Ask HN: Was Dropbox a good idea that looked like a bad idea? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Was Dropbox a good idea that looked like a bad idea?

8 pointscoralreef10 comments

We've heard that the best ideas are good ideas that look like bad ideas initially. However, I'm pretty sure I always perceived Dropbox as a good idea ever since hearing about it on HN. Perhaps its because I never tried the alternatives or competitors or knew anything about the space.

Was there anyone serious who thought it was truly a bad idea in and of itself?

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Here's the original thread, when they launched: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

It's amazing how anachronistic some of those comments read today. USB drive? FTP? SVN? CVS?

I have a similar question. I have been watching "Steve Blank's Customer development" type videoes on youtube lately. He pitches completely validate idea before writing a single line of code.

For successfully companies/products like dropbox, google, twitter, etc. What are the "right" questions/methods to "validate" the idea before the development - without developing the product and let the massive traction do the talking?

What are the name of any of "really" successfully product/company follow that method of "validating idea" before writing a single line of code?

throw that book away. The ideas sound good, but it's impossible to put them in practice and there's a lot of hindsight going on. I don't know of a single product in the world that reached any kind of market traction using that method to the letter.

No, their trite re-branded conventional wisdom is of no use to you as a founder. Just look at the examples of people who have actually done it.

Drew mentions a bit about talking to potential customers before coding:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8908

To what extent, I do not know.

I actually think this is a good tactic. Basically you try to sell a product that doesn't exist to determine whether there's any demand.

Off the top of my head I can think of at least 4 large ($50M+ acq. or valuation) teams that picked their products this way.

It's pretty easy – build a well designed landing page describing the product, share it on HN/reddit/etc and gauge the response.

The response to Dropbox was massive and overwhelmingly positive. Of course a few individuals tried to pick it apart. That's often just a sign people are excited about something. Bad ideas just get ignored.

It is true that some stupid investors were wary of Dropbox. There have been many failed sync and backup products. To the average Digg user it was clear as day that Dropbox was different.

I don't think it was considered a bad idea. Some mentioned it had been 'done before' but Dropbox outpaced them by making it simple & actually work. Also it was considered too simple as it was really bringing the well known concept of an always-accessible network drive or 'shared docs' folder to the Internet.

The idea behind Dropbox isn't a bad one. In fact, I'd argue that idea still isn't what Dropbox is, but it's relatively a minor part of it.

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