Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup

Drew's case shows how hard it is to generalize. We're generally reluctant to fund single founders. And yet the most successful startup we've funded had a single founder at the time he applied:<p><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html" rel="nofollow">http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html</a><p>We strongly encouraged Drew to get a cofounder, and he found Arash before the summer 2007 cycle began. Arash turned out to be the perfect cofounder. So Dropbox is pretty much the best case scenario for a single founder applying to YC. And the variation in startup outcomes is so great that even though we have such a large data set, the best single founder outcome is so far better than any of the multiple founder outcomes.<p>This is why one of our rules is that we'll break any of our rules.

Jobs never changed his interpretation of things. He did in fact feel cloud storage was a feature and not a product, and that's exactly what iCloud is. For Apple it's a feature that will hopefully tie people in to their iOS devices. And with the likelihood that over time they will offer greater amounts of storage for free or a minimum payment, that's not good for Dropbox. I like Dropbox, I use it almost daily. But so far I've never actually paid for it. Same, so far, with iCloud. To Apple, this would be largely irrelevant, but for Dropbox, that's not so great.

<i>"Jobs had been tracking a young software developer named Drew Houston, who blasted his way onto Apple’s radar screen when he reverse-engineered Apple’s file system so that his startup’s logo, an unfolding box, appeared elegantly tucked inside. Not even an Apple SWAT team had been able to do that."</i><p>Can anyone throw more context around this hack. Technical challenges to accomplish this will be bonus.

<i>"Ferdowsi from the start insisted Dropbox’s home page be a simple stick-figure video showing what the product does. No table of features and pricing; instead, a story about a guy who loses stuff and goes on a trip to Africa."</i><p>This made me realise I'd never been to the Dropbox homepage. I heard about the company here on HN (Drew's YC Application form is a great read), and I didn't have a need at that time - about 6 months later I took on a global project and one of the first emails I got from the client was asking me to sign up for Dropbox so we could collaborate.<p>As the article notes, that word of mouth (I've passed it on numerous times since) has driven growth, perhaps more than the homepage. After all - it just works.

<i>Then come Chris, Jason and Joe (who has a Dropbox tattoo on his arm because he feels “Drew is changing the world”), more MIT brothers aiming to live a California dream they all imagined back in Cambridge as “billionaires, bottles and babes.”</i><p>Eww, that's offputting.

While I love Dropbox and have it installed, I think they are right to fear ICloud. After getting a 4s and being able to simply type my AppleID, I instantly had all my contacts, videos, photos, music, settings, and bookmarks instantly and seamlessly synced. Best part of it all was that I didn't even know I was <i>using</i> ICloud. I didn't have to setup or download anything. It was so simple. Since I'm a mac user, I really don't have much use for Dropbox anymore.

How many people would sit in front of Steve Jobs, refuse to a hundreds of millions acquisition offer, just before Apple enters their market. You got to admire Houston. He might reach the moon.

My biggest issue with Dropbox, and I am probably not alone in this, is still security. After the lapses earlier in the year, I still store most files in a TrueCrypt share in my DropBox folders. Since I can't access the TrueCrypt volume from my phone or other mobile devices, it limits the portability of the data.

2 gig free, next step up is 50Gb. Anyone else find the big jump means they use the dropbox just for day to day projects? A 10 or 20 Gig price point at $5 a month would be something I could rationally use.

I really like Dropbox. I wish they were actually encrypting users' data in a manner like they originally advertised they were. This is my only concern with using their service.<p>I understand that they wish to save space with deduplication and that this requires them to look at your files a fair bit prior to encryption. I just prefer they let users opt into using their own private keys.

Been amazing watching the entire process, from YC hopeful to Forbes cover. Way to go Drew.

$240M Revenue? Holy CRAP!<p>As I predicted some time ago - <a href="http://marcgayle.com/how-dropbox-is-printing-money" rel="nofollow">http://marcgayle.com/how-dropbox-is-printing-money</a> - I am pretty sure that once Dropbox reveals their profit margins, the world will be stunned.<p>Mark. My. Words.

Does Forbes.com have a print URL? I couldn't find one (did find a print.css which does almost nothing to optimize for printing), and I'd rather not encourage their splitting the article onto 4 separate pages by clicking through.

I think context is important here. I don't think I am wrong in saying that most YC startups consist of 20-somethings, perhaps even in their low 20's. At this age few are truly prepared for the stress, conflict and issues that running a business could bring to the table. And, in this context, it is probably far better to have more founders rather than less.<p>I've been an entrepreneur ever since I can remember. And, retrospectively, I know that I did a lot of dumb things when I was younger. It takes a while to develop the business smarts, thick skin and, if you will, intestinal fortitude a business requires. I've experienced business issues as I got older that I know would have totally decimated me when I was younger. You are simply not prepared for that sort of thing. Particularly things like impending catastrophic failure, when you need to be mentally and emotionally in your strongest mode.<p>Barely-out-of-teenage-years entrepreneurs (not meant with disrespect at all, just chronological fact) need a support system in order to stay the course, learn and not derail. That's why I think that in these cases the multiple founder "rule" is probably a very good idea.<p>I would say that older solo founders with previous skin in the game are probably a good bet (all else being equal). One young founder thrown into the jungle that business can become is probably a formula for almost certain failure.<p>While, of course, there are always exceptions to every rule, I do think that what I am saying is a reasonable characterization of the problem.

I use dropbox everyday for work and my personal life. I have two problems with dropbox though. 1. There is no paid plan between the free 2 gb account and the $100 50 gb account. A nice 10 or 25 gb account would be great. It is hard for me to justify spending the 100 a year when I don't need all that space. 2. There has not been a huge change in dropbox since it's inception. I find myself using it less and less, since it is so easy to share documents with google docs.

Inspirational story, thanks for that Forbes. I wish I had started programming from an earlier age (I only started 4-5 years ago, I'm a junior at UT Austin) but Drew is still an idol for me for both his crazy development skills and entrepreneurial talent. I use Dropbox on a daily basis and definitely laude him for seeing the idea through and not selling it to a big fish.

This story sounds like the story of Audion, SoundJam, and iTunes nearly 10 years ago:<p><a href="http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/" rel="nofollow">http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/</a>

I think one lesson of the Dropbox story is that you can build a company around a feature of minimal product if you have a savvy team and crisp execution.

I don't closely follow the changes to Apple developer APIs, so this may be blindingly obvious to others but not to me. Does anyone know if Apple is providing iCloud APIs for iOS/OSX?<p>I suppose, something similar to the file/db libraries, only these would go let you persist files and settings to iCloud (similar to Valve's SteamCloud for games).

Dropbox is written is Python correct? Would it be faster/more efficient/smaller footprint if it was written in C++?<p>I just have this (likely) wrong perception about Python from the original BitTorrent vs uTorrent.

Just curious if Dropbox had a MVP? If so, what was it? Was it ready and launched by Demo Day? Was it a purely free model, or were they already going with the freemium model at launch?

See a need, fill a need. Love it!

Sorry, I don't read articles divided in pages. Fuck you Forbes.

Press release (and TC) says 45+ million users. Forbes says 50 million. I think 50mm is more like it.