I love dropbox (use it daily, but only the free version). To be honest I think this decision will probably be looked on as a mistake.<p>Personally, I'm moving to iCloud soon. The reason for this is that it will enable syncing of the notoriously closed Apps and music that come with Apple.<p>The non-apple crowd will not see this benefit, but once Google or Facebook decide they want to be in the cloud storage game too, Dropbox is going to find themselves squeezed between players that can pour money into this space. Dropbox is already not competitive on price, that much is certain. It's only a matter of time before their primary attribute (seamless usability) is duplicated enough to erode their base.<p>They should really look to sell, not try to build an empire. The numbers and/or culture with Apple might not have been right, but this should really be their primary goal.<p>If it isn't, I hate to say that the very best they could hope for is to be a niche player in a space that will be a commodity in 2-5 years.
Congrats to Dropbox on their success. It seems to be Steve Jobs has been used as the hook here to get more interest on this article.<p>While i am happy for dropbox , the real point that i learned in the summary article was that Apple is planning products two to three years into the curve which means if anyone wants to even dream or think of competing they need to come up with products that are two to three years ahead of the curve.
I love Dropbox, but Jobs is right -- they are a feature, not a product.<p>They will be relevant up to the point where operating systems simply makes their functionality a native element of their file system.<p>At least Drew is wise to the fact that they could become an also-ran, so it's not like this will happen to them overnight.
Original story: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbox-the-inside-story-of-techs-hottest-startup/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriabarret/2011/10/18/dropbo...</a>
It's been fascinating to follow Drew's story from the link to the early video on HN, to the YC application as a solo-founder to a "nine-digit" offer. This speaks to the importance of a good product. When Dropbox was pitched early on, everyone would point out how many competitors there were. Drew would silence the crowd by asking "how many of you actually use one of those services?"<p>It's all about the product.
"Houston cut Jobs’ pitch short: He was determined to build a big company, he said, and wasn’t selling, no matter the status of the bidder" Props to Drew. I don't think many other entrepreneurs would've been as zealous and decline such an offer.
I use Dropbox, but only the free version. For bulkier data I am just rsync'ing to my linode, with exactly the same utility to me. It is quite telling that the dropbox app uses librsync.<p>In other words, the value to the consumer is in the simple, reliable interface and easy sharing. They have got this right where Jungledisk got it wrong.<p>However, the value to investors is in the customer base and an implied CLV for those that pay offsetting the exponentially decaying cost of storage for those that don't.<p>In other words, it's a Ponzi scheme for storage and they're betting on Moore's law. Unfortunately, it is almost trivial to reimplement their utility; any half-decent systems programmer will instantly grasp what they're doing. So I would not invest in Dropbox, but whilst they maintain some momentum I am happy to store low-value documents on their service.
The major difference for me is Apple builds applications which work with its own products and not other platforms. Can I use icloud on my Linux box? Nope, but I can use Dropbox.<p>Granted, Dropbox comes with its own limitations, but when I'm looking for software, I want to make sure I'm not pigeon holing myself based on my OS.
not surprising, Dropbox is an actual business with long term potential. And with recurring revenue model, they have growth in revenue every month.<p>There is no need for them to flip like other sites who either need to make sales every month to stay in business or are reliant on Google staying nice to them in order to keep their traffic numbers.<p>Recurring revenue really is the key to lasting success on the internet.
Any company that mediates between a bunch of other companies which each provide similar complementary products/services will always be in business.<p>Dropbox is aiming to support every system under the sun. Android, Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and all the hardware that they run on. Thats why Dropbox is bigger than Apple's iCloud.<p>Apple isnt going to manufacture every device you own. But you will want your files on every device you own. Lets say you have the following: Samsung phone, ipad, windoze at work and a linux system you hack on at home. Install dropbox and you have all your files everywhere.<p>Hell I dont even want my own devices. I want to be able to go anywhere, use any make of OS/hardware and have all my stuff available to me. Why? Because its so damn convenient.<p>Dropbox is building that. And its a very solid business business model.<p>Again any company that mediates between a bunch of other companies which each provide similar complement products/services will always be in business.<p>Dropbox is infrastructure. And one that creates a huge convenience for the end user.
Sonos is a company that's not often talked about but which seems to be doing fairly well (although I don't know that for a fact; I'm just a (very) happy customer).<p>Sonos is a direct competitor to AirPlay, and even a kind of crippled one: Sonos only works on Sonos devices; AirPlay works on many non-Apple devices.<p>So why would anyone buy Sonos?<p>It just works. The quality is incredible. You can stream audio from the web to all your speakers (which I don't think is doable, realistically, with AirPlay).<p>Point is, just because Apple invests a market doesn't mean everyone else dies.
There is a huge difference when you do something because you think it's just a feature that'd be nice to have than to dedicate yourself to something and do a great job implementing it because you think that it <i>has to</i> be done, dropbox is doing the latter.
I simply don't believe this story. If you have $100+ million to throw at as fundamentally simple a product as Dropbox is, you have more than enough to make a good clone of it.<p>It's not like Jobs can deny it now.
I have a few rules in life. One is to never turn down a $100m+ acquisition offer from Steve Jobs. (Unless my percentage/net would have been too small of course. Which then gets back to the rule that ideally you never want to take outside investors or lose majority equity/control.)
I think the fundamental differences between Dropbox and iCloud is the sharing feature and Windows/Linux/Mac/etc support. iCloud is never going to be on Windows and our company uses Dropbox to share project resources and our machines are a mixed of PCs and Macs so iCloud means nothing for us.