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Drew Houston

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118
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2018-08-27
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2018-08-27
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1
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  1. “Yeah, so for the sake of starting, or if the subject of the class were starting a company. Or evolving from being an engineer to being a business person, I have a few, I have a handful of books that I really love and the concepts that I use and think about every day. So probably my two favorites are high output management by Andy Grove, which Andy Grove was the CEO of Intel, which was kind of the Google of its time back particularly back in the 80s and early 90s. One of the founding engineers and then rose the ranks at Intel and became CEO. So he's lived this path. And when I read about it, or I heard about this book and it was introduced to me as the best book on management ever written, and I agree. And it just breaks down all the mechanics of...”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “When you're 21 and you've never had a real job, you're reading this book and you sort of get a general sense for things, but you don't really deeply understand the concepts. And then coming back five years later, ten years later, you can really absorb a lot more of the material. So I read a lot of books in general, and then when I'm reading a book, I'll triage them like, okay, is this something I need to study? Is it something that's interesting or that I might need to know something about or is it just fun? And if you study it, if I'm like, I need to study this book, then I approach it pretty differently than if it's just entertainment.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “I have. I mean, I'd say there are a lot of, you read a lot of books, not all of them are as good as the innovator's dilemma, but then it also helps to revisit some of the classics. Innovator's Dilemmas of actually both of those books are good examples. So yeah, I do revisit them because again.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “And it's a big part of those themes are why startups can succeed and thrive even when they're big competitors who you would think would just wipe them out. And so how that cycle works. And then there's a book called Crossing the Chasm, which is another classic. It's a book on marketing, technology marketing. It's like how do technology products make their way from early adopters to the mainstream?”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Yes, so in that negotiation class, there's a book called Getting the Yes, which is about principal negotiation. And I still think about a lot of those. I still think about and apply a lot of those concepts today. And then some of the, so part of it was just kind of doing a random walk on Amazon. But I also became friends with the founders of the companies where I worked. And during lunch breaks or at other times, I'd go like chase them down and bug them and ask some questions about like, hey, how do you start a company? Like, do you have any book recommendations? Just making that, you know, kind of taking advantage of being the bright-eyed bushy-tailed intern and shaking down my boss or my...”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “In a way where I was like, actually, this is a lot more straightforward than some of the theoretical math classes I have to take. And it's a lot more applicable to my daily life. And so I started to, I really appreciated learning a little bit about a lot of different disciplines and just putting up a folding chair on my roof was the first thing that came to mind as far as how I could actually do that.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “A cultural meme at MIT, and I think it just creates a huge blind spot for people, both because it makes them less effective, but it's also the stuff is actually really interesting. But I kept having experiences like that and the emotional intelligence was just one example, but I took a class on negotiation at MIT, which sort of opened my eyes a notch further on this kind of thing where I'm like, all right, negotiation, I go into that class, I don't know a lot about it. I'm like, whoever yells louder, lies more, smacks the table harder. I guess that's what makes you a good negotiator. And then this class, like, I mean, those are tactics. But the class has these frameworks where, okay, smart people have thought about this, and they've broken it down. And it turns out that there's a whole process of uncovering mutual interests and figuring out what your leverage is and your best alternative. And so, and spelling it out.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Well, I think it was a little of both. So certainly starting the company made it a necessity and created a lot of additional motivation. But the experience, I also found these other topics just as interesting as the engineering. And I think it's a big cultural when engineers start off by being dismissive or defensive about the technology is all that matters or if it doesn't have a triple integral in Greek letters, it doesn't count. Certainly like a...”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “And I was like, oh my God, this has just nonfiction, but it spelled out something that was, I just didn't know you could kind of break down in a logical way. And suddenly I have this understanding about the world that I didn't have before. And so that was important because it sort of was sort of one of a bunch of early examples that anything is trainable. And it got me on a path to developing what we'd now call a growth mindset and realizing that's possible to learn about these things where you have no experience or where it's easy to be like, oh, I don't know about that. Or I'm just an engineer. I'm not a business person and kind of shatter that misconception.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “But I was pretty systematic about it. I'm like, okay, here's all the stuff that I don't know. And then reading is going to be a good way to get me introduced to all these topics. And all of that, maybe the first instance of that was when... I went through my high school, and there were a lot of great books that you read as part of your high school curriculum. But then I stumbled across a book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “And strategy, like these are all things, and all I know is I don't know a lot about them. I had the highly scientific method of, I just was like, all right, I'm just going to go on Amazon, type in sales, buy the top three or four books, and just do that for every category. And then I had a couple book recommendations from one of the founders of one of the companies where I worked as well. But it was great. And it was an important combination. So if one was actually starting the company gaming motivation to really learn the stuff because I think a lot of times when you're reading, it can just be entertainment, basically. It's like something where you just read the book. You're like, that's interesting, but then don't use the knowledge. But we're actually starting a company, then you really have an excuse to internalize and really study the material. So there's a big difference between reading the material and studying it. Totally.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Anyway, we can build a much better experience if we do it online. So I was really excited about starting a company and we jumped into it and I think we met in a chillies and like we're planning world domination and figuring out how do you incorporate a company. And so it's really great introduction to the world of starting companies. The more I learned about the mechanics of starting a company, the more I realized I didn't know about business. And I knew a lot about engineering and programming. And I'd worked at startups. But when it came to, but it was kind of, there was a fog beyond just like building the product. And so I was like, all right, we're going to need, I know like sales and marketing and”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Yeah, so it was about my junior year of. Undergrad. I took a leave of absence because I had an idea for a startup that I wanted to pursue. So I took a year off to do that. What I noticed was that this was back in the year.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Athletes. And I was not like. A super social, but I had a good group of friends. And then for sure as I went into college, I became a lot more social and just curious about humans and human behavior. But otherwise, I think people, I would have been known in class as always doing I think there were like those superlatives in yearbooks. I think I was most likely to start a company or...”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Yeah, I think somewhere in the middle. So I wasn't reclusive. I had a really great group of friends. I wasn't captain of the soccer team either. I did academic decathlon, which is just a fascinating thing that it exists. But more of a math leap than...”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “About as much as I enjoy the babysitting lifestyle, you get like three bucks an hour and eat some Pringles, watch some HBO. It's not that bad. But programming is even better. Anyway. But in middle school and in high school, I ended up getting a bunch of programming internships or summer jobs at startups basically. One of the most remote, most of them are local, but then that got me on a path of starting companies and being involved in startups. But I would say those are probably the biggest when it comes to Dropbox and everything that kind of followed after from my childhood. It was happy childhood, lots of Say it was still pretty balanced, but I did like programming and engineering was for sure my first love.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “And so for sure, I was super interested in computers and technology and started out by playing computer or video games, basically. That was like the first interest. And then I wanted to make my own computer games. I thought that my career was going to be starting a computer game company. And I thought that there would be nothing better than that. But I was that kid. So I learned programming at an early age. I grew up in just outside of Boston, so I grew up in New England. And then on my way to MIT, I really liked math, science. So kind of out of central casting in terms of being a computer science student. And then I got, my first career was babysitting, but then I discovered that you could be paid to program, and then that caused a bit of a career shift.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “So, yeah, going way back. Well, first I I was definitely that kid who was on computers. So my parents, I remembered just toddling into my living room and seeing this glowing orb and all these buttons and those were two things I really liked when I was three. I guess still do.”

    2018-08-27 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #334: Drew Houston — The Billionaire Founder of Dropbox · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT