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DropBox Demo

theragax · 673.9K views · 2008-09-15 · 4:39

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Overview

The original five-minute Dropbox demo video, which presented the product's features before a finished product existed. It was aimed at technical early adopters and became famous as a launch strategy.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as the classic example of validating a product idea with a demo video, and many recall how compelling it was.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2012–2024

Topics

Startups & entrepreneurshipProduct, marketing & sales
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dropboxdrew houstonmvp validationlaunch strategydemo video

What people said

aresant · 2013-12 · Strong recommendation

DropBox is one of the most useful products to come out in the last decade. I still remember seeing the original 5 minute demo (1). My jaw was on the floor, I instantly needed it. And it's still the best, even at a premium price (marked in cost of GB of storage). The article has several interesting points, but the takeaway for me remains "[Solve] a worthy problem." (1) [VIDEO]

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pedalpete · 2024-01 · Recommendation

What was the logic in the name Dewhale? Maybe a better method to showcase would be a walkthrough demo video. If you haven't seen the original dropbox video, it's great format, and really worked for them. [VIDEO]

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murukesh_s · 2018-03 · Recommendation

For anyone who hasn't watched it, checkout the original demo videos made by Drew himself. Video1 (Probably earlier version) [LINK] Video2 (Better than Video1, more witty and well made.) [VIDEO] It's pretty impressive and the product then looked pretty polished (though minimalistic as it is even today) that even after 11 years, it hasn't gone through much changes. One thing that is interesting is that many people use Dropbox as a poster child of MVPs and Lean methodology, but given the possible effort and polish that Drew had put into the product, I am not sure we can call the beta version as an MVP.

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Sources

Video by theragax, played through YouTube.

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