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How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

bbc.co.uk

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Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#51

Post by amorphid »

berbec wrote: post #48
briandear wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that’s exactly why they’re billionaires and you probably aren’t. It isn’t about functionality, it’s about ease of use. It’s the same argument used when MS-DOS was being replaced by the GUI. Explain FTP to your Aunt Edna. Get FTP working where everything on all devices is in sync automatically. Comment on a file via FTP. Send a link to a file they can consume on a mobile device — including playing audio or video w…

That is a genius reply. This should be what people think every time they say no to a new idea with "put isn't this just xxxx, but a little simpler?". A little simpler can be very broad and Dropbox has done just what the founder envisioned - made a web-based flash drive.

I was joking to myself earlier today that "All you gotta do is..." is an alias for "I have not thought about it, and I'm encouraging you to do the same."

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#52

Post by paulsutter »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #33

Slightly off topic, but I discovered the other day that shared folders count towards the disk quota for each account it's shared to. I had several GB of photos shared with me on Dropbox, and it blew right over my free limit, despite the fact that none of them were actually mine. The photos also count towards the quota of the account sharing with me. That's soured me quite a lot on Dropbox.

Exact same thing happened to me and it was the last time I ever use Dropbox. Product experience was a barrage of growth hacking

I can imagine their investor deck. “62% of people are total chumps, that’s our target market”

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#53

Post by telchar »

_bxg1 wrote: post #8
anoncoward111 wrote: post #7

Earlier 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

I've mainly stayed because I don't want to support the mega-corporations when there's a smaller ($12bn counts as "smaller" these days...) company doing a fine job. That aside, I appreciate that they've mostly stayed focused on the core task of syncing files between computers, that there's no bias in terms of devices or OSes, and that their client software tends to work just a little bit better than the competition.

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.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#54

Post by rozenmd »

paulsutter wrote: post #52
toomanybeersies wrote: post #33

Slightly off topic, but I discovered the other day that shared folders count towards the disk quota for each account it's shared to. I had several GB of photos shared with me on Dropbox, and it blew right over my free limit, despite the fact that none of them were actually mine. The photos also count towards the quota of the account sharing with me. That's soured me quite a lot on Dropbox.

Exact same thing happened to me and it was the last time I ever use Dropbox. Product experience was a barrage of growth hacking I can imagine their investor deck. “62% of people are total chumps, that’s our target market”

Just curious, what do you mean by growth hacking in this case?

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#55

Post by telchar »

arbie wrote: post #26
ggg9990 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dropbox client still syncs files much faster than the competitors.

Tell me about it. Google Backup and Sync is a horrendous mess, taking several hours just to start syncing every time the sync engine is relaunched.

Really? And I thought Dropbox was slow. I find myself asking what's the point of gigabit internet when I haven't found a service that users more than 50Mb.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#56

Post by rckclmbr »

marzipan wrote: post #50

I used Dropbox from 2009 through last month or so. Switched over to Syncthing. I was a little bit worried about stability but soon after I sampled it I felt convinced that it was the right move. I was previously using Dropbox as a kind of makeshift backup as well as a sync tool, but now I have a desktop again and run automated backups on that using Backblaze, so I'm a little bit more in control over the data by doing…

Somewhat related, ive been a very happy resilio sync user since it was launched as bittorrent sync. I have similar backups -- it backs up to my 2 personal computers, and one of those is backing up to backblaze. My (nontechnical) wife is happy with this for storing all her phone and camera pictures.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#57

Post by ta1234567890 »

rozenmd wrote: post #54
paulsutter wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exact same thing happened to me and it was the last time I ever use Dropbox. Product experience was a barrage of growth hacking I can imagine their investor deck. “62% of people are total chumps, that’s our target market”

Just curious, what do you mean by growth hacking in this case?

Can't speak for the parent comment. However I can relate. Today I installed Dropbox for my grandfather and their default entry-level free account comes with 2GB, but as soon as you create your account and install the software, they offer to give you 25GB of free space if you add 1 file to your account and you install Dropbox on your mobile.

Not sure if that helps them artificially boost their numbers (by claiming more installed devices), or if they try to get your contacts to get more accounts.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#58

Post by plinkplonk »

whymauri wrote: post #20
dxhdr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That narrative doesn't quite align with the article stating that "for various reasons none of his friends were able to join the business." In retrospect all of Houston's friends made a huge mistake! Maybe Ferdowsi was tired of MIT and joined him on a lark? I am curious to hear the story from his perspective.

Ferdowsi says joining was like scratching an itch here.[0] I've heard from alumni he spent a lot of time coding in his room, like more than average compared to your friendly neighborhood MIT student; I can imagine the prospect of high-risk, high-reward coding for 18 hours/day was very appealing. [0] https://medium.com/the-story-of-grip/how-two-guys-that-barel...

from the article (medium, not BBC)

"The pair worked tirelessly for three months in a cramped office in Cambridge, waking up everyday at noon and working till dawn the next day. “I think we started like most of these tech companies begin. Just a couple of guys in their boxers coding in a dark room,” Houston says. “We just kept our heads down and built.”"

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#59

Post by IronBacon »

_bxg1 wrote: post #14
anoncoward111 wrote: post #7

Earlier 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.

For Google Drive, even if not an official client I find that Gnome's Nautilus integration works extremely well and without friction (it's treated like an external storage) for the random file I could need to share with another device...

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#60

Post by _bxg1 »

scarface74 wrote: post #45
_bxg1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've mainly stayed because I don't want to support the mega-corporations when there's a smaller ($12bn counts as "smaller" these days...) company doing a fine job. That aside, I appreciate that they've mostly stayed focused on the core task of syncing files between computers, that there's no bias in terms of devices or OSes, and that their client software tends to work just a little bit better than the competition.

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.
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