I recently got one at the 295/year forever discount. Immediately applied a 10% discount to our AT&T bill and booked a hotel room thus the card paid for itself and then some in about 10 minutes.
From my understanding some of the discounts swap out regularly. For instance the UPS and FedEx ones are gone.
So it kind of depends on what you do. If you travel once or twice a year it might be a good go. I'd try to get the 295 price if possible. At 295 I'd highly recommend it. At 495 you'd need to spend some time looking at their discounts and seeing if the economics work.
"Houston cut Jobs’ pitch short: He was determined to build a big company, he said, and wasn’t selling, no matter the status of the bidder" Props to Drew. I don't think many other entrepreneurs would've been as zealous and decline such an offer.
Nine figures buyout? You really do have to believe in your future success to turn that down, especially as a two year old company and long before the current milestones.
That kind of money, Drew's payout would have been substantial, enough to bankroll any project he could dream of (or live comfortably forever).
I'm sure he's flying high right now, but I think he's foolish to turn down an offer like that in the same way Groupon was foolish to turn down Google's 11 digit offer.
Sure, one could argue that money is less important than achieving a vision, but with that kind of money, Drew could work on 5 additional visions of similar size, knowing his product was in good hands.
It takes real balls and vision to turn down that much money.
The thing is, without having the confidence to be able to turn down millions, it's unlikely one will ever be able to build a product worth millions. Those in it for the quick buck usually will fold under the slightest bit of trouble.
I'd think it's a deliberate design choice having it this way. If you think about it, paying only for actually used space would mean a lot smaller income for the company.
Maybe it would also erode the magic in it - people would start thinking if they should have this and that files on Dropbox or not. Or accidentally piling up huge bills doing some mistake managing their files...
I don't know about that. Sure, there are some people using 5-10GB of a 50GB account, but I'm sure there are lots of people that are sticking with the free account when they'd gladly pay a little bit $1-$2 for slightly more storage, and people at the other end that are either frustrated by the 100GB limit or haven't even bothered using the service because they know they need to store more than 100GB.
I trust Dropbox has done extensive market research and concluded that having two price tiers, plus the other benefits that come with such simplified pricing, outweigh the flexibility of usage-based pricing.
This is totally self serving (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3126173). If you're on the free plan, you should be able to max out your referrals at somewhere between 8-10GB of free space for you (they may have lowered it). I got 30 referrals for less than $10....give it a shot, I've had friends try this recently and they didn't end up spending more than $15.
The problem is distribution. Not many people outside the technical/hacker community are even aware what Linux is, let alone Ubuntu. They need to have more hardware partners that aggressively sell ultracheap laptops/machines. Furthermore these partners need more low entry sales channels like radio shack, walmart, target, or even CVS where more middle class consumers have access to these machines.
I agree. Unless there is a significant push by OEMs, the Linux desktop will never see wide adoption. I wonder what were the reasons for Dell pulling their Ubuntu based options in the US? Inability to provide support, or was it a push by its main OS provider.
This is definitely the case for us. We started the application process earlier but have not submitted until the last hour. We've been updating answer by answer.
From the Marin Independent Journal, the paper of the Ed Catmull's home: "Some people put marketing at the top of ... the success for the business," Catmull added. "What he did was he made the quality of what he was working on the most important thing."
This is completely true. When Pixar bought Disney for -7 billion it completely changed the atmosphere at the Disney Animation studio. The first thing Ed and John did was fire all of the executives who were making story decisions and let the storytellers go back to telling stories. There's still a lot of work to be done but things are finally back on the right track.
"Quality is the best business plan" -- John Lasseter
I've recently learned about a two other connections with Steve Job that friend have had, albiet much smaller than you see written here. One was a friend who's father was asked to make paintings for the Apple product rooms and another who's uncle ran a bicycle shop in PA that Steve would frequent to. Both said, just working with Steve made them want to improve in all aspects.
This just goes to show you why startup hubs matter so much.
