Not many people in this world who would refuse an offer to work in so-caliber company Apple, especially if the invite / invite to work together are a legend in the world of technology and founder of Apple, Steve Jobs. Drew Houston is one among the people; he rejected an offer from Steve Jobs to develop his own business, which is now known as Dropbox.
Dropbox is a hosting service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and software for clients. Dropbox also has a feature that allows users to create a special folder in each of their computers, then synchronize your Dropbox folder looks like the same (with the same content) regardless of any computer used by a user. Files and data files stored in this folder can open through the website as well as the Dropbox app on your smartphone.
The success story of Drew Houston does not necessarily come from the sky. Initially, Drew Houston worked at Bit9, a computer security firm in Boston. After working at Bit9, Drew started his first startup company Accolade. The accolade is a service for SAT preparation if in Indonesia was almost similar to the SAT college entrance exam. It did not take long for Drew to fail at this first startup. The reason is simple: its market is too small.
Failed with Accolade not make Drew Houston broke. He sees a tendency for people to store their data on the internet, and he sees cloud computing is the future of big data. He was then set up a Cloud Storage service company that became known as Dropbox along with Arash Ferdowsi.
Unlike Accolade, which quickly failed, Dropbox demonstrated the potential to become the ruler pace in the field of cloud storage. In a short time, these services reach millions of users. Dropbox's popularity made it to the ears of Steve Jobs.
In December 2009, Steve Jobs invited Drew Houston and Ferdowsi Aresh to meet in his office. Jobs impressed with the way Drew running Dropbox and applaud the intelligence is able to display a file stored on your Apple device with elegance. Something that cannot even be done by the developer Apple.
Business intuition Steve Jobs high Dropbox make it sure would be a major company in the future. Jobs assessing acquired Apple Dropbox are a strategic step in the world of Cloud Computing.
However, the surprising thing must be received by Jobs. Drew Houston interrupted him and said he had decided to build a great company and will not sell to anyone, no matter who he is and whatever the status of the antidote. At that time, Steve Jobs is an idol Drew, and he considers Jobs as its Role Model in entrepreneurship.
Then, Steve Jobs smiled warmly at them and say that Apple will enter the same market with them. Then Steve Jobs told me about other problems such as his return to Apple, and on random should never trust of investors for approximately half an hour.
At the end of the meeting, Steve Jobs offered to hold a meeting at Dropbox office in San Francisco. Houston said the better they met in Silicon Valley. Why should we try to let the enemy? Houston said at the time. Onwards, Jobs never did bring up the issue again. Sometime later, he appeared in public with the launch of iCloud, Apple's cloud storage service. Jobs hope iCloud can solve the biggest problem the Internet: How to save all the data from all your devices in one place?
Hearing Apple launched iCloud, Houston was shocked. Steve Jobs really get into the same market with them. He said to his staff: "We have an overwhelming enemy. One of the most innovative and fastest growing in the world." He made a list of some giant company that shot like a meteor because of failure to maintain market: Myspace, Yahoo!, and Netscape, up to Palm. He wants to convey to employees that the company is falling because they are less innovative, although they are the first, but when they are better rival users will switch.
The hard work and struggle Drew Houston of Dropbox keep from falling so far successful. The number of registered users reached 50 million in Dropbox, and they earn revenue of $ 240 million in 2011 even though 96% of users Dropbox do not pay anything to save their data. Although they have up to 50 million users, which is owned by Drew staff of only 70 people. Compare with similar projects like iCloud and Google Drive that suck hundreds to thousands of employees.
Dropbox makes their popularity has now become a new verb in the past few years. Example: "Dropbox wrote to me" or "Dropbox me.” Success Dropbox further enhances the prestige of Y Combinatory, an incubator before incubating technology startup Dropbox.
Many large companies and venture capital who come to invest to Dropbox as Sequoia, Greylock, Benchmark, Accel, Goldman Sachs until RIT Capital Partners. Dropbox now estimated to have a value of 4 billion dollars. Houston as the founder has a 15% stake which, when cashed worth 600 million dollars. He also has become one of the most successful online entrepreneur startup founders in the world.
Dropbox does not pitch itself at the service of Cloud Storage. The main competitor Dropbox is ready to pounce on them from behind them: Box.net, CloudMe, iCloud, Mozy, TitanFile, Windows SkyDrive, and Google Drive.
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