“We see the shift to distributed work as transformative as the shift to cloud or mobile,” says Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. “Our product is made for distributed work. Our customers have turned to Dropbox for flexibility with work since the beginning and post-COVID we’ve seen an uptick in demand. I see it making our opportunity a lot bigger. We’re in the first inning of this shift.”

Drew Houston, founder and CEO of Dropbox, discusses how the shift to distributed work is as transformative as the shift to cloud or mobile:

Shift To Distributed Work As Transformative As Shift To Cloud

Our product is made for distributed work. Our customers have turned to Dropbox for flexibility with work since the beginning and post-COVID we’ve seen an uptick in demand. Most importantly, in the long run, we see the shift to distributed work as transformative as the shift to cloud or mobile. I see it making our opportunity a lot bigger. We’re in the first inning of this shift. None of the tools we’re using were really purpose-built for this environment and that’s what we’re focusing on. 

That shift to working from home happened in the most dramatic and abrupt way possible. No one designed it. So back in March, we asked ourselves what if we made the work from home experience really great? What new tools and technology would you design for this world? We completely reoriented our product roadmap around the opportunity. That’s really what we’re focused on. I’m really excited about some of the launches we have for our second half.

Dropbox Customers Tend To Employ Knowledge Workers

We certainly have customers of all sizes including a lot of small businesses. Clearly, we’re all keeping an eye on the macro environment. It’s a challenging environment, but in general, Dropbox customers tend to be businesses that employ knowledge workers that can work from home and so they’re relatively less disrupted. Dropbox is often essential to their business operations as opposed to discretionary because all businesses need to collaborate around content. We’re keeping a watch on all the trends but we’ve seen a lot of health and stability in the business.

We had a great quarter and we’re profitable. We had a bunch of great launches and we’re helping a lot of our customers with the shift to distributed work. These are the things we focused on. I fundamentally believe if you build great products and make your customers really happy your stock price will take care of itself in the long run.