

Dropbox: The hottest startup you've never heard of - slinky
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/16/cloud-computing-for-the-rest-of-us

======
51Cards
I think this article is perfectly valid. What everyone here is forgetting is
that we are a pretty focused demographic of technical people. If you ask the
average CNN user what Dropbox is you'll probably get a blank stare. The fact
that an article like this is BEING written is just another sign of Dropbox's
success... it may be crossing the tipping point to main-stream media and
adoption outside of the tech community. I bet if you looked you would have
found something similar about Twitter at some point where social media savvy
people were going "WTF? I've used it forever"

~~~
JonnieCache
_> cloud computing -- that catchall phrase corporations use to describe
services delivered via the Internet_

With this line they are streets ahead of most pure tech sites in terms of
accuracy.

~~~
ch0wn
I love Dropbox for not using this horrible term.

~~~
nbashaw
Horrible term? Just because it's the catch phrase du jour doesn't mean it's
totally meaningless. I get annoyed with the buzz and malapropism just as much
as the next guy, but like it or not, cloud computing is a major global
phenomenon.

~~~
iamdave
It IS a meaningless phrase in the sense that it's being used.

When I was studying network engineering, "the cloud" used to encompass the
broader network environment that INCLUDED the Internet as an extension of your
enterprise infrastructure. Now? It's a hyperbolic, singular phrase that is
limited to using the internet as an extension of your operating system without
fully explaining or at least detailing for the end user why it matters.

Especially in the case of those god.awful Microsoft commercials. In their
case, the way it's presented, the cloud is nothing less synonymous with social
networking. Change your Facebook status from Windows? That's the cloud. Upload
a picture to Flickr? That's the cloud. It's no better than that phase of 'web
2.0' that was nothing more than superficial design elements that included
shiny buttons, dropping vowels and slapping the term 'beta' on everything. The
web is cyclical and this is the latest cycle.

While that in and of itself isn't BAD per se, it's a phrase that's come
synonymous with "rockstar" and "ninja" when talking about hiring developers. A
total and complete non sequitur.

------
SwellJoe
I've been shocked at how often I see the Dropbox icon on friend's systems. I
no longer live in silicon valley, and so I am completely out of the echo
chamber (except what I read here at HN). These are not nerds, not techies, and
not people who follow TechCrunch. These are artists, musicians, old folks,
nomads, and all sorts of folks that just don't do technology. But, they get
Dropbox. Admittedly, my parents aren't using Dropbox, but my parents don't
read CNN.com, either, and I can't imagine what they would even use Dropbox
for. I can't even get them to use flickr for photos, despite buying them a
digital camera (my mom still uses a film camera when she travels because she's
afraid she'll lose or break the digital one).

If I could invest in Dropbox, I would. But, that wasn't always true. I met
Drew at a YC party before they had anything to show, and were still figuring
out the diffing/versioning problems, and all the underlying hard problems.
And, I came away thinking, "Well, that's been done before. A lot. And it never
went anywhere." I had even built a little web-based file manager and sharing
app as a RoR practice app, a couple weeks before. So, I thought I knew a
business that wouldn't go anywhere when I saw it. I thought highly of Drew,
but not much of the idea. I was obviously very wrong about the idea.

Anyway, my point is, Dropbox hasn't been something "you've never heard of" for
quite some time.

~~~
daeken
My dad is using Dropbox to share his songs. He saves to Dropbox, and then
shares links on Facebook. All his masters are backed up there as well.

------
krschultz
Major news outlet learns about cheaper way to share files from their intern
who uses it at school like everyone else: News at 11

------
rayvega
>> _"...And there's little to stop...Amazon (AMZN), with its own Amazon Web
Services, from making a greater push into Dropbox's territory...."_

Dropbox actually runs on AWS by using Amazon's S3 for storage. This is what
allowed them to get up and running quickly and cheaply without needing a lot
of venture funding.

I would not be surprised with Dropbox's continued growth, if they in the
future were to set up and manage their own data centers to avoid being
dependent on Amazon or anyone else's platform. This would be advantageous if
Amazon were to decide to compete directly with a similar product.

~~~
bradleyland
Someone questioned whether Dropbox could compete with Amazon at scale, but
decided to delete it. This is a really valid question. I recalled a while back
that Backblaze asked a similar question and came up with a really cool
solution.

[http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-
budget-h...](http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-
to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/)

I see this as Dropbox's future. PaaS is good for getting started, but with
numbers like what's shown in that blog post, it's hard to argue that something
like S3 is really priced at commodity levels.

------
6ren
counterpoint: Dropbox is a great product, clever tech, insightful marketing
etc. Even the YC application was great. And I think there's a large market
(even its present size is more than enough to sate my own avarice), but... it
doesn't seem that it could become a truly _huge_ company (like Xerox, Google),
without launching a series of increasingly unrelated products. Though perhaps
that's true of many huge companies (e.g. Apple, Sony, HP - even Microsoft has
Office).

~~~
lemon_pie
possibly. that said, 100m in revenue 4 years after launch with a fairly
unbounded market (every consumer), looks like quite the promising start.

~~~
6ren
> Benioff predicts sales could hit $100 million this year. (The company
> declined to comment.)

Unfortunately, a prediction; and also by someone not privy to actual
figures...

> Dropbox reportedly experiences well over 10 times year-over-year growth...

Sounds pretty good!

> ...and positive cash flow.

The mildest expression of profitability possible. Though I'm pretty sure
they're doing way better than >0.

From scanning many acquisitions, my feeling is of the order of $200 million.
Though I'm basing that mainly on business acquisition (e.g. by Oracle), so I
might be very off for consumer acquisitions (considering youtube, facebook,
twitter etc).

~~~
wlievens
With their kind of scalability, any positive cash flow is awesome news.

------
spatten
When we were trying to figure out if Dropbox would be a good sync tool for
Leanpub, Peter went in to a local coffee shop and asked a bunch of people if
they'd ever heard of Dropbox. All of the baristas and everyone else in their
20s had, and had accounts. About half of the people 30 or older had heard of
it, and most of them had accounts.

We were pretty impressed with the numbers, and we ended up going with Dropbox,
and we've never regretted it.

------
technomancy
> The hottest startup you've never heard of

I wish this were true; unfortunately I hear lots and lots about them when they
run a "spam your friends for more free space" promotional.

~~~
jrockway
Get better friends.

------
justinxreese
Expected an article from 4 years ago...

------
djacobs
Excellent, if my non-technical friends ever ask why I don't go to mainstream
media for tech news, I'll point them to this article.

------
danielha
My dad uses Dropbox and I didn't even tell him about it. Such a badass
company.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Even more badass is your dad.

------
flexd
My mom came to me earlier asking me to help her install Dropbox. She's about
as informed about computer stuff as i am about fashion. That's a good sign for
Dropbox :-)

~~~
Tomek_
My mom did the same, except she called using Skype :)

------
zaidf
While I'm sure Dropbox has their work cut out, you know they are onto
something when you run into their flyers outside college dorms cross country
in Chapel Hill, NC.

~~~
tom_b
Hey, there are even old boring people walking around on campus who are users .
. . heck, even in _Carrboro_

If it wasn't a HIPPA issue, we might be using Dropbox for more internal
projects here

Love, love, love dropbox. You undergrad at Sitterson?

~~~
zaidf
Nah, just got my communications(!) degree and moved up to NYC :)

------
zandorg
Today I was at a University small business lecture. Someone asked one of the
entrepreneurs "What was your biggest mistake?". The guy said his laptop had
been stolen, but luckily it was all auto-backed up onto Dropbox. A nice
anecdote and good press!

------
jprobert
I love dropbox and we use it personally and for our company (we are paid
subscribers). But it seems to me that this space has fewer barriers to entry
than say Groupon. People argue that Groupon has little barriers to entry but
the fact is that it cost a lot to sell and get merchants on board. Dropbox is
a very unique and helpful product but what will stop the competition from
creating something similar and possibly better?

------
joeag
Now is maybe the really scary time for Dropbox - here come the "me too's"
including corporates who will say "Hey looks like people are starting to want
this file storage and sharing thingy" - we can do that too and offer it to our
own customers.

Should be interesting.

~~~
DufusM
Microsoft already tried their hand at it with Windows Live Mesh. Technically
Apple's MobileMe is the same thing. The 'corporates' are already on it :)

------
didip
Dropbox is awesome, I use it, I love it.

I had the same thought as SwellJoe around early 2008: That's been done, it
ain't gonna go anywhere big. Obviously failed prediction on my part.

So the question is, what made Dropbox successful? There are plenty of players
in this area (some of them are older than dropbox): box.net, mozy.com, Windows
Live mesh, backblaze.

Furthermore, techies can easily do backup to their own S3 account, but they
love Dropbox.

What's the success factors? YC? Being MIT graduates? The clever "Tell your
friends and get more space for free" email? The market is just HUGE?

I know that 1 of them is using Python. =)

------
orionlogic
I like Dropbox but i use it less often. What i am waiting for is the same
solution from Apple. Their cloud facility has been just finished and they will
probably offer similar service not later than this year. It might not start as
pure storage facility but will start by account and device activation from
cloud, iphoto & music backup and then after figuring out how this cloud thing
work will probably offer similar subscription fee based service. After all why
they still didn't buy Dropbox? Probably they are working on it.

------
sunqiang
There is a PyCon video about Dropbox: PyCon 2011: How Dropbox Did It and How
Python Helped <http://pycon.blip.tv/file/4878722/>

------
bfe
I'm glad the article pointed out the cartoon dinosaur riding a shark on the
jobs page, even though they mistook it as not taking things seriously, instead
of convincingly signalling, by the fact of its nature and presence (as an
awesome and surprising drawing on a recruitment page that's subversive of
conventional expectations for a potential employer), the claim made in the
heading on that page, that Dropbox is a pretty sweet place to work.

------
ubercore
We've been using it for our band, and it's been working great. A really useful
tool that the non-techy members have had no trouble adopting.

------
RRiccio
Dropbox it's certainly one of the most helpful startups for the average guy.

I put into use at the last company I was working for (a non-tech company) and
everyone got immediately hooked on Dropbox. It made their file-sharing much
easier.

So I honestly understand this article, even though for us it's been around for
so long.

------
akent
Any media outlet tempted to use a "you've never heard of" headline should
seriously reconsider. Guaranteed to irritate everyone who HAS heard of it
instantly.

~~~
whatusername
I heard a radio report in NZ over summer about the kids these days using words
like Cool and Wicked in ways that weren't their original meaning.

Someone deserves a medal for epic trolling. (I don't know what the station was
-- I was in a hire car and channel surfing and decided to listen to the news
broadcast)

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kylelibra
This is why traditional / mainstream media is fighting a battle to remain
relevant.

~~~
Vivtek
This they call fighting?

~~~
Tomek_
Certainly better than their previous attempts:
[http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-
february-28-2011/the-b...](http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-
february-28-2011/the-biggest-newser)

------
jpr
Finally something I can be hipster about.

------
petervandijck
Eh, "you've never heard of"?

~~~
Florin_Andrei
It's CNN, it's for normal people.

~~~
petervandijck
Ah normal people. Got it.

