Dropbox YC Application

Summer 2007Public

Dropbox went through Y Combinator in the Summer 2007 batch as a B2B company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Summer 2007
Industry: B2BProductivity
Team size: 4000
Status: Public
Launched: 2012

Founders

Drew HoustonFounder/CEO
Arash FerdowsiFounder

What Dropbox does

Dropbox is building the world’s first smart workspace. Back in 2007, making work better for people meant designing a simpler way to keep files in sync. Today, it means designing products that reduce busywork so you can focus on the work that matters. Most “productivity tools” get in your way. They constantly ping, distract, and disrupt your team’s flow, so you spend your days switching between apps and tracking down feedback. It’s busywork, not the meaningful stuff. We want to change this. We believe there’s a more enlightened way to work. Dropbox helps people be organized, stay focused, and get in sync with their teams.

Dropbox's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Dropbox, Summer 2007 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Dropbox

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

Backup and share files in the cloud.

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

A service that keeps your files in sync across all your computers and the web automatically. Drop a file in one folder and it appears everywhere, backed up and shareable. It just works, with no manual uploading, USB drives, or emailing files to yourself.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

Cambridge, USA / San Francisco, USA.

Explain your decision regarding location.

The Bay Area has the infrastructure engineering talent and investors who understand consumer software at scale, which is what building reliable cross-platform sync requires.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Dropbox YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Dropbox's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Dropbox would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.