He connects with the company after Houson puts up a screencast of Dropbox on HackerNews. Personnel, at four months: Ferdowsi joins Dropbox in April 2007. xls files for offline access, which would be strategically important as few web apps deal with the offline problem.'Īs a result of a dispute over trademark between Proxy and Evenflow, which is Dropbox parent company, Dropbox's domain is originally '' One is syncing Google Docs/Spreadsheets (or other office web apps) to local. 'There are lots of interesting possible features. Hackers have access to these tools, but normal people don't,' Houston writes on his application for Y Combinator in early 2007. Dropbox is kind of like taking the best elements of subversion, trac and rsync and making them 'just work' for the average individual or team. There's also a web interface, and the files are securely backed up to Amazon S3. It's much better than uploading or email, because it's automatic, integrated into Windows, and fits into the way you already work. Initial company description: 'Dropbox synchronizes files across your/your team's computers. If we can follow their footsteps, maybe we too can have similar success.įounded: The first lines of code for Dropbox are written in Boston’s South Station in November 2006 while Drew Houston, then a student at MIT, is waiting for the Chinatown bus to New York.įounders (age at the time): Houston (23) and Arash Ferdowsi (21) They show us the value of being resilient, persistent and committed. Stories like these are always well received, because it reminds us that anyone, regardless of pedigree and environment, can rise above the noise and have great influence.

In the end, we hope to have a good glimpse into what great startups looked like in their first three years. It's a look back at the modest days of startups, how they evolved in their first few years, and what traction they had at the time. Dropbox got to one million members only seven months after launchĪs our readers know, Vator has started a series called: When they were young.

Dropbox links young 2017