1) The document discusses lessons learned by Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, about how they applied lean startup principles and grew Dropbox from 100,000 users to millions without traditional marketing. 2) Early on, Dropbox got feedback directly from users through a screencast and beta launch video which helped them learn. Their public launch focused on making users happy rather than traditional marketing plans. 3) Experiments with paid search and ads failed, but Dropbox continued growing through word-of-mouth as they encouraged sharing and referrals, not by trying to create new demand. They focused on the product experience above all.

1. Startup Lessons Learned Drew Houston @drewhouston

4. How we applied lean startup principles at Dropbox (sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident)

5. Paul Graham: Early and often Joel Spolsky: When it doesn’t completely suck (avoid “Marimba Phenomenon”) When to Launch?

6. 2006: Dozens and dozens of cloud storage companies

7. VC: “There are a million cloud storage startups!” Drew: “Do you use any of them?” VC: “No” Drew: “…”

8. Building a bulletproof, scalable, cross-platform cloud storage architecture is hard

10. Learn early, learn often

11. Dropbox’s minimum viable product: 3 min screencast on Hacker News (Apr 07): Lots of immediate, high-quality feedback

12. Simple landing page: capture interest/email address

13. Private beta launch video  12,000 diggs; beta waiting list jumps from 5,000 to 75,000 in one day (Mar 2008)

15. When “best practices” aren’t best

16. Public launch (Sep 2008): Time to get real

19. Cost per acquisition: $233-$388

20. Cost per acquisition: $233-$388 For a $99 product. Fail.

25. Fourteen Months to the Epiphany

26. Why were conventional techniques failing, yet we were still succeeding?

28. Typical Dropbox User

31. Trailing 30 days (Apr 2010) : users sent 2.8 million direct referral invites

34. Thank you! Questions? @drewhouston