Category Archives: Mobile

The story of Dropbox

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Drew Houston, Founder of Dropbox

Drew Houston, Founder of Dropbox. Click on the cover to access Forbes' article

I’m not sure if anyone of you is using Dropbox, but if you don’t, give it a shot. I do use it, well, daily, but without even thinking about it!

It’s a great system to automatically back up and synchronise any file online, from – and to – several devices. And it’s free for up to 8Gb of storage (96% of their users!). I love it!

Forbes actually just released a brilliant article about the company: Dropbox: The Inside Story of Tech’s Hottest Startup

Well worth a read, it’s a brilliant company founded by a very driven and talented entrepreneur; who is also determined to grow his own company as he refused a multi-million dollar buyout offer from Apple!

What I love about Dropbox is that it seems like such an obvious and simple idea, yet it’s a powerful tool, that works wonderfully and seamlessly. Too many tech companies nowadays try to have too many features and their product then becomes cluttered, clunky and not user friendly. With, it’s the opposite, it does something simple (in appearance, I’m not talking about the technology behind!), but does it perfectly, in a very streamlined way!

I think that is something so key in business: you don’t need to do something complex, you can do something simple and you will succeed if you make sure that you are the best at doing it; and that you solve an actual problem.

The article also asks a great question though: can Dropbox survive the arrival of iCloud and the probable arrival of a competing product from Google? Will they shine or be the next MySpace? Any thoughts?

Make some money by sharing your bathroom?

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An interesting concept from new US start up CLOO: share your loos with strangers (or quasi strangers)!

It’s simple, just download the Cloo app on your iphone, and start sharing access to your loo with your social networking friends, and the friends of your friends, and everytime someone wants to use your loo, they pay you a small fee. The company is also planning to attract sponsorship from toilet paper companies!

I have to admit that I find the project a bit… quirky(that’s the best word I can find)?. I can’t think of many people I know who would be keen to participate by sharing their loos or going to a stranger’s place to relieve their bladders!

In short, I find the idea quite amusing, but wouldn’t use it and even less invest my money in a start up that I believe will be flushed away fairly quickly!

 

 

 

CLOO’ from Hillary Young on Vimeo.