[arikrak]

I only started the article, but it's too over-the-top to continue. I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that?

> Dropbox has the distinction of being the only cloud service—and perhaps the only startup—ever to compete simultaneously against Apple ($748 billion market cap), Google ($369 billion), Microsoft ($357 billion), Amazon ($173 billion), and Tencent ($160 billion).

> Unlike his amply financed competitors, which were all founded during the desktop computing era, Houston has been embedded in the cloud for eight years, ever since launching Dropbox in 2007.

> No one yet dominates the new global network, but Dropbox just may be the most adroit cloud company in the world, the one that has solved more problems for its users than any other.

[sytelus]

It's indeed a huge surprise that Dropbox is alive and well in 2015 when every major titan has similar offering for free. However I didn't knew Drew Houston was still that interested in Dropbox and my impression is that there is nothing new happening at Dropbox for years from development perspective. For example, basic things like showing long file names in tablets like iPad is completely broken for years and no one is fixing it. It appears to me Drew Houston is realizing that IPO is the only option for exit and starting a huge PR effort. Be prepared for lots of articles like this in coming months.

[shanemhansen]

It's called native advertising and unfortunately it's what publications are betting on to survive in an era of ad blockers.

[shostack]

On legit publications, native advertising simply means an ad unit that is tailored to fit the site design/flow or quite often a more editorially formatted ad unit. However it will always have some sort of ad indicator or the company would lose the trust of their readers.

Not saying press for dollars doesn't happen, but native advertising is something very specific. I highly recommend you familiarize yourself with the IAB's definition and recommended guidelines[1]. Large online brands follow these because they want to say they are IAB compliant for brand conscious advertisers with big media budgets.

[1] http://www.iab.net/nativeadvertising

[Angostura]

So you're saying that Dropbox paid Fastcompany to run this piece?

[shanemhansen]

I'm not saying Dropbox paid Fastcompany to run this piece. I was responding to: "I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that?".

Native advertising is a thing, one I wasn't aware of until recently.

[capkutay]

"I wonder how you get media to write about your startup like that?"

I'm sure being a cheerleader for big companies with massive PR budgets is a nice revenue stream for these online media outlets.

[boomzilla]

Remember when Google was trying to fly under the radar because they were afraid that Microsoft would find out how much money they were making selling ads on search result pages. Anyone knows if any company is doing that today? It seems we only know about start-up companies through PR pieces (oh pardon me, I mean objective journalism of the highest quality).

[funkyy]

Kickstarter and Cloudflare - both have been keeping all their financials in the secret until they have murdered most of the competition. Most of the users would come from word of mouth.

[capkutay]

I feel like that's almost impossible to do today especially with enterprise products (e.g. google selling ads to businesses). I think people now are accustomed to using products they've come across online and anything else is too foreign and strange.

[bane]

This is getting a bit meta https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9292110

[arfar]

Are you quoting yourself, quoting yourself?

[bane]

Pretty much :)