In What is a File?, the authors mention the need to find different means to store data and files. A constant problem many of us face with our computers and mobile phones, is overflowing the storage capacity of the device and not having enough storage space. However, people have already come up with some platforms that act as hard-drive disk for much of our electronic ‘baggage’.
Dropbox, is a file hosting service, owned by Dropbox Inc., and is used by more than 500 million people, with an annual revenue of 1 billion dollars, since it first started 10 years ago. Dropbox was founded by two MIT students, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, in 2007 as a startup company.
An early photo of Dropbox cofounders Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. By Drew Houston.
Drew Houston actually came up with the idea of Dropbox while on the Chinatown bus going from Boston to New York. He, once again, had forgotten his thumb drive (USB), and decided to take out his frustration by starting to write new code which later turned out to be the beginning of Dropbox.
After posting an intro video for Dropbox, his now co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, randomly happened to see it on Hackers News, which made him email Houston with the idea of working together. This was perfect timing as Houston needed a cofounder in order to be funded by Y Combinator, a seed accelerator owned by Silicon Valley legend Paul Graham.
After just one meeting with Houston at the MIT student center, Arash Ferdowsi decides to drop out of school with only one semester left and join Houston in creating Dropbox.
After a weird meeting in a rug shop and and a party for iLike (an early music startup by Facebook) the two new cofounders saw their funding go from $60 to $1.2 million in just one click of the refresh button.
After a couple demo videos online and an offer by Steve Jobs himself to by the company, Dropbox turned out to be ranked as one of the most valuable startups, not only in the US, but also in the world. At the time Dropbox was valued at over 10 billion dollars.
Even though I’m not a big user of Dropbox, it is definitely a tool that is very useful for anyone that has more than one photo on his or her phone or computer. Dropbox makes our lives much easier by storying anything we need without taking up space on our own devices but also by being able to access these files and data from anywhere in the world.
Bibliography
Mazarakis, Alyson Shontell and Anna. “Dropbox Founder Reveals How He Built a $10 Billion Company in His 20s – Even Though Steve Jobs Told Him Apple Would Destroy It.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 12 June 2017, www.businessinsider.com/dropbox-founder-and-ceo-drew-houston-interview-2017-6.
“Y Combinator (Company).” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 23 Sept. 2017, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator_(company).
