DropBox Demo on HackerTube: recommended by 4 Hacker News commenters across 4 separate months, 2012–2024.
demo · evergreen
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.
HN cites it as the classic example of validating a product idea with a demo video, and many recall how compelling it was.
“I still remember seeing the original 5 minute demo (1). My jaw was on the floor, I instantly needed it.”
10 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
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
in “How to win as a first time founder - a Drew Houston Manifesto” · View on HN
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
in “Show HN: Dewhale – GitHub-Powered AI for effortless development” · View on HN
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.
in “Dropbox Chief to Join Elite Ranks of Idea-to-I.P.O. Founders” · View on HN
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
in “Dropbox Is Getting Ready for IPO” · View on HN
Show it to the users in person as soon as possible and ask for feedback if you can. I have personally carried around an iPad around an expo hall demoing an MVP multiple times. You can also record a low budget demo of your product, and ask for user feedback. The best example of this is when Drew Houston created a demo video of what appears to be a working product. Apparently some of the video is mocked out and was edited and uses camera tricks. Even to this day, it looks like a solid working product. ▶ this video
in “Ask HN: How to show a not “so perfect” MVP to potential customers?” · View on HN
Funny you mention Dropbox because they did exactly what you say not to do, provide a video demo that doesn't actually work, it just looks like it's working [0]. Their Show HN thread has more details [1]. In general though, you definitely should work on figuring out if customers want your product without building it if at all possible, and most times it is possible. I run a SaaS that's a project management tool (todo list + calendar, basically, at [link] ) and the main page is simply a video demo that I made with Figma and an animation tool called Principle. People signed up and it works great for showing users what they'd be getting in the future. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link]
in “How and when to acquire SaaS users” · View on HN
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 folder full of markdown files. At an interval or when one changes, there's a hook that automatically updates the content of my site. (similar to the way a static site can be made to rebuild and deploy on push). I assumed the one time pricing was because this was a desktop software that handled that process. I looked around the page for extra info about installation and how it works – I wanted to avoid having to watch a fluffy howto video. This didn't work, and I gave in and watched the video. I was happy to see it's only :57 – you might call this out on the page, it would have made me more likely to click, knowing it's short. With that said, the video was illuminating but had some major issues. It starts too slow (slides) and promptly gets WAY too fast (screencap). "Sync your blog posts with d
in “Show HN: Convert a Markdown Doc to WordPress Posts and Pages” · View on HN
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
in “Dropbox Drops Photo Galleries” · View on HN
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.
in “Ask HN: How do you validate your ideas?” · View on HN
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 with Twitter, then yes, you'd have to release a better product. But then, you're not building an MVP. You're not 'testing the market'. The point of an MVP is to see whether or not people even want it. To see if you're actually solving a problem. To see if anyone will pay for it. If you're testing out a truly new idea, then that's what you need -- to get it in front of customers ASAP to find out if anyone is willing to pay for or use your app at all. Dropbox started out with just a video[1]. No working product whatsoever. He figured if he could show people what his software aimed to do, then he could find out if they'd pay for it. The alternative was to spend a year or two building a product that he couldn't sell. Why waste a year of his life? [1] - ▶ this video
in “Why do people keep creating small useless apps in the weekend?” · View on HN