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Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

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Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#501

Post by indymike »

Supermancho wrote: post #258
indymike wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card fees are negotiable with most processors. You can get a fee structure that is optimized for low dollar transactions.

That minimum fee has recently increased. Like 1-2 months ago. You are not going to negotiate that down with VISA/MC. Talk to a bar/restaurant worker, who gets to see the transaction fees.

I own an MSP and we have wide latitude to set rates with our customers. The numbers that were in the example ($.50 plus on a $2 transaction) are on the high side of ridiculous, especially for card present. And yes, the base costs vary by industry so your milage may vary.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#502

Post by bayindirh »

ryandrake wrote: post #476
bayindirh wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox is a feature not a product. I don't think so. It's a product which enables a lot of useful features on a variety of devices, including Linux desktops. No competitors of Dropbox enables the same functionality under Linux. This is why I use, and will continue to use it. Yes, iCloud just works and Google Drive works well enough, but none of them works on Linux. Nextcloud doesn't create too many problems but ne…

I thought HN established a long time ago that you could build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

I can just slap Owncloud or Nextcloud to a VPS and build a relatively secure system within three hours but, some problems will arise.

- Integration with 3rd party tools: Trello or services which provide "Dropbox Apps" support won't be able to sync to my space or directly retrieve from it. I'm sure there will be many other tools which can talk with Dropbox but not with my server.

- Collaboration: I bet that not so many people would install another client and remember a username, password, URL triplet to just work with me (e.g. academic research, side project, etc.). They'll either force me to use other tool or things will just break down (just experienced a similar thing at work).

- Maintenance: OS, service, add-on updates, licenses, security, monitoring, etc. will be additional time consuming obligations.

- Pricing: If I use a VPS, excessive network traffic or resource usage will result in a price hike.

- Price/Performance: You cannot beat the competition at the price/performance ratio. I will pay more, spend more time and get less. Why bother?

- Environmental: In my case, self-hosting at home is impossible. I neither have the bandwidth, nor the space required to store another system and keep it quiet at the same time. Additional power bill and heat is not welcome, either.

These are just the issues coming from top of my head, and can be expanded further.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#503

Post by Closi »

Chyzwar wrote: post #483
Closi wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s obviously hard to know exactly what Jobs meant, and sadly he is not here to be able to ask him, but here is my best guess as to what he meant: In the early days of computing people would sell task managers, file managers, memory optimisers, software to burn data to a CD etc. As time went on, these ‘products’ just became features of the operating system. While it used to make sense for people to own a copy of Ner…

There is a lot of useful things you can do with file storage. You can build plenty of products that synergize with Dropbox. Dropbox is failing to execute on these ideas. I was using Dropbox Carousel, now I use Google Photo. I wanted to use Dropbox Mailbox, but it was killed shortly after. Dropbox mobile app so bad that I needed to buy dedicated app to listen my music on Smartphone. They introduced computer backup in…

I don’t think they can chase the consumer market either though - it’s too competitive.

Both iPhone and Android have support for cloud sync baked into their operating system as a core feature for their own service.

The issue with things like Carousel or Google Photos is that the sync is actually a fairly small part of the engineering effort - the hard part is making an amazing photo viewing and editing app which with mobile devices includes the end to end user flow from your mobile phone camera! Google photos and iPhoto make a little more sense as products when you consider that these are really about viewing the photos you took on your Apple/google device and providing native sync from their camera app. I’m not sure what Dropbox’s long term competitive advantage could be in the space from a corporate strategy perspective.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#504

Post by avrionov »

tinyhouse wrote: post #485
avrionov wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point about the pricing. Looking at their income statement [1] DropBox is not a very efficient company: Cost Of Revenues: $413.7M (22%) in software companies this includes Operations and customer care. There are spending as much as video sharing sites or video conferencing app. R&D Expenses: $727.8M (39%). This is an insanely high number for a company that is not a startup. The average for bigger companies…

This is out of context. Maybe show how these costs have been changing over time vs revenue change to make it more meaningful.

Seeking Alpha link has the changes over time. They were able to reduce the expenses in the last 2 years, but the investors are going to compare them with their competitors, not only with the previous years. FB for example has engineering expenses of 21% better position on the market place and better growth.

Dropbox in the current state can become a target for activist investors like Elliot. The high percent R&D expenses make them more attractive because there is more to cut.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#505

Post by bayindirh »

eachro wrote: post #411
bayindirh wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox is a feature not a product. I don't think so. It's a product which enables a lot of useful features on a variety of devices, including Linux desktops. No competitors of Dropbox enables the same functionality under Linux. This is why I use, and will continue to use it. Yes, iCloud just works and Google Drive works well enough, but none of them works on Linux. Nextcloud doesn't create too many problems but ne…

Linux is just 2% of the desktop market. Apple and Microsoft have good enough cloud storage + sync, so Dropbox needs to be even more compellling on macOS/windows to survive. Their Dropbox Transfer offering is a nice alternate revenue stream for them. I wonder what else they can come up with.

> Linux is just 2% of the desktop market.

However, there are concentration points of this 2% which is beneficiary to both parties.

Dropbox can target this 2% better and users of this 2% can use Dropbox to collaborate and sync their other systems which have more popular OSes.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#506

Post by Spooky23 »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #313
aeturnum wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of smaller tech businesses that could make a good living for a few hundred folks, but are extremely vulnerable to FAANG companies putting out a half-baked competitor. Strategically, from the FAANG perspective, it makes sense to spend a little money (for them) dipping a toe into every pond "just in case." On the flip side, it makes bootstrapping a sustainable business extremely difficult. If Google give…

The problem is that maybe Steve Jobs was right after all and Dropbox is a feature not a product. Dropbox file syncing is best in class but for the vast majority of users that is probably not the most important thing for them. Most people won't run into the hard edge cases that Dropbox has solved better than the others. And something like Google Drive derives it's value from he fact that is deeply integrated into GSui…

Maybe. I think the people who are most benefiting from Dropbox (creatives, etc) are heavily impacted by COVID recession.

There is no business case for running Dropbox in a large enterprise (I tried... our creatives cried about it), and it's an increasingly difficult case to make for a home user, as all of the alternatives are pretty good.

The other thing is that Dropbox is an easy app to fall out of love with as an individual.

They constantly upsell, even after you bought the product. I was paying >$100 year for Dropbox for years and they pushed Dropbox Teams at me relentlessly for most if it. Problem: I don't have a team! They also didn't pool storage (I think they do now), so sharing stuff with my wife like video would consume 2x the storage, unless I paid 5x for the business product. Google Drive or Office 365 are a way better value in any dimension.

Basically they have a solid core product, but instead of doing something productive with it, the surrounded it with layers of bullshit. While meandering around, they eliminated the portion of the product focused on the #1 generator of storage needs (ie. photo/video), segmented basic features like PDF search, etc. All at a 20-70% premium over competitive offers.

Good riddance.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#507

Post by quickthrower2 »

aeturnum wrote: post #309
avrionov wrote: post #299

Dropbox and Evernote, for me are two very similar companies. Startups that innovated on a great user experience and had a flawless execution in the beginning. I was an early adopter of both of them, and they worked well. Dropbox sync between different machines worked like magic. I still remember some of the nightmares my coworkers had with OneDrive in meetings when the files for the presentations were missing because…

There are lots of smaller tech businesses that could make a good living for a few hundred folks, but are extremely vulnerable to FAANG companies putting out a half-baked competitor. Strategically, from the FAANG perspective, it makes sense to spend a little money (for them) dipping a toe into every pond "just in case." On the flip side, it makes bootstrapping a sustainable business extremely difficult. If Google give…

I don’t see this. So you have examples? I think that smaller companies can compete on knowing their customers better - it’s hard for a highly paid 10 year at Google person to put themselves in the shoes of say a dental practitioner or even the shoes of a typical full stack dev wanting to use nextjs for example.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#508

Post by Chyzwar »

Closi wrote: post #503
Chyzwar wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of useful things you can do with file storage. You can build plenty of products that synergize with Dropbox. Dropbox is failing to execute on these ideas. I was using Dropbox Carousel, now I use Google Photo. I wanted to use Dropbox Mailbox, but it was killed shortly after. Dropbox mobile app so bad that I needed to buy dedicated app to listen my music on Smartphone. They introduced computer backup in…

I don’t think they can chase the consumer market either though - it’s too competitive. Both iPhone and Android have support for cloud sync baked into their operating system as a core feature for their own service. The issue with things like Carousel or Google Photos is that the sync is actually a fairly small part of the engineering effort - the hard part is making an amazing photo viewing and editing app which with…

Dropbox had direct sync with camera app it worked better than Google photo sync. Over years, you accumulate multiple GB of just photos. I got my Google One subscription because of that. Once people star buying storage from google/apple there would be no point to buy any of Dropbox offering. I am only paying for Dropbox because there is no good Linux alternative.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#509

Post by tinyhouse »

avrionov wrote: post #504
tinyhouse wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is out of context. Maybe show how these costs have been changing over time vs revenue change to make it more meaningful.

Seeking Alpha link has the changes over time. They were able to reduce the expenses in the last 2 years, but the investors are going to compare them with their competitors, not only with the previous years. FB for example has engineering expenses of 21% better position on the market place and better growth. Dropbox in the current state can become a target for activist investors like Elliot. The high percent R&D expen…

Since when FB is a Dropbox competitor? I'm sure their engineering expenses will continue to drop, esp with the whatsapp exodus to Signal...

Joking aside...

> They were able to reduce the expenses in the last 2 years

That sounds pretty good to me! Reduce expenses but revenue is growing and revenue per user is growing. So they make more money without growing costs. That's great. With the layoffs that ratio would even improve.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#510

Post by ant6n »

kenhwang wrote: post #470
uyt wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny that a lot of their acquisitions were in spaces that had the potential to exceed the market cap of their core product (which is currently stuck at 9B) had they been more successful: - HelloSign for esignatures, compared to DocuSign which has a 48.29B market cap - Zulip for chat, compared to Slack which has a 24.30B market cap - Carousel for photos, compared to Instagram which is estimated at 100B market ca…

I think Google Photos would be a closer comparison for Carousel. I think it would've been the smart play for Dropbox to expand on that if they wanted to maintain consumer customers. Photos are kinda the only thing people willingly pay to save/backup and they're a royal pain in the ass to organize. But then again, it's hard to compete against free for $0.10/user margins. Way easier catching a couple of big enterprise…

It sucks having to pay google and dropbox for storage cuz i have files and photos. Dropbox doesnt do photos well, i dont trust them for it. Dropbox wants to do photos, but doesn’t separate that from storing files, so just searches all my files for images or something. Also, it doesn’t allow searching based on image recognition.
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