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by MichaelZuo 975 days ago
> Dropbox seems to have gotten it right, it seems. I guess that’s why they’re still in business even though their business is built around a feature, not otherwise a product.

That criticism never made sense to me, especially from Steve Jobs, as a moderate sized team putting their all into an excellent product will be competitive against a larger team putting in a half-hearted effort. As he himself demonstrated.

1 comments

I don’t know about Steve Jobs and iCloud, but Dropbox is the kind of thing that can become table stakes, requiring a large surface of interface (esp relative to its core functionality) vs someone else fitting it into their existing infrastructure (e.g. authentication and other tools). That’s basically the definition of a feature.

They only survive at all bc so many competitive alternatives can’t be bothered to invest in doing a good job.

Like I said a moderate sized team putting their all, going above and beyond, etc..., however you want to phrase it, will be competitive even against a much bigger company putting in a half-hearted effort.

Of course if they slip and only start putting in a 1.5x effort or something then they won't be competitive.