting slightly annoying though. Designers at Dropbox - it’s a fucking file syncing tool, not a life philosophy. Get over the garish design non sense and allow Guido(retired)...ehhh engi…

Smugmug.. I love those guys..

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#12

Post by Havoc »

Recently saw an appealing -40% discount on amex for dropbox. That could be cool - esp if stacked with a promo. Headed over to their subreddit in search of a special...literally an entire subreddit of complaints.

Don't think they'll be around in 5 years time.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#13

Post by fermienrico »

xmodem wrote: post #10
fermienrico wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Dropbox as a product and happily pay for it. It always works. No fuss. No conflicts, it just works. Something to be said about tools you forget that you’re even paying for, they silently make your life better. Lately, they’re getting slightly annoying though. Designers at Dropbox - it’s a fucking file syncing tool, not a life philosophy. Get over the garish design non sense and allow Guido(retired)...ehhh engi…

In today’s SV mantra, standing still means falling behind, and waiting until you either get disrupted by other startups, copied by big tech, or both. No, something must be done, and trying to force themselves deeper into their customers’ workflows is something. So they did it.

I think standing still with 500 million users in my book is standing way the hell up there. Boosted into space at this point.

Why shy away from competition? Should face it.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#14

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

dang wrote: post #5

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3124983

>> [pg] That does count for a lot with us. It's surprising how many of the groups who apply have a cofounder who's not willing to quit his or her job. It's a worrying sign when someone who knows the company a lot better than we do isn't willing to bet on it. But again, there are always exceptions.

The conversation is about the dropbox founder quitting his job to wok on dropbox part-time.

The problem I see with pg's logic is that the founder and YC are not betting the same value on the company. The way I see it, YC is asked to bet some money, but the founder is asked to bet everything they got. If YC was asked to bet everything they had on that one company, they'd say no. In that case, having a plan B is not a sign of lack of resolve, it's a sign of sanity.

But I'm probably missing something. I really don't have the whatsitcalled, entrepreneurial spirit. It all looks like gambling to me and I hate gambling, especially when the odds are stacked against me; which they always are, otherwise it's not gambling. So I guess I don't get it.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#15

Post by mehrdada »

Dropbox feels more bearucratic internally than Google, a company two orders of magnitude its size. I feel like it is a perfect case of all the “VC-style” advice of “CEO job changes every 6 months and you should adapt” going haywire; mistaking the focus to be building an abstract hierarchical HR org, while completely losing the ability, vision, or desire to build a product that people love.

Reminds me of Steve Jobs’ quote on monopoly businesses, except it happened before they got a proper monopoly. https://youtu.be/lmFlOd0MGZg In fact, the early success may have been a curse there, thinking they have the genie in the bottle when they really had not.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#16

Post by Barrin92 »

pmart123 wrote: post #2

They really did seem to be firing on all cylinders early on. Prior to their IPO, I thought it was weird they were spending time to migrate off of AWS versus continuing to build around their core offering. As it stands now, they could still target consumers with a higher end offering (lots of caching, etc.) if order to at least offer a superior experience to Google Drive, Microsoft, etc.

> As it stands now, they could still target consumers with a higher end offering

what I don't get is why they don't have a price plan in the 100-200GB range like google drive has for two or three bucks. I've set up like seven or eight of those for family members and relatives, it's a very good price point and size for the average user.

The free plan of dropbox pretty much is super small and the next thing is 5TB.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#17

Post by boultonmark »

Havoc wrote: post #12

Recently saw an appealing -40% discount on amex for dropbox. That could be cool - esp if stacked with a promo. Headed over to their subreddit in search of a special...literally an entire subreddit of complaints. Don't think they'll be around in 5 years time.

Steve Jobs called them ‘a feature’. Methinks you are right, that they will be gone in 5

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#18

Post by recursivecaveat »

Zoom really strikes me as the Dropbox of 2020. Took over a field full of mediocre products with one that "just works" for the casual user. 'to dropbox' was a verb too. Zoom will probably suffer the same fate, where the big corps catch up in UX and the little dedicated product can't keep up with the service you already have access to. When Google manages to properly integrate Gsuite with whatever chat service comes after Meet/Hangouts/Allo, then Zoom's days are numbered.

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#19

Post by rosywoozlechan »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #18

Zoom really strikes me as the Dropbox of 2020. Took over a field full of mediocre products with one that "just works" for the casual user. 'to dropbox' was a verb too. Zoom will probably suffer the same fate, where the big corps catch up in UX and the little dedicated product can't keep up with the service you already have access to. When Google manages to properly integrate Gsuite with whatever chat service comes af…

Does this apply to Slack as well?

Re: Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)

#20

Post by [deleted] »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #14
dang wrote: post #5

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3124983

>> [pg] That does count for a lot with us. It's surprising how many of the groups who apply have a cofounder who's not willing to quit his or her job. It's a worrying sign when someone who knows the company a lot better than we do isn't willing to bet on it. But again, there are always exceptions. The conversation is about the dropbox founder quitting his job to wok on dropbox part-time. The problem I see with pg's l…

[deleted]
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