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Drew Houston

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2010

YC Founders at Work: Dropbox

Interview0 Comments

Livingston interviews Houston, founder of Dropbox. On finding cofounder, Arash Ferdowsi:

That was definitely one of the bigger struggles getting started– having this idea and not having a co-founder. And Paul [Graham] and everybody told me over and over again that this was a necessary condition of joining Y Combinator. I was networking around and letting people know about DropBox and seeing what they though and met Kyle Vogt, a founder of Justin.tv. Kyle had dropped out of school to join Justin.tv and it turned out that he and Arash were both undergrads at MIT, and both from Kansas. The same kind of cabin fever that I had being in Cambridge and watching all my friends move out to Silicon Valley I think Arash was feeling too. So, I put up the screencasts, three or four minute video, about Dropbox and Arash emailed me after that, because Kyle let him know I was looking for a co-founder. We met up at the coffee house at MIT and everything went from there.

30 Oct, 2011

Helped sharpen Dropbox pitch

Interview0 Comments

Houston talks about how Graham gave the founders advice to distil their initial idea. That eventually led to a live demonstration where they deleted a Power Point in front of a live audience, and then restored it from the website.

One of the things we really struggled with early on….we made a list of dozens of things it was good for, our first marketing attempt was sort of throwing spaghetti at the wall. We struggled on how to articulate [the uses] to investor.

(Founder Stories) Dropbox: Advice from Paul Graham