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April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#3

Post by bstar77 »

Dropbox is definitely a case where a single person's vision was required to create a revolutionary product. Judging by the comments, leaving it to HNers as a group would have just resulted in a faster usb drive.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#4

Post by fananta »

I think the top comments there show how sometimes the HN folks can get caught up in the details.

I did a show HN today for a restaurant analytics concept and people commented on the ugliness of the launch page and over pixels.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#6

Post by GuiA »

fananta wrote: post #4

I think the top comments there show how sometimes the HN folks can get caught up in the details. I did a show HN today for a restaurant analytics concept and people commented on the ugliness of the launch page and over pixels.

People posting those sort of comments have nothing to give, except for their opinion. Keep getting stuff done, don't let them get you down :)

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#7

Post by SwellJoe »

I was among the naysayers. I first met Drew at pg's house just before Dropbox did YC. I listened as he explained Dropbox, and I immediately thought of a dozen reasons why it would be very difficult and probably fail (I'd recently worked on something very similar for a month or so just to figure out whether it was a direction I wanted to go with my own company, so had some familiarity with the scale of the problem...I also knew the allure of the simple parts of the problem).

I don't recall a whole lot about the conversation; I thought Drew was smart, and he seemed to have a pretty good understanding of all the problems he was going to have to solve. But, I still had my doubts, and walked away assuming Dropbox would not be one of the success stories out of that upcoming YC batch. We see who from that conversation is now a billionaire (or will be in the coming years)...so, it seems I was wrong. Or, at least, overly pessimistic about Drew's understanding of the problems and his ability to resolve them.

I refer to this pretty frequently to try to remind myself not to be the naysayer in the room: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-...

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#8

Post by dnautics »

SwellJoe wrote: post #7

I was among the naysayers. I first met Drew at pg's house just before Dropbox did YC. I listened as he explained Dropbox, and I immediately thought of a dozen reasons why it would be very difficult and probably fail (I'd recently worked on something very similar for a month or so just to figure out whether it was a direction I wanted to go with my own company, so had some familiarity with the scale of the problem...I…

it may not be of much comfort to you, but sometimes naysayers are important. Even if they are wrong about the overall trajectory, they may in the process of naysaying point out specific weaknesses that the visionaries might have missed, and, thus, ultimately allow for the success of the product.
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