Congrats Dropbox!

I wrote Dropbox their first investment test on June 26, 2007. What strikes me as I see at a reproduction of the test is that Drew and Arash will must were barely tremendous at getting all their incorporation paperwork done. I customarily needed to streak startups successfully into July.

Shrimp did I know motivate then what a momentous test this one would be: that eleven years later, Dropbox continuously is the first Y Combinator company to head public.

I desire I would possibly well well maybe maybe mumble that Paul, Robert, Trevor and I knew this is able to be one in every of the broad ones when we interviewed Drew and Arash on April 21, 2007. They were the first interview of the day, at 8:30am. Although it used to be a truly long time ago, I be conscious we all agreed that they gave the affect correct, and it used to be an easy determination to fund them. Trevor had already checked out the procedure and used to be impressed by it.

We’d met Drew the 300 and sixty five days sooner than. He’d been Adam Smith’s gigantic brother in MIT’s Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Adam used to be a founder of Xobni, which used to be in the Summer season ’06 batch, and he’d introduced Drew with him as a visitor to a YC dinner. We furthermore met Drew at YC’s Startup College in California in March 2007. He came to the afterparty at our house and confirmed us an early prototype of Dropbox. I be conscious him being likeable, earnest, and intensely vigorous.

When Drew applied to YC, he applied as a single founder. After we invited him to interviews, Paul sent him an electronic mail suggesting he’d be at an advantage with a cofounder. By interviews, just a few weeks later, he’d chanced on Arash. That labored out successfully.

Drew and Arash spent the summer of 2007 writing code. In those days there were loads of file storage and syncing products and companies, however none of them labored very successfully. The Dropbox founders were advantageous from the very initiating to purchase by making a product that used to be better than the leisure else. They weak their batchmates, and us, as their guinea pigs.

We had Demo Day at our Cambridge procedure of business in August. For the first few years, we remembered every Demo Day by the catastrophe that took procedure all the map thru it. This used to be the Demo Day when our aircon system broke all the map thru a heat wave. We needed to rent portable air conditioners, which took up enormous portions of procedure and did diminutive to wintry off our diminutive oven of a constructing.

Nonetheless, Drew gave an shapely pitch. It’s not easy to get file syncing see thrilling, however Paul regarded as a map: he suggested Drew delete his Demo Day presentation in the center of giving it, and then increase it from Dropbox and abet going. On the total we don’t imply gags be pleased this all the map thru pitches, however this one made folk listen. I contemplate even Drew used to be not a hundred% advantageous it could maybe most likely well maybe maybe work.

Drew Presenting at Demo Day in Mountain Look for. Arash utilizing the slides.

Dropbox impressed traders in Boston. It shapely didn’t trace them satisfactory to jot down a test. We weak to get one Demo Day in Boston in the summer, then fly each person out to Silicon Valley to get one other there every week later. So Boston traders had a entire week sooner than any Silicon Valley traders noticed Dropbox, and never one in every of them made a switch. I contemplate the birthday celebration line used to be that “the procedure used to be too crowded.” Drew and Arash presented in our Mountain Look for Situation of job on August Sixteen, raised money from Sequoia, and moved to San Francisco.

Over the next 300 and sixty five days, Drew and Arash persisted to pork up their product, unruffled the usage of the YC alumni as their early adopters:

300 and sixty five days after 300 and sixty five days, I’ve considered Drew and Arash grow Dropbox into a bigger and extra winning company. And I’ve change into prouder and prouder of them as they continue to refine their popular vision.

As of late is a big milestone for YC. After we launched Thirteen years ago, we beneath no circumstances imagined that an organization that we’d funded would one day fade public. We’re so proud of Drew and Arash and the Dropbox crew!