
Dropbox founder talks about the company's early days - boopsie
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2983
======
jkimmel
Drew is a really bright guy, you have to give him credit for standing in front
of an audience like that and speaking without any sort of presentation aide.

Most notably, his points about hiring "the best people" (around 20 minutes in)
are extremely similar to the notes in the leaked Valve employee handbook on
hiring, and the old Jobs quote about "A+ players." For everyone seeking a
position somewhere in the industry, the emphasis placed on this element of
business is really telling; good people at amazing companies don't want just
another guy who can code in C++/Java/D-/ChaiTeaLatte, they want individuals
with strengths in all aspects of engineering and business. Thanks for the
link, and if Drew still reads HN even though he's in the big time, thanks for
the talk and indirect educational advice.

~~~
minimax
He emphasizes hiring great people essentially because that's the only way
you'll be able to hire more great people. He goes on to make the point that if
you lower the hiring bar and start hiring lower quality people, that in itself
may cause you to lose the best people. This process, he says, is irreversible.

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zxcvvcxz
Great talk, I really love Dropbox as a company because they just make things
easy. I too have forgotten my humble USB on my desk table even though it's
normally in my wallet. Now I don't even need a USB.

Off-topic comment though: anyone else annoyed at his sweater's design? The
word "Drop" should be completely on the left side of the zipper, with "Box"
and the picture of the box on the right side.

~~~
chmike
I noticed it too, but my last impression was that it is good to be like that.
I see it as an attempt to cut the link between the new word dropbox as a brand
and the two words drop and box. Drop has a negative conotation.

~~~
someperson
Completely off topic and doesn't belong here but since we're already talking
about his hooldie, the asymmetry of his hood cord REALLY REALLY bugs me :(

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sabathmt
Great presentation, for anyone that hasen't checked out Drew's application to
Y-Combinator, here it is:

[http://sulemanali.com/blog/2010/11/29/drew-houstons-y-
combin...](http://sulemanali.com/blog/2010/11/29/drew-houstons-y-combinator-
application-for-dropbox.html)

*On a side note, one thing (if you can) is to add a little humor/personality in your application:

Q:Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has
discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)

A:The ridiculous things people name their documents to do versioning, like
"proposal v2 good revised NEW 11-15-06.doc", continue to crack me up :)

~~~
jaredsohn
While funny, if you reveal something like that and it is something you're not
supposed to know for privacy reasons (don't know if that was the case here or
not; maybe it showed up in a log entry and their privacy policy indicates that
this will happen), and the information becomes more public you can get
yourself into trouble (like 37Signals did when they say that the 100,000,000th
file on BaseCamp was a picture of a cat.
([http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3076-i-heard-you-like-
numbers...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3076-i-heard-you-like-numbers\)))

~~~
nl
It's linked from the YC "How to Apply"[1] page.

Don't try scaring people unless you are very sure of what you are talking
about.

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html>

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anamax
[http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/winter-
schedule-20112012...](http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/winter-
schedule-20112012.html) has a talk about the different dropbox architectures
as they scaled.

