Hacker News Reader

> But still. It boils down to a mobile app that could be cloned, bit-for-bit, for way under $5 million.

Anyone can clone Mailbox v1.0. Then Mailbox come out with v2.0 and it's better than anything on the market, again, until that gets cloned too. Then out comes v3.0. (A valid comparison: the iPhone itself.)

Dropbox want to buy the Mailbox team's UX talent so that they're the ones running ahead of the curve, instead of constantly playing catch-up. They can then put it to work on all their other products, too.

> Let's assume mailbox.app utterly dominates the (iphone?) market.

There are two reasons I would potentially want Dropbox on my phone. 1: For photos. 2: I need to email someone a file on the run. If the app that I'm using for email plays nicely with Dropbox, this is suddenly much easier. At least that's the main benefit I've thought of, and it strikes me as pretty powerful.

As far as a big player cloning an app to take out a dominating startup, can't you argue that's what Microsoft, Apple, Google are trying against Dropbox now?

> I expect the next moves to be either developing or acquiring media sharing (photos, videos, etc) apps

It's not too big of a secret that they're doing this...check out their New Grad job description.

> "But still. It boils down to a mobile app that could be cloned, bit-for-bit, for way under $5 million."

I had an argument about this yesterday with someone. I do not think this statement is true.

Mailbox is an app that, usability, design, and technology-wise is two standard deviations away from the mean iPhone app. It is anything but commodity.

If you assembled a team of pretty-decent devs and designers, you probably couldn't clone Mailbox. To be blunt, the quality of Mailbox's app is beyond the capabilities of almost every mobile engineering team I've ever come across, and I write mobile apps for a living.

You could try cloning Mailbox, but it's contingent on first building a truly world-class design and mobile development team - and I mean world-class literally, you need to build a mobile team two standard deviations away from what every startup has. Assembling a team at this level is really friggin' hard. Mailbox has somehow done it - there's no guarantee that Dropbox could do it independently.

It might seem a bit hyperbolic, but apps like Mailbox are sort of like the mobile equivalent of Google - there's a magic sauce and team there that makes it non-trivial to clone. We're not talking about an app that bolts together standard UI components and pours some fresh paint on top, this is something that's at the very extreme end of UX quality.

> "Dropbox has a pretty strong brand of its own already."

I highly doubt Dropbox gives a shit about the Mailbox brand as it stands. The idea is to have the absolute best email client money can buy - and that competitors will have a hell of a time trying to clone. The whole idea is to be able to go "Sign up for Dropbox, make email way easier than blech! iPhone email. And way easier than even GMail!"

> "I can't imagine mailbox.app would fare all that well against a (near identical) dropboxmail.app"

This rests on the assumption that Dropbox can clone Mailbox. Having used the Dropbox app extensively, this is a really unsafe assumption. Dropbox's mobile app quality right now is pretty middling - not bad, but not great. For them to even start approaching the ability to clone Mailbox they'd first have to build a brand new team at a level few companies have been able to achieve.

And even if they did, an app like Mailbox is not something a few people can bang out in a couple of months. IMO Dropbox would be easily at least a year behind Mailbox. All the while other cloud competitors are looking for the leg up and willing to acquire Mailbox also.

> "By that logic their next move will be to pull another Color.app?"

If people ever gave a shit about Color.app. Color was a flop right out of the gate. Mailbox has received rave reviews from just about everyone who's touched it, and the demand continues to be furious.

If Dropbox will acquire a photo sharing app, it will have to hit that bar - i.e., absolute best in class experience, existing buzz, and not a pointless app no one knows what to do with.

So, after this flaming endorsement I just had to install mailbox.app. I gave it a whirl and... well, it's nice.

But can you give an example of the parts that you deem "unclone-able"?

That seems a pretty wild claim. It's not made of pixie dust. And I'm frankly a little underwhelmed. It's certainly nice, but (to me) not nearly as earth shattering as you make it sound.

I'll give you that assembling a team to maintain such a standard (and extend it) is non-trivial. But do you seriously think iOS top-talent wouldn't jump when dropbox puts, say, one million dollars per nose on the table?

Get a team of five and have them dedicate their life to making the best mail-client ever. That'll be $5 million dollars, not $100MM.

This whole prospective is of course a little surreal. But so is paying a hundred million dollars for a mobile mail client...