Dropbox Chief to Join Elite Ranks of Idea-to-I.P.O. Founders | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox Chief to Join Elite Ranks of Idea-to-I.P.O. Founders

nytimes.com

90 pointscmod45 comments

For anyone who hasn't watched it, checkout the original demo videos made by Drew himself.

Video1 (Probably earlier version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAnJjXriIcw

Video2 (Better than Video1, more witty and well made.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE

It's pretty impressive and the product then looked pretty polished (though minimalistic as it is even today) that even after 11 years, it hasn't gone through much changes. One thing that is interesting is that many people use Dropbox as a poster child of MVPs and Lean methodology, but given the possible effort and polish that Drew had put into the product, I am not sure we can call the beta version as an MVP.

I think it's fair to say that those videos you linked are not examples of MVP / Lean, given how sophisticated the product was throughout the demo. The example that I've always heard (and couldn't find a link to now, so might not be true) was that, while Dropbox was in YC, they put up a landing page and a teaser video that only explained what the product would be once released, without even releasing it. That video generated a lot of buzz and signups, which was a lean way to validate the idea that people wanted the product.

Seeing as I can't find the video I imagine this story might've been embellished over the years, so if anyone was here for that I'd love to be corrected.

I can confirm that. I was introduced to Drew when he was looking for a co-founder in March and saw his announcement below in April. That's correct, the launch page had a heading "Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive", a short video with the same message, and an email form.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

I had my own software business for three years by then (archived screenshots to https://angel.co/spoof-proof-software), so I replied with better marketing text and benefits, rather than "throw away your USB drive", the problem Drew had at MIT. Years later, they made new intro videos (with a mountain climber) that adopted the ideas I posted way back then.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9153

"What about this on the download page (also good for a press release.) Drop Box: Automatically safeguards even your biggest worries, so you don't have any!

What is a Drop Box?

Your Drop Box is a File Cabinet that Follows You Around Everywhere You Want to Go, Across Your Computers, or Across The Country.

Download and start using it today. (link goes here.)

Your Drop Box includes your own Secretary who Files and Photocopies Every Document You Make or Edit, So You Can See What Each Document Looked Like Yesterday, Two Days Ago, or at Any Point In Time. Did I Mention the Secretary and the File Cabinet are Fire-Proof and Wireless?

But, it's all digital. And, it's secure. And it's built to work between as many Windows desktops or laptop computer you use at NO EXTRA COST! See for yourself! (another link to the download.)

Or, access your files at work from a web-based interface! It's so flexible!

Q: Do I have to change how I work?

A: Absolutely not. Any file and folder (Word documents, spreadsheets, family photos, etc) you add to your Drop Box folder is automatically synchronized and saved remotely.

Q: What is the Drop Box folder?

A: It's just a special folder which will appear on your computer. Anything added to it is automatically saved, synchronized, and "dated" so you can go back in time!

Try it now! (another download link) It's safe, it's free, and you can use it on as many computers to share, backup, and keep archived file versions on, as you need to, by registering for just one account!"

Nice to hear that.. But he did have the video demo right? As per another comment it's called MVP because the video seems to be fake? Either way it was a great success story. Had you wished you'd be part of Dropbox later?

> I think it's fair to say that those videos you linked are not examples of MVP / Lean, given how sophisticated the product was throughout the demo.

The reason it's considered MVP is because the video is faked.

Source: Eric Ries

If it's a fake, it's a damn good fake!.

True!

People selling methodologies always claim unrelated big successes as instances of their method.

the original YC application is also really good. extremely focused.

(side, that original demo dropbox web UI is nicer than what they have now. there's a tendency for big companies to create over-heavy web UI (cf., what's happened to gmail and google maps).)

> but given the possible effort and polish that Drew had put into the product, I am not sure we can call the beta version as an MVP.

Actually, the video is faked. It's not working tech, which is why it is considered an MVP test.

He came to speak at MIT while I was there, and I remember two things that stuck out. He's a really unassuming guy and smiled at everyone he met in the hallways(have to kind of enjoy when the market rewards humble people), and he also fielded the question "where do I find a technical cofounder" to which he had a great one word answer "codecademy".

Why is that a great answer?

I think he’s saying that you should teach yourself technical skills instead of looking for a technical co founder

Well he was already coding in high-school, 20 years ago... Not much codeacademy then. But I can see the point he was trying to make, it just doesn't apply to him, like at all.

Which reminds me of another wealthy character with a JD degree telling people not to go to college. There might be some truth there for a very tiny 0.1% of the senior cohort, but again it doesn't apply to that individual.

But what he's recommending is basically his path: go learn it. The fact that he learned it before codeacademy existed isn't a reason to dismiss his recommendation of something concrete that someone could do.

It's infinitely more practical than saying, "Go back to high school age and start programming then".

If anything he is probably wishing there were a codecademy back then, as that probably would have accelerated even his path up the learning curve. I'm his age and back then we had to connect to the wall or go to the library and get a book with coffee stains on it. Also back then surprisingly few people believed studying CS was worth the investment.

There were places to learn how to code, but by reading books, docs, and sample code, and not watching videos.

A bigger problem is what you said in the second part. When I had a short chat with Drew when he was looking for a co-founder in 2007, he said almost all MIT students were joining investment banks, grad school in business/law, big companies, etc.

Because teaching yourself coding and attempting to do it yourself should be done or at least attempted before hand . A bunch of nontechnical cofounders think that coding is scary or they can’t learn it . You will burn a bunch of time attempting to cofounder date than actually get the job done.

There are exceptions such as already getting funding or having background knowledge or an inspiring vision .

The number of exceptions is mathematically very close to 0%

Because there is a surprising number of well-funded startups founded by people who can't/won't build anything themselves. While this seems OK on the face of it (maybe they are good at other things like business plans or marketing), in practice what it means is that they end up burning large sums of money unnecessarily on hiring and cloud hosting because they start with a massive technical debt. Also, since they aren't building anything themselves, the odds that they are solving their own problem (a problem you know exists) goes down. The alternative for someone who finds that they can't build anything is to learn how to build something. While this seems like it will take longer than just hiring people and telling them what to do, in fact it is a good investment of time because it eliminates all the headaches I described above.

Fantastic answer. In other words: learn to code yourself, first. At least, you will be able to pick a tech co-founder better.

This is great. I remember the initial hacker news post. I remember how I thought it was trivial and that in the best case Microsoft and google would eat them. Glad to see that I was wrong. From that perspective I’m trying to figure out why I thought that despite all evidence to the contrary. And how I can avoid that type of mistake going forward.

Does anyone know what kinda of watch he's wearing in that picture?

No offense to Drew Houston.

> At M.I.T., he joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he has said helped him learn how to build a corporate culture.

> Dropbox also developed a reputation as an unwelcoming workplace for women. “Some of the things they’ve been struggling with are how to balance Dropbox being a fun place to work with accusations of having a frat boy atmosphere,” Mr. Mann said.

Not much of a plot twist there!

When people talk about things you can't say in tech companies, being in a greek organization is one of them. I would never advertise the fact that I was in a fraternity for fear of how people would perceive me. People have a tendency to blame a group instead of the individual for bad behavior. I don't need my workplace to be "fun", I'd rather do interesting work with smart people. I can have fun when I'm not working.

This is a good point.

I think part of the problem is what is meant by "fun" in the workplace. Fun at a workplace should mean something like you enjoy being there, are interested and challenged by your work, and have a cohesive team that works well together.

If you are struggling to have "fun" at work without creating the perception that it is like a fraternity, then I think you have likely missed the point entirely.

>I would never advertise the fact that I was in a fraternity for fear of how people would perceive me. People have a tendency to blame a group instead of the individual for bad behavior.

There's good reason. Fraternities are the exact opposite of meritocracy. Their very reason for existence, in fact, is to subvert meritocracy through cronyism and nepotism for those who can afford it. Because of this, people engaged in strictly meritocratic work (science and engineering) find that whole world repulsive.

Being sociable and cultivating social connections is also a skill, and a marketplace where supply and demand need to be matched up but aren't necessarily able to articulate or quantify their offers, it's one of the most valuable skills you can have.

> There's good reason. Fraternities are the exact opposite of meritocracy. Their very reason for existence, in fact, is to subvert meritocracy through cronyism and nepotism for those who can afford it.

There may be some like that but there are plenty that are not. I don't remember anyone getting in my fraternity that way and we averaged over 100 members at a time.

Science and engineering aren't strictly meritocratic by any means. More than the fraternity system, perhaps, but not strictly.

> Because of this, people engaged in strictly meritocratic work (science and engineering) find that whole world repulsive.

Richard Feynman, John Bardeen, Linus Pauling, and Kary Mullis were all in frats. That's just from 5 minutes of googling famous American scientists I could think of, I'm sure there's more.

Using Feynman as an example doesn't help your case: https://restructure.wordpress.com/2009/08/07/sexist-feynman-...

That said, I don't think we can judge people in the past using modern ethical values and it doesn't take away from his achievements.

The argument was "engineers/scientists find fraternities repulsive". Arguing that a top scientist was a jerk/misogynist/racist/sexist/whatever doesn't refute that.

Right; ask the average person to name a frat and they will think of Skull & Bones at Yale.

That's actually not a frat. It's a "secret society." Related but not the same thing.

What's the difference between a fraternity and secret society? One is more exclusive and secretive?

It varies a lot. Yes, secret societies tend to be more secretive. In some cases, though not Skull & Bones, membership is secret. And they generally don't have public parties as tends to be the case with fraternities. At least some members also generally live in fraternity houses while that's generally not the case with secret societies. That said, there are lots of variants of both as well as honor societies, eating clubs, etc.

Ironically being the most well known! That and Bohemian Grove!

> At M.I.T., he joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, which he has said helped him learn how to build a corporate culture.

> When people talk about things you can't say in tech companies, being in a greek organization is one of them. I would never advertise the fact that I was in a fraternity for fear of how people would perceive me.

I was in a fraternity myself and I don't bring it up unless it's relevant because I'm an adult and nobody cares anymore.

People will only perceive you poorly if you bring it up when it's not relevant and that's because they'll, rightly or wrongly, think that you never grew up.

> I was in a fraternity myself and I don't bring it up unless it's relevant because I'm an adult and nobody cares anymore.

If anyone actually does care, it's probably a shitty company culture. Why would anyone care about your social activities at college post graduation and working at a real job?

My comment has spurred conversation about the perception/stigma of having been in a fraternity, instead of conversation about how the fraternity mentality can (and does?) lead to an unwelcoming environment for women. Isn't that telling that maybe we (as men) should look elsewhere than a fraternity for inspiration on how to run a tech company?

MIT fraternities are "Greek light" (or even "Greek skim") as compared to what is shown in Animal House and in the news on other universities.

I think the independent living group structure at MIT is fairly unique and makes for a large part of the students' experience and some of my strongest memories are living group related, probably 2:1 over laboratory or classroom related memories. I'm a strong supporter of the living group situation at MIT, even with the problems that come along with it. (I think that a certain level of problems are unavoidable when contemplating the first-time independent living of 17-22 year olds, whether coed or single-sex, dorm or independent living group.)

Source/disclaimer: I'm also MIT Phi Delta Theta, older and not overlapping with/never met Drew.

> No offense to Drew Houston...

This comment is a near ideal solution to the problem of "how to derail the thread, fire a shot in the culture wars and likely still gain karma".

Wasn't expecting to gain karma with this comment, and I absolutely wanted to "derail the thread" with something I found interesting in the article.

I think it's important to discuss unwelcoming work environments every single time we celebrate a tech company's success because more often than not, tech companies continue to have terrible work environments for people of all walks of life.

> Wasn't expecting to gain karma with this comment, and I absolutely wanted to "derail the thread"

Fortunately, this is a moderated forum. Your prejudices towards Greek organizations may or may not have a valid basis, but taking the entire discussion into an ideological brawl is a disservice to all.

> tech companies continue to have terrible work environments for people of all walks of life

Agreed. Please don't make them worse than they already are.

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