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Why we are leaving Dropbox

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Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#131

Post by xauronx »

xasos wrote: post #66
jayvanguard wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. Innovation is not what I want out of Dropbox. I want stability, speed, and continued bug fixes. The one point I agree with him on though is that the web interface could use some work.

This is what happened with Google. The innovated on the UI front multiple times, and I'm really starting to dislike their new design changes on Drive, GMail (by way of Inbox), etc.

Google drive is almost unusable to me now. Always takes like 5 minutes to figure out where my stuff is.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#132

Post by mattlutze »

DenisM wrote: post #115
mattlutze wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be a big pile of something-or-other, but the newest iteration of SharePoint is really quite a solid product, particularly for some of the trickier tasks around document management and distribution. And with the Office 365 versions, smaller businesses don't need to worry about building out the physical resources (or hiring the admin personnel) to run an instance. It might be something to ask your IT folks i…

That's a good point. Sharepoint might have solved some of these problems, but I have made my bet in the opposite direction - my startup is making and selling a vertically-tailored content distribution system; it distributes the structured data via vertical-specific "apps", and the (as of yet) unstructured data as generic "documents" - a simplified,'locked down "dropbox" functionality . So, while Sharepoint is good fo…

Well, using a dropbox like a content management system is the issue in the case in your OP, really... it's a file synchronization and storage tool :)

I'd like to talk about what you're building, but I honestly couldn't understand what you said in that first paragraph, and I shill market-speak to corporate clients for (part of) a living. Could you give that another shot?

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#133

Post by fit2rule »

jinushaun wrote: post #119
fit2rule wrote: post #72

The most frustrating thing for me, while watching a new generation of users grow up on Dropbox and similar functionality, is that this sort of thing should really be in the Operating System by now, as a standard feature. But it seems the OS vendors have lost their way and are chasing shiny colors and new hardware, as usual. Wasn't so long ago you kind of expected a new filesharing technology to be built-in to the ope…

Or, more likely... monopoly concerns. You are seeing the fall out of the MS anti-trust case. The kinds of innovation you talk about pretty much stopped after that. You will soon see the fall out of the Google anti-trust case.

>You are seeing the fall out of the MS anti-trust case.

Good point, and actually I'll start to accommodate this in my considerations of the topic in the future.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#134

Post by DenisM »

mattlutze wrote: post #132
DenisM wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. Sharepoint might have solved some of these problems, but I have made my bet in the opposite direction - my startup is making and selling a vertically-tailored content distribution system; it distributes the structured data via vertical-specific "apps", and the (as of yet) unstructured data as generic "documents" - a simplified,'locked down "dropbox" functionality . So, while Sharepoint is good fo…

Well, using a dropbox like a content management system is the issue in the case in your OP, really... it's a file synchronization and storage tool :) I'd like to talk about what you're building, but I honestly couldn't understand what you said in that first paragraph, and I shill market-speak to corporate clients for (part of) a living. Could you give that another shot?

Our clients are small and medium size manufacturers (e.g. furniture). They need to distribute data to their salesforce - catalogs, pricelists, pictures, credit application forms, assembly instructions, etc. 50 years ago they used paper for everything, 15 years ago they switched some document distribution to FTP - the documents which you don't need to close the sale, but those that must follow after (credit applications, assembly instructions). Then Dropbox came along, and half of them jumped to replace FTP with that. FTP has its own problems, DB has its own. You're right in that it's a wrong tool for the job, but that's what they use for the (perceived) lack of better alternatives. My point is that Dropbox is often times used where it doesn't fit, so there is plenty of room for competition in the "file-sharing" space, which is counterintuitive - one would think that Dropbox owns the space by now.

Going back to my first paragraph... What is the minimally viable content management and distribution system (CM/DS) for such business? It's a Dropbox that doesn't let "subscriber" users delete files (and is otherwise friendly to low-tech "subscriber" users). The sales manager will load it with PDFs and JPGs and Excels, and the sales reps will then get the files and use them. That's MVP. What is the ideal system? Rather than distributing the product catalog as a pile of JPG and Excel files you would want to distribute a native catalog application where the list of clients is well-organized, history of the past orders is right there next to each client, all products are neatly categorized, and it's easy to build a new order with all the math done for you. In other words, rather that treating content as opaque files, this CM/DS is keenly aware of the inner structure of the data and about the workflow surrounding use of that data. This awareness begets usability and accuracy. That's the vertical-specific CM/DS I am talking about.

Does this make more sense now?

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#135

Post by mattlutze »

DenisM wrote: post #134
mattlutze wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, using a dropbox like a content management system is the issue in the case in your OP, really... it's a file synchronization and storage tool :) I'd like to talk about what you're building, but I honestly couldn't understand what you said in that first paragraph, and I shill market-speak to corporate clients for (part of) a living. Could you give that another shot?

Our clients are small and medium size manufacturers (e.g. furniture). They need to distribute data to their salesforce - catalogs, pricelists, pictures, credit application forms, assembly instructions, etc. 50 years ago they used paper for everything, 15 years ago they switched some document distribution to FTP - the documents which you don't need to close the sale, but those that must follow after (credit applicatio…

Yeah, I think it was the liberal use of "vertical" in your elevator pitch that made it confusing.

You're building a one-way file sharing app.

The other things you're talking about, is your goal to build a point-of-sale or sales management system? What's your goal for differentiating yours against a relatively broad market? A cheap, low-feature alternative to the biggers CRMs and Sales systems could certainly provide a service.

For example, how does your vision compare with the customer management, inventory, product development, etc. from Square: https://squareup.com/ ?

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#136

Post by achyfxgi »

I changed to Hubic and I am happy, Created account, run referral links and I’m at 55GB as I speak. You can sign up to get extra space beyond the space offered on their website https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO

OK, 55GB that’s way more than most of storage services offer. Plus - here is the deal - Hubic offers true folder syncing (not like Dropbox or Onedrive, just one folder), plus they offer backup option only. The mobile device apps are pretty good. One thing I like about Hubic is it give expiry dates on shared links.

SugarSync doesn’t provide free space. Cubby has limited storage and you have to do a lot of work to get some space. Copy is not interesting anymore since they cut the referral program. Dropbox sucks because you have to do 30 referrals to get just a few Gig space. I find HubiC is pretty good and it now pretty fast, I am averaging 2-3 GB upload per hour which is pretty decent. Here is a sign up link to get you extra 5GB in addition to 25GB plus you can get 25 GB additional space for a total of 55GB of space easily on HubiC: https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO .....

Just sign up with this link and you get the bonus space instead of the regular 25GB if you go directly through Hubic website. And you can have peace of mind HubiC is owned by OVH, they are pretty big internet hosting company, hosting is in Europe.

Right now they have 500,000 accounts, which is pretty impressive for a service that just started a couple of months ago.

If you decide to subscribe to their service, it’s starts at 80 cents per month, pretty good price, so no need to prepay chunk of money and you can cancel anytime.

Here is the link again: https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO

Cheers.

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#137

Post by achyfxgi »

achyfxgi wrote: post #136

I changed to Hubic and I am happy, Created account, run referral links and I’m at 55GB as I speak. You can sign up to get extra space beyond the space offered on their website https://hubic.com/nl/offers?referral=CYHNPO OK, 55GB that’s way more than most of storage services offer. Plus - here is the deal - Hubic offers true folder syncing (not like Dropbox or Onedrive, just one folder), plus they offer backup option…

:)

Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox

#139

Post by DenisM »

mattlutze wrote: post #135
DenisM wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our clients are small and medium size manufacturers (e.g. furniture). They need to distribute data to their salesforce - catalogs, pricelists, pictures, credit application forms, assembly instructions, etc. 50 years ago they used paper for everything, 15 years ago they switched some document distribution to FTP - the documents which you don't need to close the sale, but those that must follow after (credit applicatio…

Yeah, I think it was the liberal use of "vertical" in your elevator pitch that made it confusing. You're building a one-way file sharing app. The other things you're talking about, is your goal to build a point-of-sale or sales management system? What's your goal for differentiating yours against a relatively broad market? A cheap, low-feature alternative to the biggers CRMs and Sales systems could certainly provide…

We're primarily wholesale, not retail, so it's not POS and not competing with Square on any level. Not yet, anyway.

A better comparison is SAP - the data management that we provide can be done in SAP for a few million dollars, but if you happen to be in the vertical we're targeting, like furniture, and have modest needs, you can go wih us for two orders of magnitude less, and it takes only hours to set up because it's tailored to the vertical. That is the differentiator - vertical tailoring makes it quick and cheap to install.

I've been in it so deep for so long, it's surprisingly difficult to explain...

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