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Comment by jl | Hacker News Reader

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jl·

For those you can't make it, I'll try to have a copy of the interview up on YC's blog by the end of the day!

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Please ask if they're profitable and what % of users pay for their service.

we can't tell you that! :-)

Worth a shot :)

How come? Honest question. Would making that information available hurt your business somehow? Don't get me wrong, my typical impulse is to play numbers very close to the vest, but I'm realizing more and more that the real risk of transparency is usually pretty low.

I think I probably have enough transparency-is-groovy street cred to say this: they don't owe you a number, and they don't owe you an explanation, unless you are credibly trying to buy their company. (This is the generic "you", not the specific "you" here.)

I'm certainly not suggesting they owe me/anyone else anything! I was just curious what their rationale was for holding back. Maybe it's a really good reason I hadn't considered.

If they make a ton of money, then it might encourage competition. If they don't make any money, then it might be embarrassing.

Yes. If they aren't profitable, I would hesitate to pay them for my backups, since I might doubt they would be around N years from now.

It's the only part of an interview with Dropbox that would be interesting.

I have a business plan where I send out a dollar free to anyone who logs onto my site. With $5M of funding from YC I think I could also get 4million 'customers'

As it stands I use dropbox for free. When they/or their vc decides to start charging me I will switch to the next free competitor, this is not a business model.

Thanks! These are amazing. How will they tie into Founders at Work v2, the book?

Am I the only one who is getting the Weebly interview instead?

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