Dropbox: Tech's Hottest Startup (2011)
Dropbox sells one thing: easy to use drive space in the cloud.<p>Dropbox failed to do one thing: give people compelling reasons to put a growing amount of stuff there so they would keep paying for and upgrading their accounts.<p>Imagine these scenarios:<p>- A user dumps their photos into dropbox and automatically is granted a flickr quality site with all of their photos there and organized. They can add metadata in the site and dropbox just makes it &quot;work&quot;. Now I want to keep putting photos up and need to keep upgrading and paying for my account. Dropbox could have taken on Flickr and any number of other photo sharing sites.<p>- A user dumps their music collection into dropbox and automatically get a private site they can use to listen to <i>their</i> collection. Now I have to keep paying for their service and upgrading to add new music. Dropbox could have taken on any number of music services.<p>- A user dumps the music they created into dropbox and automatically get a soundcloud like experience to share their music. Now I have to pay to keep sharing my creations and upgrading to add more. Dropbox is now taking on soundcloud, and any number of other music sharing services.<p>- A user dumps their videos into dropbox and automatically gets a youtube like channel they can use to share their works. Now Dropbox is taking on youtube...and video takes up a <i>ton</i> of storage.<p>Give a storefront now people can sell their music, art, videos and now their livelihoods are tied to paying for Dropbox to exist.<p>And on and on and on. Dropbox could have been hugely disruptive to any number of other sites and instead is a languishing file sharing site that&#x27;s targeting enterprise customers (meanwhile enterprises are actively trying to block dropbox from their systems as it&#x27;s an easy exfil route) -- and it&#x27;s in a crowded space competing with companies who <i>are</i> making it necessary to have their file sharing services <i>because</i> they&#x27;re tying all kinds of productivity applications to their storage (OneDrive, Gdrive, etc.) that enterprises are willing to approve even given possible exfil risks.