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Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

cnbc.com

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Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#281

Post by gonzalohm »

caconym_ wrote: post #72
browningstreet wrote: post #10

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…

I think they're squeezed between bigcorps offering consumers products in ecosystems they're already bought into, and independent-minded techies more willing to roll their own solutions. I paid for Dropbox for a long time specifically because it was an independent option, but over time the feature bloat annoyed me more and more, and their dabbling in genai stuff was the last straw. Now I use syncthing over wireguard t…

I'm surprised by how many people mention Syncthing as an alternative to Dropbox or Google drive. It's not. Syncthing forces you to have a copy of your data on all your devices. With Dropbox or Google drive you can "stream" only the files you need. This is important when you want to share GB of data with devices that can't sync everything into local storage (like a phone)

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#282

Post by s_dev »

joshmn wrote: post #265
s_dev wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Appreciate the context, however if I was to follow up on my own comment. You were sentenced to prison, I went to the grocery store yesterday. It's the casualness of the phrasing that is jarring.

The shame has passed and I served my time. What I owe now is not doing it again—which I'm not.

To clarify I'm not commenting on what you've done but how you've phrased it. I really don't mind about pirating movies I don't even see it as wrong.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#284

Post by fist »

bhouston wrote: post #216
fist wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, Dropbox yearly income is about $500 million per year. $2.5 billion income on a $6 billion market cap would be a much better deal. Box is about $115 million income.

I meant "gross income", which is revenue. Not "net income", which is profit. I was unclear and I apologize.

Revenue and gross income are definitely not the same. It's a very common confusion.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#285

Post by pianoben »

browningstreet wrote: post #10

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…

> I'm surprised how few competitors there are in the Dropbox space.

There used to be many more - Sugarsync, AeroFS, Syncplicity, just to name a few - all bit the dust. Box.com found a niche serving business document flows; Gdrive, iCloud, OneDrive, all survived thanks to being features in a broader Big Tech suite. Everybody else? Outcompeted, plain and simple. Dropbox was just a cut above.

(I used to work at one of the companies named above, so although it's just one person's opinion, it's at least as informed as anyone else's here :) )

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#286

Post by sfjailbird »

bhouston wrote: post #124

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…

> the big players have their own deeply integrated solutions: Apple (iCloud), Google (Drive), Microsoft (OneDrive).

So Steve Jobs was right: Dropbox is a feature, not a product.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#287

Post by thewebguyd »

bhouston wrote: post #124

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…

> AI company that would use this type of cloud storage as a AI document store / collaboration hub?

Wouldn't that run into the same problem the consumer end has? MS bundles 2TB of OneDrive storage for every user with a M365 license, and Workspace does more or less the same. You can already connect pretty much anything to them as is for pseudo-RAG/enterprise search.

The aggressive bundling from the big players have taken away most of the reasons to pay for Dropbox or box.com and other cloud storage providers.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#288

Post by dessimus »

stringfood wrote: post #224
giancarlostoro wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not sure what Dropbox could even do other than have gone full swing towards a serious pivot or a new expansion into a new domain, but if they were going to do that they should have done that some years ago, if their current CEO stepping down alarms some of their existing customers, it might not end well. Dropbox is one of those companies that did something right, and its kind of sad seeing them in this wei…

Problem is most consumers and businesses would rather pay for 1 product that does 7 things ok than 7 products that do 1 thing great each. The former is cheaper and often is easier to cross-integrate - I'd rather just use AWS or GCP storage options than ever touch drop box

I mean yeah, who would rather spend time at their job helping other users figure out how to include the right add-in for Dropbox to work with their various apps vs how Office integrates with OneDrive or Google Mail, Sheets, et al. integrates with Drive? Thus adding another layer of software to manage updates, etc. At some point, there is an opportunity cost to using siloed products, especially for something that's become relatively commoditized like cloud storage.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#289

Post by justmarc »

dhouston wrote: post #176
joshmn wrote: 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…

Hi Josh -- Drew here -- our escalations team should be reaching out shortly. (Losing phone, 2FA keys, etc. can be tricky but they should be able to work with you and hopefully verify enough to get you unblocked.)

Awesome move to help a simple user in need. hats off.

Re: Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down

#290

Post by adam_arthur »

AznHisoka wrote: post #223
runako wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where do those shares then go? Are they just gone forever? Or do they then turnaround and give them to employees? If its gone forever, then… why? They just bought something and burnt it? Isnt that like a waste of resources? The stock market, still to this day is a very very strange thing…

If you look at all the tech companies doing buybacks, usually the shares created for employee RSUs matches or exceeds the shares retired from buybacks.

Not in all cases, but many

Which is why GAAP earnings matter and not free cash flow

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