I think your first point about enterprise vs consumer is very true. I don't even think it's a recent change.
What I disagree with is your opinion about VC money. If they didn't take VC money Dropbox in its current state wouldn't exist. The costs to support free accounts is staggering - there is a very real dollar cost associated with running a giant farm of storage servers. But free accounts are also crucial to Dropbox's business. It's very natural to run out of space and then decide to upgrade to a paid account. So you can see there's a bootstrapping problem. How do you support these free users while they add enough stuff to convert? This seems like a pretty good usecase for VC to me.
I'd also push back a bit on sticking to 'their core vision.' I don't know how much more there is to do there: Dropbox is already best in class in sync and backup. I'm not saying there are no improvements, but they are decidedly more incremental than in the business collaboration space.
It was quite aggravating when my shared Dropbox folder on a dual-boot Windows/Linux System lost support. It was the main reason I switched from GDrive to Dropbox (besides trying to gradually de-Google). Now I have 2 Dropbox folders on one machine.
What I disagree with is your opinion about VC money. If they didn't take VC money Dropbox in its current state wouldn't exist. The costs to support free accounts is staggering - there is a very real dollar cost associated with running a giant farm of storage servers. But free accounts are also crucial to Dropbox's business. It's very natural to run out of space and then decide to upgrade to a paid account. So you can see there's a bootstrapping problem. How do you support these free users while they add enough stuff to convert? This seems like a pretty good usecase for VC to me.
I'd also push back a bit on sticking to 'their core vision.' I don't know how much more there is to do there: Dropbox is already best in class in sync and backup. I'm not saying there are no improvements, but they are decidedly more incremental than in the business collaboration space.