Dropbox: Drew Houston

**Guy Raz** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:10)
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**Guy Raz** (0:39)
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**Drew Houston** (2:15)
I'm trying to work these different leads on co-founders and then I had met this kid, Kyle. And so Kyle's like, hey, you should talk to my friend Arash.

**Guy Raz** (2:23)
And what do you know about Arash at that point?

**Drew Houston** (2:25)
Virtually nothing.

**Guy Raz** (2:26)
Just a recommendation from somebody else is like, hey, this guy, he might be a good co-founder.

**Drew Houston** (2:31)
Yeah. And he's still in school, right? So we get together in the student center and just start hashing it out.
And that was what was so crazy. I was just like, you gotta drop out of school to do this. And I'm like, all right, I'm expecting to have to talk to the parents and like do all this stuff and he just bounces. A couple of days later, he had just dropped out of school.

**Guy Raz** (2:57)
From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz and on today's show, how Drew Houston came up with the idea for Dropbox on the day he forgot to bring his thumb drive for a weekend in New York, and how that idea grew into a multi-billion dollar business.
I probably don't have to explain why walkie talkies are sold in multiples. Yes, in practice, you could use just one, I suppose, maybe to scan the frequencies or eavesdrop on other two-way radios, or you could just talk into it and hope someone hears you, but that's no fun and not really what these things were designed to do. To get the most out of a walkie talkie, ideally you have someone else or even lots of other people talking on the same channel.
And this idea is basically what venture capitalists and other investors call the network effect. And in the past few years, products that grow through networks have become extremely attractive to these investors. And why? Because the network effect allows a product to grow on its own without a whole lot of marketing. So here's an example. Someone sends you a survey to complete and the survey was created using SurveyMonkey. You fill it out and send it back. And by doing that, you have seamlessly become a SurveyMonkey user. And the next time you want to create a survey, you are likely to use SurveyMonkey. It's the same story for Calendly. When someone invites you to schedule a meeting, you get an email from Calendly inviting you to use the service as well. Slack works in a similar way. If one person on a team uses it, the rest of the team will jump on as well. It's a concept called product-led growth. If you use it, your friends have to use it to engage with you. And then you are all users and the product grows and grows and grows.