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Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

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Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#151
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was quite a stupid and expensive ride, but they were vindicated, especially on point 3: >Our business is in a stronger position than it's been in years >What’s energized me most since joining Dropbox is the connection people have with our brand >It gives me a lot of confidence in what’s ahead for Dropbox All corporate fluff, no actual content.

Point 3 was not "'viral' or income generating" and DBX pioneered one of the most viral campaigns (give-get) and generates almost $1B a year in free cash flows? How is that vindication?

Their roadmap doesn't exist beyond their one-hit-wonder. CEOs are stepping down because there is no future for the company unless you count acquisition by Amazon or Google or Apple, which will result in the entire company being walked to the grave.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#152

Dropbox's stock has been stuck at around $6B valuation for years with flat growth and income around $2.5B per year. It is just stuck. Box.com, which is quite similar, is not that different. Around $3B and $1.2B in income. Similar valuation. I think it is the market, not the leadership. It is a tough market that has cut off the consumer end because all the big players have their own deeply integrated solutions: Apple…

Why is it bad that a company continues to provide services for customers and income for employees?

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#153
post #132

Dropbox's stock has been stuck at around $6B valuation for years with flat growth and income around $2.5B per year. It is just stuck. Box.com, which is quite similar, is not that different. Around $3B and $1.2B in income. Similar valuation. I think it is the market, not the leadership. It is a tough market that has cut off the consumer end because all the big players have their own deeply integrated solutions: Apple…

How about a strange outdated idea. Stay where you are and start paying dividends? Well, somehow that is now unacceptable idea.

DropBox has been retiring shares fairly consistently. This is generally used as an alternative to dividends, and is done primarily for tax efficiency.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#154

Having just rsync'd 100s of GBs back down from B2 and not sure where to put it, and having lots and lots of business documents and video files to share with collaborators, I'm surprised how few competitors there are in the Dropbox space. With their block level syncing, Dropbox is still not really replicated in the market. I'd only take issue with their price given the volumes of data I'm dealing with. Being able to s…

It's a surprisingly tricky problem. I know all too well.

If you want to minimize drama, it's worth still paying for Dropbox.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#155
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important to note here that Dan has been for years asking people to understand this comment in the context of the time and circumstances it was written. It's not a dunk on Dropbox. It's not the "less space than a Nomad" iPod comment on Slashdot. It was helpful and constructive criticism for Houston's YC application --- very specifically the application itself. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&…

> "less space than a Nomad" I actually thought that was a valid comment, more so than the Dropbox one. The contemporaneous iPod _was_ technically and acoustically inferior to the Nomad. The iPod "won" on account of fashion, style and marketing. Yes, the Slashdot comment was naive in underestimating or ignoring the power of Apple, but objectively it wasn't wrong. Apple released an inferior product and used out-of-band…

> The contemporaneous iPod _was_ technically and acoustically inferior to the Nomad.

You're cherry-picking your "technicals". The click wheel hardware and software implementation (especially the UI response time) was (and still is) revolutionary.

iPod won on the technical merits; just not the ones you're focusing.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#157
post #85
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the uninitiated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 Edit: Read the comment below, it's information I should have included in the first place. It's important to note that the comment was helpful at the time, and only became a meme later.

Important to note here that Dan has been for years asking people to understand this comment in the context of the time and circumstances it was written. It's not a dunk on Dropbox. It's not the "less space than a Nomad" iPod comment on Slashdot. It was helpful and constructive criticism for Houston's YC application --- very specifically the application itself. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&…

There is probably something here about human psychology where we underestimate the switching costs of things we have already, and are wired to look at things through the lens of the world we have now.

Absolutely no-one is concerned today about what happens when you dip out of connectivity because fast mobile connectivity was not abundant in 2007 (the iPhone was only released that year), which obviates the "this will never replace a USB" criticism. Mobile made a whole new class of businesses possible.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#158
post #131
post #128

If there are any Dropboxers here (drew—I emailed you a few weeks ago, but I imagine you're busy): I went to prison for 18 months, my digital and physical life was stolen from me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45451567 applies to my Dropbox account (and Apple but separate problem); I just received the "your account will be going bye-bye" email. I have very important dead-mom-club stuff in there, and support is…

sad that going viral on social media is the only functional support system for many tech companies. good luck hope you get your mom's stuff.

I was selling a GPU on Facebook marketplace during covid.

The description was that the card was good for gaming or “turning dinosaurs into clean money”.

Banned permanently and no way to ever reach a human.

I sold a rifle legally on an online auction site. The buyer was offered to pay with PayPal they were given the option to use. The buyer took that option, making me break PayPal TOS.

Banned permanently and no way to ever reach a human.

Banned from Venmo, absolutely no idea why. SO banned from Venmo, absolutely no idea why.

Banned permanently and no way to ever reach a human.

Fuck. Big. Tech.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s literally: click the paper clip logo in Gmail, tap files, pick your file. You can also just go into the files app, tap and hold, tap copy, go to Gmail tap and hold in your draft email, tap paste. There’s other paths that work too, like hitting the “send to” logo in files and then selecting Gmail. It’s really the exact same patterns I might use on a computer for the most part.

Google will often convert it to a gdrive thing instead. So you're not sending the file, just a link to the file uploaded somewhere. I'm not sure what heuristic it uses, but sometimes when mailing photos like half of them are included in the mail and half automagically uploaded to gdrive instead.

Anything over 25mb goes out via gdrive if memory serves. That’s at least how it used to be.
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