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Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

cnbc.com

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Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#301

Post by hcurtiss »

saghm wrote: post #291
idiotsecant wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline

> In the aftermath of World War I, birth rates in the United States and many European countries fell below replacement level. This prompted concern about population decline.[8] The recovery of the birth rate in most Western countries around 1940 that produced the "baby boom", with annual growth rates in the 1.0 – 1.5% range, and which peaked during the period 1962–1968 at 2.1% per year,[13] temporarily dispelled prio…

I'm not so sure that global population growth tells the right story vis-à-vis declining birth rates in western countries.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#302

Post by abhiyerra »

price wrote: post #257
light_triad wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great product. They had the brand, the capital, and the user base to become what Slack, Zoom, or Notion became. Instead, they spent a decade fighting a losing battle over storage pricing with Google and Microsoft. Their lack of a second act is due to a failure of product vision and enterprise execution.

And they had Paper, which was an excellent product (I was at Dropbox a decade ago; we all used Paper constantly and it was great) very close to what Notion later became. They never got it over the hump to wider PMF — like you say, a failure of product and of enterprise execution. (Given that it was so close to Notion, I think Paper is one area where the product vision was on to something good; but they didn't succeed…

Never worked at Dropbox, but I absolutely loved Paper.

The problem at Dropbox seems to have been that there was no cohesiveness to all the products. Paper, Passwords, Sign, all seem to have never been truly integrated into a single experience. Each one felt like it was trying to have its own identity.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#303

Post by MikeTheGreat »

blks wrote: post #295
guhcampos wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that bad though? Think about it. If you're paying all your bills, all your wages, and you have a strong product that people enjoy, and you're able to compete in the market - maybe not gaining any ground, but at least not losing any either - why change? Of course I moderately understand the market pressures at work, but at some point in the human civilization journey we'll have to be content with something instead…

In the current economic system, if capital is not growing, it’s reducing.

Can you explain this further?

For example, if the market cap is $6B and has been for years, how is that reducing?

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#304

Post by SL61 »

bachmeier wrote: post #205
bhouston wrote: post #124

Dropbox's stock has been stuck at around $6B valuation for years with flat growth and income around $2.5B per year. It is just stuck. Box.com, which is quite similar, is not that different. Around $3B and $1.2B in income. Similar valuation. I think it is the market, not the leadership. It is a tough market that has cut off the consumer end because all the big players have their own deeply integrated solutions: Apple…

> It is a tough market that has cut off the consumer end because all the big players have their own deeply integrated solutions: Apple (iCloud), Google (Drive), Microsoft (OneDrive). A huge unforced error though is that the starting price for individual plans is $20/year versus $10/month for Dropbox and Box. At a certain point you have to recognize that the rules of the game have changed. Once a customer has their fo…

The typical answer when people ask why Dropbox doesn't have a cheap low tier is that the more expensive plans are more likely to be underused, and therefore more profitable than a 100GB plan that users constantly max out.

But I'm also curious about whether they've studied the long-term growth impact like you mentioned. I first needed to pay for cloud storage as a broke college student. I'd used Dropbox's free tier in high school and only needed a bit more space, and I certainly didn't have $120/year to spend on it. I ended up switching to Google Drive's $2/month plan and never looked back at Dropbox. If Dropbox had offered a comparable plan, I would have stayed and ended up upgrading to the $10/month plan when I got my first job. Looking at how much data I'm using right now, I would have become exactly the type of underutilizing user they want.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#305

Post by alexfoo »

yesitcan wrote: post #210
dhouston wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair criticism. The tricky part though with any scaled service is that for every legitimate case like this, there are many more bad actors trying to hijack accounts through exactly this mechanism -- so account recovery has to be conservative by default, which means legitimate cases sometimes get caught in the friction. Not an excuse, but it's a hard problem at scale and not just e.g. a cost-cutting thing or not givin…

Is this guy really replying with AI?

This is almost as good as the classic HN "Putnam" comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

(Hint: No, he's not replying with AI. Two hyphens are not an em dash. Even then there's no hint of it being an AI response. Also the person is actually the CEO of Dropbox, the very person this thread is all about. You only have to click his username to see his posting history to see he's not an AI bot posting endlessly, his last posts (prior to today) were in 2024.)

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#306

Post by tmp10423288442 »

afavour wrote: post #273
light_triad wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great product. They had the brand, the capital, and the user base to become what Slack, Zoom, or Notion became. Instead, they spent a decade fighting a losing battle over storage pricing with Google and Microsoft. Their lack of a second act is due to a failure of product vision and enterprise execution.

> They had the brand, the capital, and the user base to become what Slack, Zoom, or Notion became. Instead, they spent a decade fighting a losing battle over storage pricing with Google and Microsoft Is the alternative not likely that they would have spent a decade fighting a losing battle over office software with Google and Microsoft? Paper was a great product but the big guys have vertical integration so companies…

> Is the alternative not likely that they would have spent a decade fighting a losing battle over office software with Google and Microsoft? Paper was a great product but the big guys have vertical integration so companies prefer their end-to-end solutions (GSuite etc) and I don't see how Dropbox could have easily overcome that.

Slack, Zoom, and Notion all argue against that. Yes, they have to compete against Google and Microsoft's integrated solutions, but they're good enough that they have held their own. Of course they would be bigger if Google and Microsoft didn't have such products.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#307

Post by BoorishBears »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #303
blks wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the current economic system, if capital is not growing, it’s reducing.

Can you explain this further? For example, if the market cap is $6B and has been for years, how is that reducing?

HDDs, SSDs, RAM for their servers are all up what, anywhere 50% to >100% for the year?

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#308

Post by jacobgkau »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #303
blks wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the current economic system, if capital is not growing, it’s reducing.

Can you explain this further? For example, if the market cap is $6B and has been for years, how is that reducing?

I think they're saying that inflation means the $6B is reducing in buying power.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#309

Post by dchevell »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #303
blks wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the current economic system, if capital is not growing, it’s reducing.

Can you explain this further? For example, if the market cap is $6B and has been for years, how is that reducing?

inflation … ?

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#310

Post by bombcar »

ktallett wrote: post #240
light_triad wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a great product. They had the brand, the capital, and the user base to become what Slack, Zoom, or Notion became. Instead, they spent a decade fighting a losing battle over storage pricing with Google and Microsoft. Their lack of a second act is due to a failure of product vision and enterprise execution.

I don't see the need to become bloated like slack and a one size fits all application. They do a great job with the product they have. Is there anything wrong with just being what you are? Why does the lack of a second act need to be a bad thing if your first product is great and still extremely valuable? I would also if anything put Zoom in with Dropbox, they have a product that is by far the most enjoyable to use i…

Zoom is great, but it's hard to argue for paying $x per user when you're already paying $x per user for email/office and "teams is free".
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