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Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

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Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#51

Post by cfgvjkljhgfb »

dabent wrote: post #45
MikeCapone wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm just an ignorant not-involved-in-a-startup person, but what is Dropbox doing with these 400+ employees? To me Dropbox seems like it's a pretty simply and mature product feature-wise. Have they announced that they're expanding into other products? I just hope they won't bloat Dropbox the way that some of these one-main-feature softwares were inflated in the past (ICQ, etc). edit: I guess what got me thinking…

> Google had a working search engine and they were building their own hardware with less than 100 employees. But now Google has over 20,000 employees and is still hiring. It's possible that Dropbox is building on its core product and developing entirely new products to amaze us and entice dollars out of our wallets.

Except Google build and run some of the largest datacenters in the world.

Dropbox uses Amazon S3 - the whole point of being a hip and trendy web2.0 cloud service is that all you need is a web designer an SEO expert and a PR firm

In addition renting a large expensive trendy building in the middle of an expensive trendy city seems to suggest a certain lack of hip-and-trendy web2.0 cloud thinking. ING (the online only bank) has started clearing it's people out of expensive city center office blocks to work remotely and (very profitably) renting the space to hip-and-trendy web2.0 startups

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#52

Post by notatoad »

dstein wrote: post #46
MikeCapone wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm just an ignorant not-involved-in-a-startup person, but what is Dropbox doing with these 400+ employees? To me Dropbox seems like it's a pretty simply and mature product feature-wise. Have they announced that they're expanding into other products? I just hope they won't bloat Dropbox the way that some of these one-main-feature softwares were inflated in the past (ICQ, etc). edit: I guess what got me thinking…

My wild guess is they're going after the enterprise market. Dropbox would need to expand in some big ways to provide a secure "all-cloud" filesystem that enterprises could use to replace their own data centers with.

large-scale enterprise is probably a long ways away, but SMB is a big market that they could get into without nearly as much work.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#53

Post by windexh8er »

Anybody still using Dropbox needs a head check. They've made too many mistakes that showcase a broken undercarriage. Dropbox is the epitomy of succesful failures in my book. only the unknowing masses will stick with them for lack of understanding.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#54

Post by bane »

MikeCapone wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm just an ignorant not-involved-in-a-startup person, but what is Dropbox doing with these 400+ employees? To me Dropbox seems like it's a pretty simply and mature product feature-wise. Have they announced that they're expanding into other products? I just hope they won't bloat Dropbox the way that some of these one-main-feature softwares were inflated in the past (ICQ, etc). edit: I guess what got me thinking…

One easy thing they could do is put a folder in everybody's dropboxes called "my website" or something, where people can simply start dropping files in and have db basically "just work" as a site publisher.

I know it sort of does this now, but I've heard many problems about it when the traffic starts to scale. Presumably you'd need some serious engineers talent to solve that issue.

Imagine no more fussing with ftp clients or publishing tools to get a site up and running, just copy files into a folder. With a little fiddling and some simple rules it might even be possible to support modernish web frameworks behind the scenes...and db just assembles it and "makes it work".

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#55

Post by dstein »

notatoad wrote: post #52
dstein wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wild guess is they're going after the enterprise market. Dropbox would need to expand in some big ways to provide a secure "all-cloud" filesystem that enterprises could use to replace their own data centers with.

large-scale enterprise is probably a long ways away, but SMB is a big market that they could get into without nearly as much work.

They already have a small business product:

https://www.dropbox.com/teams

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#56

Post by ori_b »

ghshephard wrote: post #29

I find it humorous that (otherwise highly intelligent, and well informed) members of HN are asking "What do they need all these people for" - DropBox is getting a rumored $5B valuation - which implies, no, requires they start to ramp up both their revenue and, eventually, profit. That's going to require either (A) a LOT more customers, or (B) More profitable Customers. (A) is just going to be a huge headache in terms…

Why does their valuation matter for the number of employees they should have?

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#57

Post by slug »

jallmann wrote: post #48
qq66 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Client-side encryption severely worsens the economics of Dropbox, and not everyone needs it. If you want that you're perfectly entitled to go build your own competitor, which will have higher costs.

Tarsnap. http://www.tarsnap.com/

tarsnap is good, but try to teach your [insert] on how to use the tar command and what [sb]crypt means.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#59

Post by slug »

bane wrote: post #54
MikeCapone wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm just an ignorant not-involved-in-a-startup person, but what is Dropbox doing with these 400+ employees? To me Dropbox seems like it's a pretty simply and mature product feature-wise. Have they announced that they're expanding into other products? I just hope they won't bloat Dropbox the way that some of these one-main-feature softwares were inflated in the past (ICQ, etc). edit: I guess what got me thinking…

One easy thing they could do is put a folder in everybody's dropboxes called "my website" or something, where people can simply start dropping files in and have db basically "just work" as a site publisher. I know it sort of does this now, but I've heard many problems about it when the traffic starts to scale. Presumably you'd need some serious engineers talent to solve that issue. Imagine no more fussing with ftp cl…

Wouldn't it be possible to do this with webdav ? RW+ permissions for you, R for world.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#60

Post by jacques_chester »

jallmann wrote: post #48
qq66 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Client-side encryption severely worsens the economics of Dropbox, and not everyone needs it. If you want that you're perfectly entitled to go build your own competitor, which will have higher costs.

Tarsnap. http://www.tarsnap.com/

I've once or twice mused about building and selling an app that backs onto tarnsap. The service itself is fantastic, but it's not aimed at the mass market.
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