On the contrary, the most creative new ideas are generally common knowledge in one field, but completely new and innovative in another. The thought that a good idea has to be never before heard of and new to the world is absolutely ridiculous. As he wrote in his application to YC, “Hackers have access to these tools, but normal people don’t.” 7 On the contrary, the raw pieces needed for Dropbox already were heavily used by some people. Looking for a solution to his file management problem, Drew didn’t find some eureka, why-did-no-one-else-think-of-it solution. Why didn’t something like this exist for the rest of the world?ĭuring that bus ride, Drew wrote the first lines of code that eventually became Dropbox. Thinking back to his student days at MIT, he remembered fondly the intranet system that let him instantly access his files and even his desktop icons from any of the thousands of computers across campus 6. This wasn’t a problem he’d always experienced. Opening his computer at a bus station to get some work done in transit, he suddenly remembered that the files he needed were sitting on his desk in a thumb drive 5. In early 2007, Drew Houston ran into a problem. Focused primarily on the consumer market (though expanding to enterprise recently), Dropbox has 400 million users 4 just 9 years since their founding in 2007. Within what was already a very competitive cloud storage industry 2, Dropbox has become one of the biggest, with a $10 billion valuation during the most recent funding round in 2014 3. You’ve probably heard of Dropbox and know they’ve done generally well, but what makes their growth story so special? Interlude: Why should I care about Dropbox’s growth? So today let’s go down the rabbit hole and explore the lesser-known details of Dropbox’s rise to success. Sure, those tactics worked out quite well for Dropbox, but what were the guiding principles that lead them there? And well it should - Sean Ellis identified many of the most foundational growth principles during his tenure as head of growth at Dropbox 1.īut as much as we’ve heard about their viral video, their epic referral program, and their invite-only launch, I started to wonder if perhaps we were only seeing part of the picture. Like Airbnb and Hotmail, it merits a mention in nearly every “growth 101” book or article ever written. Remove all friction (or at least as much as possible)ĭropbox is one of the celebrities of the growth world. Look for audiences that aren’t being servedīuild a technical infrastructure that will grow with you Launch powerfully (but know it’s only the beginning)
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