How To use Dropbox to organize your startup's documents | Hacker News Reader

How To use Dropbox to organize your startup's documents

blog.revenueloan.com

23 pointsrlucas15 comments

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I organize Dropbox based on access and make folders for each:

Dropbox > MyStartup > Interns (Shared)

Dropbox > MyStartup > Management (Shared)

Dropbox > MyStartup > Entire Team (Shared)

Dropbox > MyStartup > secret_takeover_plans.doc (Not Shared)

Dropbox > MyStartup > Code (Not Shared, Addition to Git)

Dropbox > Personal Stuff

Love me some organized files. We use Google Docs when we need to collaboratively edit a document, but the finalized versions are all stored in Dropbox.

  Startup\ (Shared with all employees)
     Competitors\
     Contacts\ (folders for people/companies, better in a CRM at some point)
     Customers\
     Dev\
         Concepts\ (mockups)
             Web\
             iPhone\
             Android\
         Specs\
     Graphics\ (logo, frequently used images)
     Marketing\
     Presentations\
     Press\
     Reference\
     Research\
     Unfiled\
     Whiteboards_and_Ideas\ (photos of whiteboarding/brainstorming)

  Startup-Confidential\ (Shared with those who need to know)
     Legal\
         Agreements-Executed\
             (Folders by name of person/organization)\
                 (Agreements signed by this person/organization and us)
         Corporate_Records\
             Master_Record_Book\
                 (Sequentially labeled, signed finalized documents 
                 from the corporate record book)
             YYYY-MM-DD_<Company-Event-Description>\
                 (Draft documents/revisions for each major legal event like 
                 formation, board actions, hiring)
         Employee_Records\
             (Folders by name of employee)\
                 Important employee files, agreements
         Forms
             Template legal documents
     Finances\

  Startup\Interns\ (Shared with interns)

  Startup-Working\ (for me)

Nice, bonus points for using the YYYYMMDD date form in your folder names -- free lexical sort!! (We do likewise with suffix notation, mainly because the more common use case for us is to to first sort by "event description" then by date.)

I'm one of the people that works in RevenueLoan's DropBox structure, and I have to say that it has saved my butt a number of times.

I work on a laptop, and largely work remotely, so the obvious benefit of being able to access the latest files all the time is tremendous. (I use GoogleDocs with another organization I am a part of, and the DropBox interface and user experience is superior in every regard. Especially with my non-technical compatriots!)

I also have Growl notifications turned on for DropBox, so I can see the activity that is happening within the company even if I am not in the office that day. This is a surprising benefit.

And finally, having naming conventions (like the YYYYMMDD format) that we rigidly adhere to, ensures that I can find anything anywhere: The folder hierarchy is clear and concise, the file names are standardized across all folders, Etc.

All of this increases efficiency, and just has to have saved me all kinds of time... and that is one thing every startup company in the world could use more of!

you might want to dig deeper into the dropbox encryption and security methodologies before putting valuable information up there if you haven't already.

Agreed; for better or worse, though, a lot of what we get comes in unencrypted email. (This includes legal documents from prestigious law firms, etc., whose practices we are unlikely to be able to influence.)

Hence, we practice "no-worse-than" security. And if we originate a secret, and want it to remain so, we encrypt it using strong encryption.

Alternatively, you could set up a private git repo, and use ssh keys to control access with gitolite or similar...

I tend to think that Dropbox is only useful for people who can't figure out version control, but that's probably my own bias.

Or for people who want to share binary files, or for people who like drag-and-drop interfaces, or for people who don't want to spend a bunch of time learning about secure shared repo setup. In other words, for people who Just Want To Share A Damn Folder. Like my thesis advisor, my artist friends, and me, a loyal git user.

I find google doc better for sharing docs, you can edit them online anywhere and also upload any kind of files now though I never do.

Doesn't work at all if the source material is in LaTeX, or anything more complicated than RTF really.

You can still upload LaTeX docs to google docs and edit them with your own editor or use http://code.google.com/p/latex-lab/

However, one the great parts of Dropbox is that you don't have to pull new changes--they're automatically updated on your computer as soon as someone else changes a file. With Git, you'd have to remember to keep pulling the new information as needed.

I agree; my bias was to try and control everything (including lots of legal docs, in our business) with SVN. But it turns out ... "people who can't [or won't] figure out version control" amounts to just about everybody who's not a dev, in my world. There are lots of those people and they're important to my success (and, dear reader, it is likely, also to yours).

I store all of my code plus their git repos on my Dropbox, that's MY bias. ( And it's a useful one)

I have been doing this! However – we are still just two founders, so we haven't expanded beyond the 2gb freebie.

Though I use the following structure:

NEWCO: - DOCS – then dirs Doc, XLS, PDF, NDA, PPT, Legal, Research

- GRAPHICS – All graphic collateral .vsd, .psd, .svg etc.

- IMAGES – Output of graphics files, .png, .jpg

- SITE – All HTML pages created.

Outside of this, I make my Eclipse Workspace in my dropbox folder as well. Then any machine I open eclipse on, everything is as I left it.

—*NOTE: this i proving weird as the Android SDK installs a TON of stuff in the folder. I am still figuring out the best way to do this.

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