I’ll start off this post with a somewhat controversial claim: I invented Dropbox.
I’ll show why this claim doesn’t matter later, but for now, I’ll assure you that it’s true.
How many of you out there use Dropbox? If you don’t, you should — it’s an excellent tool. In its free version, it provides you with 2GB of storage “in the cloud”, using a new kind of folder called a “Dropbox”. What distinguishes a Dropbox from other folders on your computer? The following:
- Every file put in your Dropbox is automatically (and securely) uploaded to Dropbox’s servers, ensuring you have an offsite backup of all data therein.
- Multiple computers can gain access to a Dropbox, ensuring files are automatically synchronized across computers without having to use complication version control systems.
- All files in your Dropbox are versioned, ensuring you can always recover an older version of a file in case you accidentally overwrite a good version.
Dropbox is supported on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and now even has mobile applications, as well. Further, I have a special place in my heart for this service because I started using it almost 2 years ago, and it has acted as a file sharing and project management tool for my own startup’s internal operations at Parse.ly. I was therefore more than ecstatic to discover that this excellent tool and its smart founders had also made it through all of the hurdles necessary to get an early-stage company the financing it needs: they’ve raised over $7 million in financing and have over 3 million users.
But there is another reason I absolutely love Dropbox: because it was my idea. I invented it.
Continue reading Persistent Folders: Or, why ideas don’t matter, and execution does