What is interesting to me is when this got posted several weeks ago, an admin/mod deleted it off HN.
Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
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Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#12It's been fascinating to follow Drew's story from the link to the early video on HN, to the YC application as a solo-founder to a "nine-digit" offer. This speaks to the importance of a good product. When Dropbox was pitched early on, everyone would point out how many competitors there were. Drew would silence the crowd by asking "how many of you actually use one of those services?" It's all about the product.
It is all about the product but it's not as if Dropbox isn't facing some very serious competition. iCloud, G-Drive and Skydrive are all concerns. Dropbox's advantage may be being platform agnostic but one has to wonder if Dropbox's fate may eventually be the primary storage of pirates. There have already been stories written regarding the content owners' interest of litigation.
While I agree with your central point that Dropbox faces competition (still, who does't? this isn't inherently bad) note that as of yet iCloud doesn't exactly let you solve the problem of syncing any document across devices. Although I'm assuming this will either become integrated or could be made possible via the iCloud developer API.
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#13"Houston cut Jobs’ pitch short: He was determined to build a big company, he said, and wasn’t selling, no matter the status of the bidder" Props to Drew. I don't think many other entrepreneurs would've been as zealous and decline such an offer.
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#14I think the fundamental differences between Dropbox and iCloud is the sharing feature and Windows/Linux/Mac/etc support. iCloud is never going to be on Windows and our company uses Dropbox to share project resources and our machines are a mixed of PCs and Macs so iCloud means nothing for us.
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#15not surprising, Dropbox is an actual business with long term potential. And with recurring revenue model, they have growth in revenue every month.
There is no need for them to flip like other sites who either need to make sales every month to stay in business or are reliant on Google staying nice to them in order to keep their traffic numbers.
Recurring revenue really is the key to lasting success on the internet.
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#16I think the fundamental differences between Dropbox and iCloud is the sharing feature and Windows/Linux/Mac/etc support. iCloud is never going to be on Windows and our company uses Dropbox to share project resources and our machines are a mixed of PCs and Macs so iCloud means nothing for us.
Exactly. As Steve Jobs is quoted in the article; Dropbox is only half the solution.
Apple's 'full' solution involves the necessary purchase of their hardware and software as well. Dropbox works across the board, without prejudice.
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#17I think the fundamental differences between Dropbox and iCloud is the sharing feature and Windows/Linux/Mac/etc support. iCloud is never going to be on Windows and our company uses Dropbox to share project resources and our machines are a mixed of PCs and Macs so iCloud means nothing for us.
wait for Google, Facebook or Microsoft to implement their own Dropbox clone.
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#18It's been fascinating to follow Drew's story from the link to the early video on HN, to the YC application as a solo-founder to a "nine-digit" offer. This speaks to the importance of a good product. When Dropbox was pitched early on, everyone would point out how many competitors there were. Drew would silence the crowd by asking "how many of you actually use one of those services?" It's all about the product.
It is all about the product but it's not as if Dropbox isn't facing some very serious competition. iCloud, G-Drive and Skydrive are all concerns. Dropbox's advantage may be being platform agnostic but one has to wonder if Dropbox's fate may eventually be the primary storage of pirates. There have already been stories written regarding the content owners' interest of litigation.
one has to wonder if Dropbox's fate may eventually be the primary storage of pirates
That's further reinforced by the existence of Dropship[1] (although I don't know if it still works), which enabled people to get copies of any file in the whole Dropbox network with just its hash, by taking advantage of their deduplication techniques.
[1]: http://forwardfeed.pl/index.php/2011/04/24/dropship-successo...
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#19I love Dropbox, but Jobs is right -- they are a feature, not a product.
They will be relevant up to the point where operating systems simply makes their functionality a native element of their file system.
At least Drew is wise to the fact that they could become an also-ran, so it's not like this will happen to them overnight.
Re: Dropbox Said No To “Nine-Digit” Acquisition Offer From Steve Jobs
#20> (pronounced like the New York City street, not the Texas city)
What does that mean in non-US-English?