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My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

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Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#61

Post by JMiao »

vlad wrote: post #57
nickb wrote: post #31

The only problem is that you have to install something. See, it's not the same as USB drive. Most corporate laptops are locked and you can't install anything on them. That's gonna be the problem. Also, another point where your USB comparison fails is that USB works in places where you don't have internet access. My suggestion is to drop the "Throw away your USB drive" tag line and use something else... it will just m…

What about this on the download page (also good for a press release.) Drop Box: Automatically safeguards even your biggest worries, so you don't have any! What is a Drop Box? Your Drop Box is a File Cabinet that Follows You Around Everywhere You Want to Go, Across Your Computers, or Across The Country. Download and start using it today. (link goes here.) Your Drop Box includes your own Secretary who Files and Photoco…

"Your Drop Box is a File Cabinet that Follows You Around Everywhere You Want to Go, Across Your Computers, or Across The Country."

Ladies & Gentlemen, the WORLD'S LIGHTEST FILE CABINET. Great for cross-country roadtrips! =)

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#62

Post by budu3 »

jganetsk wrote: post #44
budu3 wrote: post #19

Wow dude! This looks like a good competitor for Google"s "GDrive". I hope you get accepted.

Well there doesn't seem to be a GDrive at the moment... but there are many other similar online storage solutions. Techcrunch had an article with 13 of them... http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/31/the-online-storage-gang/ It's a pretty crowded space. And XDrive gets you 5 GB for free, 50 GB for $9.95 a month. I can't expect Dropbox to charge those prices, given S3 as a backend. The margin just isn't really there, esp…

Well, the fact that GDrive is not materialising makes this idea a great aquisition target. Then again Google might squash it like it did Kiko if/when it rolls out GDrive.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#63

Post by dhouston »

JMiao wrote: post #23

Was Dropbox your first idea, or did you start from another point of inspiration? How long did it take to get to a workable demo? Great job, Drew!

nope. informally came up with and tossed around 6 or 7 ideas at the same time -- not so much coding as investigating/talking to potential customers and bouncing them off other friends and entrepreneurs. this was crucial -- ideas don't really fall out of the sky, they evolve.

there were several times where i'd get really excited about one idea -- like pacing in my living room at 5:30am excited -- and then 5 days later find out (via a different set of search terms or something) there were 3 other people doing the same thing, with a head start and more money.

ultimately they say scratch your own itch -- this was a problem (syncing a 3gb file across several computers efficiently) i routinely had working on a prior company i had started and i was frustrated that no one had solved it well, and it turned out to be more promising than my original company :)

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#64

Post by dhouston »

BrandonM wrote: post #60

I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them s…

1. re: the first part, many people want something plug and play. and even if they were plug and play, the problem is that the user experience (on windows at least) with online drives generally sucks, and you don't have disconnected access.

windows for sure doesn't hide latency well (CIFS is bad, webdav etc. are worse), and most apps are written as if the disk was local, and assume, for example, accessing a file only takes a few ms. if the server is 80ms away, and you do 100 accesses (e.g. the open file common dialog listing a directory and poking files for various attributes or icons) serially, suddenly your UI locks up for _seconds_ (joel spolsky summarizes this well in his article on leaky abstractions.) ditto saving any file; you change one character in your 20mb word file and hit save, and your upstream-capped 40k/sec comcast connection is hosed for 8 minutes. sure for docs of a few hundred k it's fine, but doing work on large docs on an online drive feels like walking around with cinder blocks tied to your feet. anyway, the point of that rant was that dropbox uses a _local_ folder with efficient sync in the background, which is an important difference :)

2. true, if you're both not at your computer and on another computer without net access, this won't replace a usb drive :) but the case i'm worried about is being, for example, on a plane, and dropbox will let you get to the most recent version of your docs at the time you were last connected, and will sync everything up when you get back online (without you having to copy anything or really do anything.)

3. there are some unannounced viral parts i didn't get to show in there :) it'll be a freemium model. up to x gb free, tiered plans above that.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#65

Post by vlad »

zkinion wrote: post #58
vlad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if he applied; he has tried before and was rejected. Way to represent the lone rangers!

I'm guessing he did, though I may be wrong. The thread title was "...YC app..." something like that. I don't see how after that video and that post how he wouldn't be accepted unless the YC people have some pre-existing opinions about the future of online storage.

I totally missed that. I just know he was interviewed for this past winter session, and it came up that he was a single founder. I sure hope he gets in, because it shows that you don't always need a team if you can invision, design, draw, code, and test your idea yourself. Too many cooks can spoil the broth, sometimes. Plus, I believe when leading a product that you need to have one leader, not a committee. And, the other thing I believe is that a leader must be willing to do, by himself, anything he asks of others.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#66

Post by dhouston »

vlad wrote: post #65
zkinion wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing he did, though I may be wrong. The thread title was "...YC app..." something like that. I don't see how after that video and that post how he wouldn't be accepted unless the YC people have some pre-existing opinions about the future of online storage.

I totally missed that. I just know he was interviewed for this past winter session, and it came up that he was a single founder. I sure hope he gets in, because it shows that you don't always need a team if you can invision, design, draw, code, and test your idea yourself. Too many cooks can spoil the broth, sometimes. Plus, I believe when leading a product that you need to have one leader, not a committee. And, the…

couple of clarifications :)

1) i have other people working with me on this. i did prototype it alone, but i don't intend to be a single founder. i won't belabor it here, but it's really a good idea to get other people on board and the reasons yc and everyone have for not encouraging single founders are valid. your odds are much worse, and playing superman gets old after a while when you're trying to do everything -- and it's more fun to have more people involved and excited about the idea anyway.

2) re: applying: i am applying for this round, but actually didn't apply for funding for the last wfp. however, i did apply 2 years ago (with a cofounder) with another idea and wasn't selected.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#67

Post by BrandonM »

dhouston wrote: post #64
BrandonM wrote: post #60

I have a few qualms with this app: 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. 2. It doesn't actually replace a USB drive. Most people I know e-mail files to themselves or host them s…

1. re: the first part, many people want something plug and play. and even if they were plug and play, the problem is that the user experience (on windows at least) with online drives generally sucks, and you don't have disconnected access. windows for sure doesn't hide latency well (CIFS is bad, webdav etc. are worse), and most apps are written as if the disk was local, and assume, for example, accessing a file only…

You are correct that this presents a very good, easy-to-install piece of functionality for Windows users. The Windows shortcomings that you point out are certainly problems, and I think that your software does a good job of overcoming that.

The part about efficient background sync is a good point, too. I have noticed some minor lagging using curlftpfs in Linux, and that might be something that would make for a better solution in the Linux world, so thanks for that idea.

Your use-case described in #2 does make sense, but I still agree with others' comments here that claiming that it replaces USB drives is a bad idea in general. All of your feedback was well-thought-out and appreciated; I only hope that I was able to give you a sneak preview of some of the potential criticisms you may receive. Best of luck to you!

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#68

Post by andreyf »

chandrab wrote: post #47

Nice Application...the question I have is on the marketing side- how are you going to attract users? and how are you going to differentiate yourself from the hordes of other online storage vendors, esp. to the newbie users who can't tell them apart easy? (so you have to have a simple, compelling story for them)

I'd also love to see how you answered the "Whom do you fear the most" and "What makes this hard to replicate" questions on the app...

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#69

Post by bls »

This is an interesting application. But, your demo video does not do it justice: (a) It is too long; (b) your folders that you use in the video have too many files in them; you say about 10x more words than necessary; and (d) your voice, combined with the bad microphone input, make the explanation sounds pad.

Your main competition is not USB drives: it is HotMail, GMail, and Yahoo! Mail. Once people are taught the "email it to yourself" trick, they love to use it--I think because it is not so intuitive for people, yet it is so simple, that they are proud that they are doing something so clever.

Re: My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive

#70

Post by Tichy »

dhouston wrote: post #16
markovich wrote: post #14

It's pretty nice, and I was thinking to myself - hey cool, I could make an online backup of my code. Then it occured to me - who the hell is this guy, and why should I trust my code to be on his server!? That's a huge issue you should consider. Why would people feel comfortable leaving their valuable stuff on "Drews" server?

data's stored on s3, and encrypted before storage -- there'll be another option to enter in an additional passphrase (or private key) when installing in order to encrypt your data before it leaves your computer (kind of like what mozy does.)

Maybe, but the encryption is entirely in the hands of the client application that dropbox provides (I suppose it is not open source), so it is still a matter of faith.
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