Hardware Podcasts

Dropbox: Drew Houston

How I Built This · 9 Nov 2020 · 47m

What this episode covers

Drew Houston, co-founder of Dropbox, explains how a forgotten thumb drive on a bus ride in 2006 inspired the creation of a cloud-based file synchronization service. He details the process of joining Y Combinator, finding co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, and leveraging a viral demo video on Hacker News to gain early traction. Houston discusses securing funding from Sequoia Capital, navigating a hostile meeting with Steve Jobs, and pivoting the business model to focus on enterprise clients to ensure long-term survival against tech giants.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Sequoia Capital, Bit 9, Accolade, Soft Servo Systems, Kite, Zobni, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook
Products
Dropbox, Mailbox, Carousel, iCloud
Also
Y Combinator, Hacker News, MIT, Reddit, Digg

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