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Drew Houston: Investors Said Online Storage Is a Commodity. He Asked Them One Question.

By Drew Houston · Startup Growth · 1 min read

Houston heard every objection — Google will do this, it's a commodity, you don't have structural advantages. His response: do you use any of the 50 products that already exist? They'd say no. He'd say: isn't that interesting.

Key Points

Online storage was the startup cliché — investors said Google would crush them
Houston agreed with every objection but realized none of them were causal
His killer question to investors: there are 50 of these things — do you use any of them? No.

I'd ask investors: there are 50 of these things out there. Do you use any of them? They'd say no. And I'd say: isn't that interesting.

The Hacker News Moment

Houston: I made this 3-minute demo video with some music equipment I had from my band. Put it on Hacker News. It stayed at the top of Hacker News for two days. I got the email from Paul Graham I was looking for.

There's this infamous comment on that post — someone said this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Don't these people know that rsync exists? You can just use that. No one needs a company for this. We send that around to other founders when they get demotivated.

Someone said it's the stupidest thing they've ever heard of. We send that comment to founders when they get demotivated.

Constant Negativity

Houston: That is always going to happen. We experienced it from before we founded the company and all the way to now. When you zoom out, you realize that Apple, quarter after quarter, can post the best revenue, most profit of any company in business history. And the next day — 'but they're really dead now.'

You have to appreciate that's human nature. You have to simultaneously have thick skin and tune things out, but also thin skin — if your customers are unhappy or your team is unhappy, you have to respond. That's a weird dynamic.

Apple can post the most profit of any company in history. Next day: but they're really dead now.

The Killer Question

Houston: We got a lot of pushback from investors. Google's going to do this. It's a commodity. Online storage was the startup cliché. And frankly I agreed with them. Yeah, Google can probably do this. We don't have a lot of structural advantages. We're not sure how we're going to make money.

But just because other folks have done something doesn't mean it's inherently a bad idea. I would ask investors — do you use any of these? There are 50 of these things out there. Do you use any of them? They would say no. And I'd say: yeah, isn't that interesting.

There are 50 of these things out there. Do you use any of them? No. Isn't that interesting.