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The concept for Paper began to emerge about three years ago. “We’re not in a realm where the most important thing is to print something out,” he said. “We weren’t there yet,” Houston said, “but wanted to be there someday.”ĭropbox Paper is a document collaboration product, but the emphasis is on connecting the people working on those documents, not on formatting those documents, Houston said. Now the company’s chief operating officer, he had run a $17 billion business at Google. “You want talented people who have grown up with the company working with experienced people who can help you with the learning curve.” These mentors matter because you can ask them pointed and tactical questions about running a startup, Houston said. To learn about sales, he bought the three highest-rated books on Amazon about the sales process.įind mentors who are one step ahead of youĪs Dropbox started to grow, Houston said some of his most helpful mentors came from startups that were anywhere from six months to two years ahead of Dropbox in the process. He said he quickly realized that there was only so much that they could cover in a 15-minute coffee meeting - and that, after a while, it all started to sound the same. To learn how to run a business, Houston initially set out to meet as many successful entrepreneurs as he could. The best training for being a founder or CEO is being a founder or CEO.” “Don’t stress so much about trying to get ready. “It may not be ideal to go directly from school to starting a company, but don’t obsess over the optimal circumstances,” Houston said. Houston returned to campus April 18 to talk with students about his experience. In the 11 years since, Dropbox has grown from a cloud storage company based in a small apartment to a provider of business collaboration software with close to 2,000 employees - along with a March 23 initial public offering that has valued the company at more than $12 billion.

Drew Houston ’05 co-founded Dropbox in June 2007, one year after graduating from MIT, in response to the frustration of losing thumb drives.

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