Dropbox began in 2007 as a file sharing service created by Drew Houston to solve his problem of forgetting flash drives. It has now grown to over 500 million users and generates billions in revenue by offering cloud storage. While Dropbox was successful initially by offering a simple and fast cloud storage solution, it now faces challenges around retaining users and increasing revenue as competitors emerged and users' needs grew more complex.

1. Case Study: Dropbox
Muhammad Haneef

3. Introduction
 The file sharing service that began as a two person team in 2007, now
having more then thousand employees.
 The cloud storage giants now provide service to more then 500 million
people and generates billions of dollars in annual revenue.
 It stores and tracks billion of files.
 Its 2/3rd of its users live outside USA.
 The company reaches this scale by offering one single product to
consumers & business consumers.

5. Background Of
Drew Houston
 Started programming at very early stage.
 MIT graduate in computer science in 2006.
 He cofounded Accolade, an online SAT preparation service in 2004.
 Joined Bit9, an enterprise security soft wear company.
 Worked full time at Bit9, and part time on Accolade but did not have much
passion for the product.
 While travelling to Bit9 in a bus during a 4 hours ride, he planned to work on
a programming project, but he forgets his flash drive at the apartment.

6. The Journey Begins
 "I was so frustrated ... because this kept happening," he said. "And I'm
like, my God, I never want to have this problem again. I opened up the
editor and started writing some code. I had no idea what it would
become.“
 Recruit Arash ferdoursi (MIT), later became the cofounder and CTO.
 Competition is already there, Box net, I storage, Mozy, X drive etc.
 In July 2007, one of the tech blog published 80 online storage services.

7. Then Why Dropbox
 File access is very slow in other .
 Browsing freezes the computer.
 Drop box is based on entirely different models where data can be
approached locally and updating the copy in the back ground.

8. Every Thing Needs Money
 Financers ask questions.
 He uploaded a video of hacker news to test the demand of his proto
type “ Not launching is painful but not learning is fatal”
 Feed backs helped them a lot to build better application.
 He got the attraction he wants.
 Paul Graham founder of Y combination an investment company in
technology .
 Y combination provided Houston funds as well as working space,
investors and inventors.

9. Plan Of Action
 Relocated to San Francisco.
 Target individuals rather then enterprises.
 Free business model
 1 GB free and 10 GB for $5 per month less expensive.
 Uses Amazon’s storage service (S3) in order to work learn. (Not having
their own infrastructure )

10. Launching Of Beta Program
 Private beta program for the limited users.
 Offered 2 GB free.
 Premium version was not yet offered.
 Launched an other marketing video on Digg.
 Launched for the public in Sept 2008 at Techcrunch50, an annual
competition of high potential startups.
 It created a buzz.

12. Expanding the Company
 Hires first 6 employees form MIT, all of them were engineers.
 Hired a project manager (Librarian not a poet).
 It did not work for them.
 Marketing was not there cup of tea.
 Cost them $300 to acquire one paid customer, who will pay $99 50GB per
year.
 Displaying ads from sites.
 Hiding free version from visitors from ads.
 “ we didn’t feel good about doing sneaky things to our users to get them to
pay”

13. How To Grow
 How to retain the users?
 How to increase the revenue?
 How to cut down the storage cost?
 They perform the A/B test to find out the preference of customers
 New policy of undo history in $39/year for subscribed users only.
 Is partnership an option?
 They need customization.
 They put you behind and took over your product if your are at startup.

14. What to do?
 They need business developer.
 Customers feed back were asking for the features that were already
there.
 They haven’t done consumer survey

15. The products needs improvement
 Improved password protected shared folder
 Referrals on the public folders.
 In 2010, 35% of 2.8 million were form referrals and 20% from public
folders

16. Problems
 In order to get large market share they need to upgrade continuously.
 They offer only one single product for the consumers.
 Customer want to sync dropbox with folder generated by operating
system.
 It can make it difficult to use.
 How to over come those problems?

17. Suggestions
 Develop a separate version for the business use.
 Needs to become a partner with the partner with the operating system
developers
 Day to day updated with the latest technology.
 Needs to have survey in order to meet the customer satisfaction.

18. Conclusion
 The decision facing executives at DropBox involves the rate at which they
want to grow, and by what means. It is my belief that their only choice
for maintaining current customer base, while furthering their reach in
into the corporate arena, is to breath new life into their existence. Doing
so would allow flexibility and independence while also giving the
Dropbox the luxury to focus on business customers.