Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox and a pioneer in cloud storage, shares his unique journey with AI, coding over 400 hours with LLMs. He discusses how Dropbox is evolving into an AI-first organization, highlighting innovations like Files GPT and universal search with Dropbox Dash. Drew emphasizes the importance of aligning technology with user needs while navigating data privacy and ethical practices. He explores the transformative potential of AI as a 'silicon brain' for knowledge work, urging a balance between human creativity and AI capabilities.

Dropbox CEO, Drew Houston, discusses the future of AI in tech, remote work challenges, and the importance of adapting to technological advancements. The conversation touches on cloud storage, generative AI, remote work, and the impact of regulations on big platform providers.

Drew Houston, Co-founder and CEO of Dropbox, shares insights from his 17-year journey leading the company. He discusses the crucial leadership lessons learned while battling big tech rivals. The conversation dives into the transformative potential of AI, emphasizing tools like Dropbox Dash that enhance productivity and streamline tasks. Houston reflects on the company's 'memo first' culture, the challenges of early growth and competition, and the strategic decisions in navigating fundraising and infrastructure. A candid take on innovation and adapting to the future of work awaits!

"Write an interesting story, not a perfect story." — Drew HoustonDrew Houston (@DrewHouston) is co-founder and CEO of Dropbox. Since founding the company in 2007 with Arash Ferdowsi, Drew has led the company's growth from a simple idea to a service used by 500 million people around the world.Drew received his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2006. After graduating, he turned his frustration with carrying USB drives and emailing files to himself into a demo for what became Dropbox. Today Dropbox is one of the world's leading business collaboration platforms, with 11 million paying subscribers and 1,800 employees across 12 global offices.Enjoy!This podcast is brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together to create designs they love. Its creative process has become the go-to solution for businesses, agencies, and individuals, and I have used it for years to help with display advertising and illustrations and to rapid prototype the cover for The Tao of Seneca. Whether your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99designs.You can work with multiple designers at once to get a bunch of different ideas, or hire the perfect designer for your project based based on their style and industry specialization. It's simple to review concepts and leave feedback so you'll end up with a design that you're happy with. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade.This podcast is also brought to you by WordPress, my go-to platform for 24/7-supported, zero downtime blogging, writing online, creating websites. I love it to bits, and the lead developer, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times.Whether for personal use or business, you're in good company with WordPress, which is used by The New Yorker, Jay Z, Beyoncé, FiveThirtyEight, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, and Time, just to name a few. A source at Google told me that WordPress offers "the best out-of-the-box SEO imaginable," which is probably why it runs nearly 30% of the Internet. Go to WordPress.com/Tim to get 15% off your website today!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Drew Houston is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Dropbox, for over 700 million users and +600,000 teams, Dropbox is the choice for storing and sharing their most important files. Prior to their IPO in 2018, Drew raised funding from some of the best including Sequoia, Index, Greylock, and IVP to name a few. Drew also currently sits on the board of Meta and is a seasoned angel with a portfolio including Gusto, Scale AI, Pilot and Superhuman to name a few. Prior to Dropbox, Drew founded Accolade, a bootstrapped online SAT prep company he started while in college. In Today's Episode with Drew Houston We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Startups and Y Combinator: How did Drew make his way into the world of startups with an SAT prep planning startup? How did Drew convince Paul Graham to accept him and Dropbox into Y Combinator? If we are all a function of our pasts, what is Drew running towards and what is he running away from? 2.) Drew Houston: The Leader and CEO: How does Drew define "high performance" today? How would Drew describe his style of management? How has it changed over time? How did taking an enneagram test change how Drew leads? What did he learn? What have been Drew's biggest hiring mistakes? What mistakes does he see others make? What have been Drew's biggest lessons in how to let people go the right way? 3.) Crucible Moments: Getting Sequoia, Acquisitions and Steve Jobs: How did Drew convince the Sequoia team to invest in Dropbox? How did it all start in a rug shop thanks to Pejman Nozad @ Pear? Has Drew had opportunities to sell the company? Why did he not take them? How does he advise founders on the decision to sell or not? How did Drew come to meet Steve Jobs? How did the meeting go? 4.) Drew Houston: AMA: Is Dropbox a B2B company or a B2C company? What is the hardest element of Drew's role with Dropbox? What has Drew recently changed his mind on? When press cycles were against him, how did Drew get through those tough times? What is Drew's biggest takeaway from joining the Meta board? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Drew's Fave Book: High Output Management by And