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April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

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

#101

Post by mathattack »

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…

I do get a kick out of all the complaints and snarky comments. Sometimes you just have to do one thing very right, and everything else takes care of itself.

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

#102

Post by toddmorey »

I'm reminded of this Quora post on the popularity of Dropbox:

"Dropbox: Why is Dropbox more popular than other programs with similar functionality?

Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do:

There would be a folder. You'd put your stuff in it. It would sync.

They built that.

Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea.

"But," you may ask, "so much more you could do! What about task management, calendaring, customized dashboards, virtual white boarding. More than just folders and files!"

No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs."

http://www.quora.com/Dropbox/Why-is-Dropbox-more-popular-tha...

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

#103

Post by ThomPete »

singular wrote: post #87
300bps wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 300k files and symlinks, you are probably not considered a typical Dropbox customer.

As I said, very easy to achieve as a developer (I hadn't done anything crazy), and the symlinks were working up to that point. Even as a non-typical dropbox user (a developer, then), I think there should have been some kind of a warning a, some ability to recover from the situation b (I was left for nearly a month with a completely non-functional dropbox), and not suddenly getting dropped without warning by support c…

I have a menu bar on one of my product pages that I still haven't aligned properly.

Priority is in the eye of the beholder.

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

#104

Post by romaniv »

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…

From what I've seen, 'naysayer' is a term people most commonly use to ignore and suppress critical thinking. It's very convenient, because it sidesteps the question of why someone says 'no', and blames it on their personality instead, making all kinds of 'no' (substantiated or not) equivalent.

Besides, people who can't handle criticism are usually the same people who can't properly deal with new ideas either. Have you never seen large corporations going under because of abandoning their main products and chasing something new and shiny? That's a case where some intelligent no's would save the day.

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

#105

Post by 300bps »

singular wrote: post #97
mgkimsal wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And good business means providing good support and service and infrastructure to the 99.92% of your customers who fall within your statistical norm while still functioning for the other 0.08%, even if you don't bend over backwards to 'accommodate' that 0.08%'s wishlists.

Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation. It's been a year and a half at least they've acknowledged this problem, so prevent somebody from having a non-functioning product - wouldn't take much effort. The problem is they hide this problem away and in no way warn you, I fully accept that they might not want to prioritise fixing this, I just ask for common courtesy - I had a month with dropbox basically not worki…

Ok, so just pop up a warning in this situation.

My friend, I don't believe you realize just how outside of the norm you are. 300k files is quite a large number of files for even a local file store to choke on.

But there are actually two things that put you outside the norm. First, it is likely only technical users who are going to acquire 300,000 files in their DropBox. Second, technical users are already typically aware of the downsides of storing tens of thousands of small files on a file system and how common it is for even dedicated local servers to choke on them. We all have copied 300,000 small files and have it take f-o-r-e-v-e-r and then copy one file of the same aggregate size of the 300,000 small files and it flies through the copy. Why would DropBox be any different?

I wonder what would happen if this occurred on gmail - you have too many emails so suddenly it stops working without warning

Here's an experiment for you to try. Write a program that sends you 60k byte emails as fast as it can. When you get up to 300,000 emails see how well your Gmail account works.

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

#106

Post by anuragramdasan »

nostrademons wrote: post #31
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…

And I'm an example of how you can be right and still wrong because you let "other plans" get in the way. I'm on that thread with my two cents: "I'm impressed." However, Drew took me out to lunch about 10 months later. They'd just signed their Series A with Sequoia (although it wasn't public knowledge), and were looking to hire their first couple employees. Aston had just been hired the day before as employee #1; Drew…

Quite an interesting story. I guess I am a few years behind you, as in I just graduated a year back and get offers from startups which i accept/turn down. I often wonder how these startups would end up and where I would be relative to them. But I guess what makes the most sense here is the part that says "you made the decision that was right for you.". That kind of seems like the right line of thought.

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

#107

Post by scott_s »

singular wrote: post #92
Perceptes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also amusing that the top comment on this thread is a big rant about one specific customer service incident. Totally unrelated to the linked story, and as usual, not seeing the forest for the trees.

I strongly dislike the strain of negativity that seems to be typical of hn these days, but... I don't think it's totally unrelated, as I always very much admired dropbox as a company and technically, and had the sense of them being something of a hacker's company (an hn thread in which the founder is replying to technical issues definitely gives one that impression), and I was very disappointed to have that experienc…

Perhaps your use-case is not one they consider important. (As others have pointed out, 300,000 files is a lot for a synced drive.)

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

#108

Post by hackinthebochs »

nostrademons wrote: post #42
hackinthebochs wrote: post #39

Honestly, I still think the idea of dropbox is ludicrous. There are many ways to share files, and sending them to a third party to host for you is the worst one of them all. Aside from the few people that really need to multiply their bandwith by many orders of magnitude, a simple file sharing server on their own PC or a server they own would do the job just fine. Besides, dropbox was just yet another iteration of on…

"a simple file sharing server on their own PC or a server they own..." I think that's the part you're missing. What fraction of the general population can set up a file-sharing server? What fraction of the population even owns a server? What fraction of the population even knows what a server is ? DropBox faced this objection over and over again from the investors they pitched, and Drew's answer was variations on "Bu…

That's the thing though, how many "grandmas and grandpas" really need a file sharing service for blobs of data? There already exists "better" solutions to share common file types: flickr/picasa for images, youtube for video, email for word documents, etc. The vast majority of people simply don't need an arbitrary file hosting service. Somehow they've managed to convince people they do.

On the other hand, if you give something away for free that seems to have value, people will flock to it regardless of need. I'm curious if dropbox is actually profitable. I know of many people who use dropbox that I wouldn't have thought would even have heard of it. But not a single one of them pays for it. Perhaps what we're attributing to success is simply a company being sustained by the VC bubble. Even in the face of the "success" of dropbox I don't see the service in its current incarnation being self-sustainable.

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

#109

Post by a3voices »

Aldo_MX wrote: post #72

The secret to success: Trust in yourself, nobody else is going to trust in you.

Another secret to success: have good parenting, DNA, education, friends, and an interest in creating things of value (as opposed to the other million things you can do with your time)

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

#110

Post by JanLaussmann »

I was reading Drew Houston's YC application: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html and notices something strange: There is Google Drive's favicon on https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com " rel="nofollow">http://docs.google.com/favicon.ico">

Edit: Screenshot https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4jNwxVKChpYREZ5ZDZ6Q3Jqb2c/...

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