Who invented drop box

Houston declined to sell his company, preferring to stay independent. Since then it has gone on to have million users across the world. How Dropbox Started. Free stuff always wins people over. I embraced Dropbox because I had access to all the features on the platform even with this storage. This approach sent a clear message to the users that these freemium customers were just as important to the company as their paying customers.

Offering free space was such a simple strategy, but it helped build an audience of millions to which it could then market its paid subscriptions. In fact, many of their paying clients converted from the freemium model in order to get more storage space.

What made Dropbox grow into a viral trend was word-of-mouth marketing. Users spread the word about Dropbox to their friends and families.

People sent invitation links to their friends who also sent them to someone else just to get more storage space on the platform. It was a clever digital marketing strategy. The integration across all existing platforms was done so well it just worked and felt right. Dropbox gave them exactly that. If you had Dropbox on your Linux machine you could get these same files on your MacBook synced up-to-date. If you are at home working on files on your Windows PC then leave the house and you need to check these files on transit in a bus or train you just check them out on your Android phone.

As long as you have an internet connection, everything will be synced and up to date. Dropbox made integration across devices and operating systems so easy that people got so used to it and made Dropbox a part of their daily lives. Early seed funders of Dropbox included well-renowned venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners.

These were very impressive names to have on your startup portfolio as a company. They have all the connections you need including positive relationships with media outlets. They could call upon any of their media contacts if you needed some publicity. Their experience with startups made them very strong partners for Dropbox because they brought something more than funding to the table.

They brought ideas and advice that went a long way in making Dropbox the giant it is today. This is just what customers and businesses needed. Dropbox made it very easy for teams in a company to collaborate. Sara brings years of experience driving growth and innovation. Karen brings years of experience growing teams and scaling businesses.

Michael is a skilled entrepreneur, investor, and advisor to companies across industries. Previously he was co-founder and CEO of Justin. Mission Our mission is to design a more enlightened way of working.

Learn more. Just a few months later Y Combinator expressed an interest, and Mr Houston went back to MIT to meet Mr Ferdowsi, who was studying electrical engineering and computer science at his old university. Mr Houston, who is now 35, says: "We met in the student centre for an hour or two, then Arash dropped out of school the next week. I'm sure his parents had a different plan for him, one that involved finishing college.

And I don't know if either of us knew quite what we were getting into. To attract its first customers Dropbox made promotional videos that it put up on discussion websites such as Reddit and Slashdot.

The aim was to get technology sector influencers to start using the service in the hope that they would speak positively about the product, and user numbers would then grow thanks to this word of mouth.

This indeed proved successful, and from 5, users on a waiting list, within a few days Dropbox had 75, sign ups. Then it went from , users to , users "in something like 10 days". More The Boss features, which every week profile a different business leader from around the world:.

User numbers rocketed even further and faster when Mr Houston and his team came up with an incentivised referral scheme. This offered existing Dropbox customers more free storage space if they could get a friend to sign up.