Dropbox
A company that keeps a folder of your files in sync across all your devices.
Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, two MIT students. The story goes that Houston kept forgetting his USB drive, and wanted his files to just be everywhere. The product they built was simple to explain: a special folder on your computer. Anything you put in it is copied to Dropbox's servers and appears, automatically, in the same folder on your other computers and on your phone.
That idea of file sync sounds obvious now, but in 2008 it was a small revelation. You could also share a folder with someone and both of you would see the same files, always up to date, and recover earlier versions of a file you overwrote by mistake. Dropbox grew with a freemium model: a few free gigabytes, more space if you invited friends or paid a subscription.
Today it competes with services bundled into bigger platforms, like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and Apple iCloud, and it sells more to teams and businesses: shared storage, document signing and tools for sending large files. It is listed on Nasdaq since 2018. A detail engineers like: Dropbox started out storing files on Amazon S3 and later moved most of that data to its own storage system and data centers to cut costs.
Keep in mind
- Founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi.
- Core product: a folder that syncs across computers and phones.
- Grew with a freemium model and referral bonuses.
- Competes with Google Drive, OneDrive and iCloud.
