Dropbox — Marketing with no money
On May 2014, Dropbox reached 300 million users. The cloud-based file syncing service is definitely one of the leaders in the online storage market.
When people are asked about Dropbox success, they commonly point out the obvious — Simplicity. And I’ll be the last to argue about that.
Dropbox for the sync and storage market is like the iPhone for the mobile market. Even my mother can understand how to use it.
Wouldn’t it be enough for starting a successful company? Not really…
Starting in 2007, Dropbox wasn’t the first one to tackle this problem of file syncing and online storage.
The startup Omnidrive launched its product in January 2006, with a client for windows and mac that syncs with your online drive, and provides 2GB free storage. Amazingly identical to Dropbox’s solution, isn’t it? But how many of you heard about Omnidrive?
More products were around too, like Carbonite and Mozy, among several others. Some of them had better solution of syncing/storing/sharing files than others, however none succeeded in having millions of users as fast as Dropbox did.
Even the three software giants — Google, Microsoft and Apple — didn’t provide a good solution to this problem back then.
- Microsoft acquired FolderShare on 2005, and used it later to launch Windows Live Folders on 2007. It wasn’t good enough, though. It was slow, heavy and too complicated for the simple user.
- Apple launched the iCloud on 2011.
- Google made Google Docs available for users in 2007 and was starting to talk about Google Drive, which eventually was launched only on 2012.
Drew Houston, the cofounder and CEO of Dropbox, was lucky the giants weren’t around. However, he had few other challenges, such as creating a product that works, finding a cofounder, getting money and finding the right users. And the clock was ticking.
Houston faced all those challenges using a brilliant technique — a video. Not just any video, but the right video at the right place.
Video #1: Funding, Co founder and MVP
It was after his first attempt (as Dropbox solo founder) to apply to Y Combinator, an American seed accelerator, that he realized he must do something different to grab attention.
Paul Graham, Y Combinator cofounder, told him to come back only after he gets a cofounder.
Houston then created a simple video, demoing the product, and published it on April 2007 on Hacker News (a social news website for programmers and entrepreneurs) with the title ‘My YC app: Dropbox — Throw away your USB drive’.
Hacker News website was created in 2007 by no other than Paul Graham and is run by Y Combinator. Houston knew what he was doing… This video not only grabbed Graham’s attention, but it also helped Houston to find his cofounder, Arash Ferdowsi.
And if that’s not enough, this video unintentionally started Dropbox MVP approach.
The post got lots of immediate, high quality feedback from the relevant people, the potential users of Dropbox.
Dropbox got its seed funding from Y Combinator on June 1st 2007 and joined the exclusive startup program.
Video #2: Creating a waiting list
The 2nd video came on March 2008, during the private beta launch. It was quite similar to the 1st video, only this time they posted on Digg and planted dozens of Easter eggs aimed at the Digg users. The title was ‘Google Drive killer coming from MIT startup’.
It worked once again. They got 12,000 diggs and were on the top 10 diggs.
Beta waiting list jumped from 5,000 to 75,000 overnight. They were expecting 15,000 at the most…
Another brilliant move!
Of course, lots of useful feedback was coming this time as well, without exposing even a single line of code. Knowing where your target audience hangs out and give them a taste of your product is the perfect MVP implementation.
With 75,000 users in the waiting list, this video actually solved the getting started problem of Dropbox.
Video #3: Storytelling
So, you have ~100,000 users on the waiting list, most of them are early adaptors tech savvy users, What’s next? How do you convince the rest of the world to use your product?
The 3rd video was totally different and more marketing like video, targeting a wider audience than those tech savvy users. It was the famous video most of us probably saw on Dropbox’s homepage.
The video describes the solution in a very simple and non-technical way, using a story about a guy who travels to Africa. This was Dropbox’s first storytelling.
According to Houston, Ferdowsi insisted on keeping a super simple homepage, with only this video and the download button. Super focus. Super genius.
With many people on the waiting list, plus the simplicity of the story and the look and feel, it was only a matter of time until the ~100k users will become millions.
Using the tons of important feedback they got, Dropbox managed to improve the product and make the right decisions (such as targeting Linux users). By the time they launched the public beta the product was smooth, sleek and ready to use.
The right video at the right place…
Product name: Dropbox
Launch date: founded on June 2007, launched on 11 Sep 2008
About: Dropbox is a cloud-based file syncing, hosting and sharing service.
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/
Resources:
The 3 videos:
Video #1 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/original_screencast.html
Video #2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmCUDHpNzE
Video #3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFb0NaeRmdg
Drew Houston speaking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmPCy_SXuuQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUxBdBexmFI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEhVVZlFVsE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GDoEA2oD7k
http://www.slideshare.net/gueste94e4c/dropbox-startup-lessons-learned-3836587
More:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
http://techcrunch.com/2005/12/28/omnidrive-online-storage-perfection/
