DropBox Demo
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as the classic example of validating a product idea with a demo video, and many recall how compelling it was.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2012 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec aresant · 2013-12 · on “How to win as a first time founder - a Drew Houston Manifesto”
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) [this video]
Recommends justboxing · 2017-07 · on “Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO”
Not sure about the code, but here's the original Demo Video Drew had on their getdropbox.com landing page. It presents the features in a very entertaining way :) [ Sep 15th 2008 ] DropBox Demo [this video]
Recommends murukesh_s · 2018-03 · on “Dropbox Chief to Join Elite Ranks of Idea-to-I.P.O. Founders”
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.) [this 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.
Recommends pedalpete · 2024-01 · on “Show HN: Dewhale – GitHub-Powered AI for effortless development”
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. [this video]
Cites bmelton · 2012-05 · on “Why do people keep creating small useless apps in the weekend?”
They exist NOW because of their extended feature set, and that they were able to monetize all the data they found that they had access to. They existed originally because they had a dirt-simple microblogging application that people liked. If they had spent a year developing it and people didn't like it, they would have wasted that year. The goal of an MVP is to do exactly what you say is so valuable -- get customer feedback. If you're solving a problem that people have, it doesn't matter if your application is ugly or has all the features it might have a year from now -- it only matters that it exist in whatever minimal form it can exist in that solves that problem. If you wanted to compete
Cites bjones53 · 2014-09 · on “Ask HN: How do you validate your ideas?”
Validation is often oversimplified. Driving traffic to a landing page validate's that you're good at marketing; signups validate interest from consumers; feedback provides insight for product development. However, none of these actions validate your idea. Product demo videos provide people the context they require to properly assess the value of your idea. The best demo videos quickly describe the value of the product and then provide a use case which creates context for the audience. Finally, they end with a QUICK walk-through. Drew Houston launched Dropbox with a product demo [this video] . Try to think of validation as an ongoing process and product demos as the next step.
Cites leipert · 2017-07 · on “Dropbox Drops Photo Galleries”
Funny, it seems that it has been a feature since the first day. Just yesterday I watched this [1] first demo of dropbox which notably mentioned the feature [1]: [this video]
Cites RickS · 2018-11 · on “Show HN: Convert a Markdown Doc to WordPress Posts and Pages”
This is a brilliant idea. Wishing you well. I'm a .com user so I can't use this (though I'd like to), but here's a walkthrough of all my thoughts as I interacted with your page, and some notes about how you might improve the site given my experience. To others reading, if you'd like a more formalized version of this type of feedback for your own products, including split testing recommendations designed to help validate the hypotheses, I'm available for consulting and my email's in my profile. Cheers! --------- "wow, this is a great idea" At this point, I fundamentally misunderstood what your product was. Here's what I thought it was, that it seemingly isn't: I maintain a local dropdown fold