I think there is still space for open source on premise competitor. I don't trust Dropbox or other services, but I'd love to run something like this myself for full control.
How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of curiousity, what does Dropbox do for you that they don't? Have you stayed because of price, service, features, laziness to switch? :) I personally don't have many storage needs so I just email myself important files, back up some things to USB, and sometimes will add things to Google Drive
Google Drive is like "I guess you can use the desktop client instead of the web one". One Drive is like "I guess you can use a Mac". iCloud is like "I guess you can have non-Apple devices". Dropbox just syncs your files from and to anything you have, equally well. I'm pretty sure none of the others even have a Linux client at all, but Dropbox does.
Except smart sync only works on mac and windows. Linux is a second class citizen.
I’d sign up for Dropbox if they had feature parity on Linux.
Also a plan in the $5 range would be greatly preferred. My threshold for moderately helpful services is usually $5/Mo.
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can’t see myself paying $10/month for Dropbox when I can get Office365 for the same price with 1tb apiece for up to five users, plus office for 5 computers, and 5 iPads.
The equivalent Dropbox plan is also 1TB. I personally don't ever use Office so for me that element of it is not a benefit.
How many large businesses do either use MS Office or Google’s enterprise offerings?
Dropbox will gladly take money from consumers but the money is in the Enterprise and that’s what they are chasing.
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#104When Google Drive and iCloud and One Drive all cropped up, copying the same service with the addition of deeper integration into different devices and software, I was worried Dropbox would be unable to compete. But they've hung in there, and I remain a happy customer.
What kind of deeper integration do you find useful in those competing services? For me, I found OneDrive being automatically installed on windows and nagging me to sign on too intrusive. Windows setting the default Document folder to onedrive would be convenient if I hadn't already signed up to dropbox, but it's just annoying if I don't have Onedrive. I like the fact that Dropbox isn't part of google or microsoft, wh…
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Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#105I like Dropbox but I think they now focus more on enterprise and forgot individual users which led them to where they are today.
First is the price. If you need more space than the free option provides, the cheapest upgrade is $100/year. The competition is about $25/year. The $100 doesn't even contain basic features like full text search when searching your Dropbox folder in the browser. You need to pay more for that. I'm sure most companies don't mind paying the extra cost for a better service, but individual users are much more likely to go with the significantly cheaper option even if that means inferior product.
I totally understand that for the big tech companies it's easier to lower prices and even lose money to gain market share. Dropbox will need to find a way to fight back.
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I ask why syncing files between computers if a useful thing for you? I'm on the verge of cancelling my Dropbox account since I realized the Dropbox account is not useful as an external drive, but only as a syncing tool. To me that's not worth anything bit I'm curious what use the happy customers have for it.
Storage is cheap enough these days that each of my computers has more HDD space than I need for my whole Dropbox, so I don't have a need for a "true" external drive. I primarily use it as a backup and secondarily use it to sync across machines. Every file of importance lives in my Dropbox directory, so when I'm working on a project or something I don't even have to think about backups. If my apartment building burned…
For backups I understand. What I'm curious about is what is your setup that involves multiple computers. Is it one personal computer and one at work? Do you have multiple personal computers for some reason? Just curious about usage patterns that differ from my own.
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the kind of dismissal people make when there's nothing left of substance to criticize about a company. But it's an empty dismissal - see my comment above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17548438
Would you also say the same about Uber? Neither company has proven that there is a demand for their product once they set a price where they can make a profit.
This is false in Dropbox's case:
While on a GAAP basis, Dropbox is losing money, the company generated $0.18 of non-GAAP earnings per share in 2017, an incredible feat for a software business of their size and growth.
Their GAAP operating margin was (10)% in 2017, but the non-GAAP margin was 5%. Their free cash flow margin has been improving dramatically over the past few years, and was at 28% in 2017, up from 16% in 2016 and (11)% in 2015. [1]
I wouldn't say the same thing about Uber, because they seem to have a negative operating margin, unlike Dropbox.
This is the whole point. Anyone can look at the final result and sneer "unprofitable", but it's meaningless without actually looking at the figures and understanding what their cashflows are.
[1] https://medium.com/@alexfclayton/dropbox-ipo-s-1-breakdown-3...
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Drive is like "I guess you can use the desktop client instead of the web one". One Drive is like "I guess you can use a Mac". iCloud is like "I guess you can have non-Apple devices". Dropbox just syncs your files from and to anything you have, equally well. I'm pretty sure none of the others even have a Linux client at all, but Dropbox does.
Except smart sync only works on mac and windows. Linux is a second class citizen. I’d sign up for Dropbox if they had feature parity on Linux. Also a plan in the $5 range would be greatly preferred. My threshold for moderately helpful services is usually $5/Mo.
I believe Linux also has a headless/command-line-only client, which is pretty freakin sweet
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google Drive is like "I guess you can use the desktop client instead of the web one". One Drive is like "I guess you can use a Mac". iCloud is like "I guess you can have non-Apple devices". Dropbox just syncs your files from and to anything you have, equally well. I'm pretty sure none of the others even have a Linux client at all, but Dropbox does.
Except smart sync only works on mac and windows. Linux is a second class citizen. I’d sign up for Dropbox if they had feature parity on Linux. Also a plan in the $5 range would be greatly preferred. My threshold for moderately helpful services is usually $5/Mo.
I'm not sure what you mean by "smart sync", but selective sync does work on Linux last I checked (a few months ago)
Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The equivalent Dropbox plan is also 1TB. I personally don't ever use Office so for me that element of it is not a benefit.
How many large businesses do either use MS Office or Google’s enterprise offerings? Dropbox will gladly take money from consumers but the money is in the Enterprise and that’s what they are chasing.
Right, and that's where they have a competitive disadvantage. They did launch Paper which is pretty neat, and they've done some partnering, but I could understand a business not using them for that reason.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/01/dropbox-to-add-native-g-su...