Drew Houston on Being Rejected from YC

so you were in Y Combinator with Dropbox in the summer 2007 that's right how did you come up with the idea and end up at YC in the first place well I had the idea that it was born out of frustration so I kept forgetting my thumb drive this origin story of the company was when I riding the Chinatown bus from Boston New York and forgot my thumb drive and couldn't get anything done on the trip and then I had another problem which is I had it I was working on my first company which we can talk about and I had a real pain point around collaborating with my co-founder around the things that we were working on so but his personal frustration I'd hacked together all these scripts to try to fix it but then that bus ride was the last straw you would you mentioned you're the first company would applied to YC before we were rejected you're rejected for the first I was either earth or a really good call it was a good call it was so viced my first company is called accolade and I was doing online SAT prep because we realized back in the day the SAT was changing and no one had really built a good online course and so started that company applied to IC rejected largely because we were both my co-founder never with part-time on it a couple other reasons to market size probably some other stuff did you interview what were you two rejected without him we were rejected without an interview Wow I don't think I knew that and you didn't and you came back the next batch when I I got a little more feedback from about what what happened and some of the concerns were the ones I said about my co-founder and I didn't know each other super well neither of us was a full-time on it just a market what happened was we kept working on the company until I started Dropbox and then I was sort of drifted apart how did you guys validate the need for Dropbox I've heard stories although may be apocryphal that you posted on reddit but like if they wanted something like Dropbox well the first real test was I made I made a demo video because and there's initially just to get into I see because the whole Y Combinator application process was pretty similar to the world where I came from which was college admissions and test prep and one of the things you can do to give yourself an edge and admissions it's just do something different so I knew everybody's kind of a demo link in their application or whatever that would be but I thought this was something that would really that Dropbox would was something I would really appeal to the to the hacker news audience and it was really to get him to YC where I made this three-minute demo video some music equipment that I had for my band and I put it on Hacker News that stay at the top hacker news for two days I got that thing I was looking for which is the email from Paul I think I didn't want was that you also need a co-founder in three weeks but that was the first I think we did that at least we did that at least twice first again do I see them to get some build some momentum around the company there's this infinite infamous comment either on that poster a future one you made probably that one where someone's like I think the stupidest thing I've ever heard of like don't these people know that w get exists you can just use that no one needs a company for this right we send that around to other founders when they get demotivated because people shed on their idea yeah her reddit or something oh we were getting it from all the actions you

Channel: Y Combinator Clips

Views: 4,027

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Drew Houston, YC, Y Combinator, Interview, Sam Altman, Dropbox

Id: O3aqDXHBHe0

Length: 3min 47sec (227 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2017