Dropbox：2500万用户，仍在继续增长
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许多硅谷人都知道，只有极少数新创企业能取得成功。而且即便真的成功了，也只有很少的企业能在如此短的时间里，达到Dropbox那样的增长。从2010年1月开始，由首席执行官杜鲁•休斯顿和首席技术官阿拉什•费得沃斯领导的文件同步与分享公司Dropbox发展迅猛，虽然在广告上的投入为零，但该公司的用户从400万增长至2500万人，日文件存储量达到2亿之多。休斯顿表示，这完全得益于口耳相传：30%的新注册用户来自Dropbox的用户推荐计划，每一次成功的推荐，可以为推荐人带来250MB免费的额外存储空间；还有20%的用户是被Dropbox便捷的文件分享功能吸引来的。另外，虽然Dropbox的重心在个人用户，但仍吸引到成百上千家企业用户，其中包括美联航（United Airlines）、红牛（Red Bull）和Tishman Construction，后者是纽约市新的世贸中心一期（One World Trade Center）的建筑监理商。 上周，休斯顿来到《财富》（Fortune）的办公室，与我们探讨了Dropbox的发展方向。概述如下： ----- 像Dropbox这样的新创公司，增长速度很快并且拥有大量极度忠实的用户，就应该志存高远。这无疑是首席执行官杜鲁•休斯顿目前的想法。他正在探索如何把这家4岁的文件同步及分享新创企业带向主流市场。 虽然一些热衷于技术的《财富》读者表示没人不知道Dropbox，但说不定有些读者还不太了解，所以我还是简要介绍一下。休斯顿毕业于麻省理工学院，2007年，在Y Combinator基金的资助下，他和同学阿拉什•费得沃斯一道创立了Dropbox。用户能将照片、个人文档、音乐等数码文件存储在Dropbox的“电子保险箱内”，并能用任何联网设备访问和分享它们。使用Dropbox非常简单：下载工具、创建账号和文件夹，然后开始使用。 Dropbox并不是第一个提供此类服务的公司，PogoPlug和SugarSync等公司都向个人用户提供类似服务，不过许多硅谷人以及越来越多的硅谷以外的人似乎对Dropbox情有独钟。该公司表示超过80%的《财富》美国100强公司在正式或非正式地使用其服务。 Dropbox的快速发展和声名远播让休斯顿本人都感到吃惊。Dropbox有超过45名员工，这些人经常能听到关于Dropbox如何提高人们生活质量，以及帮助他们解决某些难题的故事。 休斯顿很喜欢提到来自于一位天文学家的一个故事。最开始这位天文学家的团队每天要花费3小时，将来自于望远镜的图片在芬兰、波士顿和新墨西哥州之间相互传送，而现在他们使用Dropbox保存并随时同步这些望远镜图片。 休斯顿表示：“Dropbox让他们从早上9点开始工作，而不用晚上12点开始。” Dropbox获得了很多类似好评，休斯顿因此开始考察如何将Dropbox整合到更多的产品里去。 休斯顿表示：“2007年，iPhone和iPad还未诞生，但如今，大家都在使用手机拍照，都在将各种数据上传到iPad和Facebook上去。明天，就将是电视机、摄像头和汽车。未来几年，将会涌现出无数联网设备。” 休斯顿认为数据存储将发生根本性变革，而且现在已经开始，我们的设备都开始无缝连接到云网络里。（看看谷歌即将推出的Chrome操作系统笔记本，以及苹果那时尚有余，但存储空间不够的MacBook就知道了。）Dropbox提供了便捷的文件同步和云数据存储功能，能将你所有的设备与互联网服务连为一体，不管它们是在网上还是在你的卧室、口袋或是汽车里。 休斯顿说：“我们所创建的服务能取代硬件存储装置。想想未来的情形吧。你可能有20TB（兆兆字节）的数据要处理，不过你仅仅只有200G（千兆字节）的固态硬盘（SSD，solid state disk drive）。我们能解决这类问题。我们能解除几十亿人在使用计算机时面对的基础性硬件设备限制，帮助他们处理越来越复杂的数据，让他们的烦恼一扫而空。 休斯顿及其团队还在考察互联网服务的整合：将Dropbox按钮整合到第三方服务中，例如快门网（Shutterfly）这种适合社交分享的照片发布网站。理论上讲，点击Dropbox按钮能让用户快速地将照片存储在自己的账号里，这将节约他们上传的时间。如果能实现这个级别的协同，那意味着Dropbox将成为真正的服务平台。 为了实现这个目标，Dropbox计划在今年将团队扩充一倍。虽然休斯顿并没有太多表示，但他暗示更多的风险投资是必不可少的。（他表示：“我们正在替换成千上万的硬盘，而替换这类设备需要资金。”） Dropbox野心勃勃？确实是。不过，任何企业家都会告诉你，弄明白如何利用Dropbox这样的成功，这样的“问题”可谓求之不得。 译者：项航 |
As many in Silicon Valley know, very few start-ups succeed, and even if they do, even fewer stumble upon the kind of growth Dropbox has in such little time. But since January 2010, CEO Drew Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi's file-syncing and sharing service has exploded, from 4 million to 25 million, with 200 million files now saved daily, despite having spent zero dollars on advertising. According to Houston, it's all thanks to word of mouth: 30% of new sign-ups now come via its user referral program, where users get a free, additional 250 MB for each successful referral, while 20% are due to its easy file-sharing features. And despite Dropbox's focus on consumers, it counts hundreds of thousands of businesses among its userbase now, including United Airlines (UAUA), Red Bull, and Tishman Construction, the construction manager for One World Trade Center in New York City. Houston dropped by the Fortune offices last week to discuss where his company is headed. Here's a recap: ----- When you're a start-up like Dropbox with rapid growth and fiercely loyal userbase, it's all right to think big. Certainly that's how CEO Drew Houston is thinking now, as he figures out how to take the four-year-old file-syncing and sharing start-up mainstream. In case you're not already familiar with Dropbox -- and as more tech-savvy Fortune readers pointed out after our recent story, who isn't? -- here's a quick refresher. Houston, an MIT grad, co-founded the Y Combinator start-up in 2007 with fellow student Arash Ferdowsi, with the goal of letting users store digital files -- photos, personal documents, music -- in an electronic locker accessible and shareable over any Internet-connected device. The key was keeping things simple: download the utility, create an account and folder, and go. Dropbox isn't the first product of its kind, and there's no shortage of consumer-facing contenders like PogoPlug and the SugarSync, but it's a service that many in -- and increasingly outside -- Silicon Valley seem to swear by. Meanwhile, the company claims more than 80% of Fortune 100 companies use Dropbox, either officially or, ahem, not. For Houston, who visited Fortune last week, its rapid growth and buzz-worthiness surprises even him. The 45-plus team regularly hears tales of how Dropbox improved their lives or saved them in particular instances. Houston likes to bring up one story from an astronomer. Instead of having to spend three hours each morning transferring images from the telescope to staffers among Finland, Boston and New Mexico, his team of star watchers use Dropbox to keep large photo images from their telescope synced among locations at all times. "For them, Dropbox is the difference between starting work at 9 AM versus 12 PM," Houston says. With testimonials like that in tow, he's looking into how to integrate Dropbox into more products. "In 2007, there was no iPhone, no iPad, but now today, normal people are taking pictures with their phone and putting things on their iPads or on their Facebook," he says. "Tomorrow, it's going to be your TV, and your camera and your car. There's just going to be billions of things with on-switches coming out over the next several years that are going to be shipping over the next several years." Houston envisions a fundamental shift, one that's starting to happen already, where all your devices are seamlessly connected portals to content in the cloud. (One need look no further than Google's (GOOG) upcoming Chrome OS notebooks or Apple's (AAPL) snazzy, but storage-poor MacBook Air for evidence of what's coming down the pike.) So the Dropbox of today, a simple file-syncing and cloud data repository -- becomes a service that links all your devices and web services together, whether they're on the Web, in your living room, your pocket, or driveway. "The kinds of things we're building are going to make the hard drive go away," says Houston. Thinking way down the road, he continues, "you might have 20 terabytes of stuff, but it'll be OK that you [only] have a 200 gigabyte SSD [solid state disk drive]. We'll just make it work. It's eliminating those basic limitations and frustrations that a couple billion people have with using their computers and helping people cope with the increasing complexity of these things, that silent kind of pain point." Houston and crew are also looking into web services integration: a Dropbox button integrated into third-party services like social sharing-friendly photo publishing tool Shutterfly. Clicking the Dropbox button would in theory quickly allow the user to access photos stored in their accounts and cut down on unnecessary upload times. Mastering that level of synergy is when the company believes it'll become a true platform. To achieve that, Dropbox plans to double its staff this year, and though Houston won't say as much, he implies that more funding from venture capitalists is inevitable. ("We're basically replacing tens of millions of hard drives and replacing that kind of infrastructure will require capital," he concedes.) Ambitious? Sure. But as any entrepreneur will tell you, figuring out how to capitalize on success like Dropbox's is the best kind of problem to have. |
