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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

#61

Post by _bxg1 »

telchar wrote: post #53
_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.

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.

Storage is cheap enough these days that each of my computers has more HDD space than I need for my whole Dropbox, so I don't have a need for a "true" external drive. I primarily use it as a backup and secondarily use it to sync across machines. Every file of importance lives in my Dropbox directory, so when I'm working on a project or something I don't even have to think about backups. If my apartment building burned down or all my drives simultaneously died, I wouldn't lose any data. And if I ever need to glance at some file away from home I can always do so.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#62

Post by shostack »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #57
rozenmd wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mor…

Without being overly familiar with that specific tactic, on the surface I think it is actually much more benign.

Incentivizing users to add their first file and install it on their phone (where it will likely want to slurp up photos, videos, etc. to back them up there) isn't a bad thing IMHO. It drives immediate engagement with the core product experience, and I'd be shocked if they didn't have data saying that people who upload at least one file and have the app installed on their phone convert to paid at some rate above people who don't. Thus, by incentivizing that behavior, they can likely boost conversion rates AND make users happier by getting more familiar with the service. Sounds like a win-win scenario to me. I wonder how many users sign up but don't ever use Dropbox.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#63

Post by ajkjk »

telchar wrote: post #53
_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.

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.

Saving everything into Dropbox is just so incredibly easier than trying to manage and keep track of and not damage an external drive.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#64

Post by bad_user »

kornish wrote: post #40
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.

That's probably done to prevent people from creating many free accounts and sharing folders with each other to simulate having more storage space.

I have a big archive of family photos (130 GB and growing) that I’d like to share with my wife in read-only mode.

She only needs Dropbox for a bunch of documents, so paying an extra €10 per month is not something we can do.

Dropbox is a fairly expensive service. I’ve used it for years however I can no longer defend my choice.

Extended versioning is gone. Expiring sharing links are gone from Plus, so I have to pay €20 per month for it ... yes they grandfathered old accounts, however I made the mistake of trying out Pro and their Support refused to reinstate my old Plus account.

Want to search your documents? Pay €20 for Pro. Which wouldn’t be bad, except that their search is terrible. And I could not get their support to admit that they aren’t indexing all my documents.

Just to get an idea, they aren’t indexing all PDFs (that Google Drive is indexing just fine) and they aren’t indexing text files with a .log extension either. A comparison with Google Drive isn’t even funny as GDrive does text recognition on images, indexing everything.

Speaking of Dropbox’s support, I’ve never been more frustrated in my life as the only issue they’ve ever solved for me was a refund, which they had to provide by law due to me being an EU citizen.

All in all, I ended up paying €20 per month for link sharing I had in Plus, broken full text indexing and piss poor support.

Also they keep pushing collaboration features but I wonder for whom. I don’t think they’ve thought this through. If Dropbox is no longer a good place to keep my photos then it stops being a good service for sharing work items with colleagues.

Do they hope for Dropbox to become a service imposed by management? Probably, however in that space they are competing with the likes of GSuite and we already have GSuite for email. And Extending that to the Business edition that gives you Unlimited space is much cheaper than going with Dropbox.

I’ll grant that Dropbox’s desktop sync is the best in business. But I can deal with the warts of the others.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#65

Post by ycombinete »

telchar wrote: post #55
arbie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like you're asking the right questions

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#66

Post by voltagex_ »

bad_user wrote: post #64
kornish wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably done to prevent people from creating many free accounts and sharing folders with each other to simulate having more storage space.

I have a big archive of family photos (130 GB and growing) that I’d like to share with my wife in read-only mode. She only needs Dropbox for a bunch of documents, so paying an extra €10 per month is not something we can do. Dropbox is a fairly expensive service. I’ve used it for years however I can no longer defend my choice. Extended versioning is gone. Expiring sharing links are gone from Plus, so I have to pay €20…

I had sort of the same issues as you and ended up with OneDrive because other family members needed Office.

In Australia you can often find 1 year x 5 accounts (1TB Onedrive space, Office, Skype minutes) for ~$70.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#67

Post by point78 »

bad_user wrote: post #64
kornish wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's probably done to prevent people from creating many free accounts and sharing folders with each other to simulate having more storage space.

I have a big archive of family photos (130 GB and growing) that I’d like to share with my wife in read-only mode. She only needs Dropbox for a bunch of documents, so paying an extra €10 per month is not something we can do. Dropbox is a fairly expensive service. I’ve used it for years however I can no longer defend my choice. Extended versioning is gone. Expiring sharing links are gone from Plus, so I have to pay €20…

10 or 20 a month is completely reasonable for what you need...

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#68

Post by abrookewood »

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.

There are lots of things wrong with OneDrive which is what you will be using. Off the top of my head: no delta sync; no LAN sync. End result was that every single file change will result in your the entire file being uploaded to the web and your ENTIRE team downloading it again ... Can't remember the others, but it was enough for me to continue with DropBox despite the rising cost when recently compared to OneDrive.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#69

Post by blub »

briandear wrote: post #36
madengr wrote: post #31

Still fathoms me that Dropbox is worth billions of $ for the same functionality as FTP.

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…

Oh boy, someone believes in the startup myth.

A massive part of the success of such startups are connections, connections, connections.

The product itself doesn't matter that much, considering all the pivoting. Nor does making a profit, considering all the startups still burning VC money.

Yes, there is certainly an amount of skill necessary, but the scrappy startup that suceeds against all odds is a fairytale. Luck, connections and moral flexibility play an equally or more important part.

Re: How two strangers set up Dropbox and made billions

#70

Post by ggg9990 »

telchar wrote: post #55
arbie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gigabit Internet is largely pointless for home use. Unless you have a Mormon family all watching different 4K shows at the same time or something.
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