Product life cycle management of Dropbox & It's PLG

1. Dropbox Case Study
Product: Dropbox is a cloud storage service which allows users to
store their data on remote servers. A basic file synchronization
software.
Founded by Drew Huston in 2007
Key selling point: 75% of Dropbox's customers who subscribe to a premium business plan have
linked their Dropbox account to at least one of these third-party services. Dropbox has designed very
clean apps that are easy to navigate. Its subscription services are compatible with many third-party
business apps from companies such as salesforce, Adobe Systems, and many others.
Today, Dropbox boasts more than 500 million registered users. It's added 100 million since the
beginning of 2017. This puts Dropbox at No. 2 in market share with 32%, just behind Google Drive's 36%.
The idea was simple and tough to execute as there were already 80 competitors in the cloud
storage space.
Prob space:
• performance limitations of existing online backup and storage services
• syncing issues
• not user friendly
• existing products were not able to solve the individuals’ problems, this is the reason why
Houston wanted to create a performance advantage for Dropbox
Major competitors: mojy,carbonite
Why it became so hit?
• Making itself available in the earlier days of smartphone adoption: iPhone launched in
same year-2007
• Created a trust amongst users to keep documents handy across multiple devices
(smartphones, pcs)
• Key integrations with third party Apps

2. Tech stack /System design dropbox
2007- simple client server architecture with single DB
2008-13-Load balancer, multiple DBs
2014+- Multiple LBs, DBs

3. We wanted to clearly outline the PLC of dropbox, and the
products built by them at different stages
Development intro Growth Maturity
Product Development-Mid of
2007
Prob space identified
Both founders coded basic file
synchronization software -First
version
Late mover advantage-Found
their niche
2008-Fisrt Version launch
Team only consists of engineers-
only they have to figure out how
to sell.
Innovators
• YC community
• MIT community
Yr. 2008-09
MVP- 3 mins screencast
on hacker news.
Early adopter: Tech
community, Digg, MIT,
tech students’
community
Beta waiting list grown
from 5000 to 75000
overnight
High cac cost-
300$,100k users
Few competitors
Freemium model
adopted
Self-serve strategy
propelled
User base and revenue
model
100M users in 2009
09-13
Competitors entered-G
drive-Apr 2012
Consistent user base-
200M
2.8 m direct referral
invites
FB-Dropbox integration
in 12
Pre-installed Dropbox
app on Samsung Phones
in 13
Combined adoption
Early majority
SME users, individual
users
Late majority
Power users-individual
Sme power users
14+
Late majority:
Enterprise customers
Focus was more generating
revenue from large
enterprise clients-2016-2020
Cash flow positive-2016
Filed IPO in US in 2018
500m customers in 2016
Late majority
Business customers (large
companies)
Software developers’-API
integrations
Microsoft users
Salesforce users
Product
File sharing
Mailbox acquisition
Simple landing page for
signup
-2 side referral
program
-offline access
-file sharing
- cross-platform
-iPhone app
-dropbox integrations-
HelloSign
Dropbox plus
Dropbox paper
Shut of Mailbox
Dropb0x notes launched to
compete google prod g docs
Advance sharing controls
Remote wipe
Extended version history
Valt acquisition
Integration with
salesforce,microsoft

4. SDLC ~DROPBOX
R&d 07 Introduction-08 Growth9-13 Maturity 14+
Evolutionary protyping
Quality was focus
MVP was clear, not many
iterations required
Evolutionary
protyping-mid 08
Agile-post 08
100k users
Post 08-delivery of
product features was a
key and CX was
immense relevant
Users base was high
Agile + scrum
Post massive funding
quick growth was
required in product. Lot
of features were brought
And fastest delivery was
required.
Focus was on business
customers and API
integrations
Agile + scrum
200M users
Doing in batches as they had
to scale in number of prod
features and geographies
Setup their own data Centre
across geographies
-File sharing
-simple client server architecture
Users-
Innovators
Yc community
MIT community
-used Amazon S3
Users~
Individual power users
Diggs community
-offline access
-file sharing
- cross-platform
-iPhone app
-dropbox integrations-
HelloSign
Users- Business power
users
Software developers
Dropbox plus
Dropbox paper
Shut of Mailbox
Dropb0x notes launched to
compete google prod g docs
Advance sharing controls
Remote wipe
Extended version history
Valt acquisition
Users-
Enterprise customers
Microsoft users
Salesforce user
Adobe users
Vodafone users