Evaluation Essay on Dropbox Company

Introduction

Dropbox is a San Francisco California based tech company founded in 2007 which provides cloud storage and file sharing solutions to both the single user individual and other established business enterprises. The company which was founded by Drew Houston had a mission of providing its esteemed customers with a better online storage option that particularly for group projects and greater efficiency while accessing important files. The company's success can be attributed to not its financial prowess but also to its comprehensive business model which can be understood through its customer segment, value positions, and its key partners. Ideally, in terms of customer segment, Drew Houston's Dropbox extends cloud storage services and file sharing solutions to its millions of customers; either individual, small businesses or large business enterprises. For instance, Dropbox's individual customers consist of students, teachers, or other professionals that require important storage facilities on the internet to upload personal or group documents. The company also deals with small businesses that consist of all small businesses in that deals with a few numbers of individuals; mostly in the creative and service sectors. Finally, the company's huge customers consist of large-scale domestic or multinational businesses that deals across more than one sector. These kinds of companies rely on Dropbox to aid in the storage of their massive data that require a more complex storage system. Similarly, Dropbox thrives through its value propositions and offers this to its customers through quality storage services and top-notch solutions to storage problems. The company is also known for its state of art security system that many customers can rely on. Additionally, its flexibility and accessibility as well as a number of specialist technical personnel ready to support its customers if need be. Moreover, in terms of key partners, the company deals with various companies that offer a range of support. For example, Dropbox has technology partners that include different technology companies and several software developers that often assists with tech-related issues. Dropbox also has channel partners such as independent software vendors, consulting firms and various software companies that help the company through marketing and crucial consultations. The strategic and alliance partners often assist the company I joint projects that require collaborations.

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Changes are inevitable in any business environment, and most of these changes reflect on the business model. Dropbox has not really changed that much over time especially in terms of value position, however, a lot of changes have been witnessed in customer segments and key partners. For instance, the company's customer base has tripled over the years and have included government institutions, schools, other tech companies and most professions including engineering. Moreover, the companies key partners as evidence shows from the case study, have changed over time with others leaving the partnership and joining the most anticipated business venture.

One of the most important aspects of marketing any business or a product is through its positioning in the market. Ideally, for a start-up company that faces huge completion from already established companies, positioning is the best way to overcome the overcrowding effect. Dropbox, for instance, faces huge competition from some established enterprises such as Apple and Google drive; however, it has managed to separate itself from these competitive companies through its user-friendly platform. From the beginning, Dropbox's team have continuously followed the responses from the users, and with that, they have managed to upgrade the company's product's user-friendly features. This has helped the company overtake tech giants who are deemed to be complicated by many customers. Similarly, the company, through customer's requests, has added additional functionality desires including additional languages other than English to be able to reach customers beyond the borders of Native English speaking countries. Most importantly, however, is the fact that the company has managed to stay on course without resorting to more complicated services. Even though the company has had several requests especially on Votebox, it has deliberately avoided the implementation of such features as they threaten the company's commitment to providing the easy-to-use product.

The success of Dropbox in the tech industry is still as remarkable as it was years because mainly because of the nature of completion that existed in the online storage market at the time. However, the most astonishing thing about their success is not the kind of products it offers, but how it found this success; which is closely similar to that of Method in the detergent business. For instance, just like the Method, Dropbox found the right target audience. Despite having huge companies as competitors, Dropbox management team analyzed the market and came up with ideas their customers needed the most. Drew Houston knew what was lacking in other products such as Apple and Google Drive, therefore, created a product that satisfied the clients' needs fully. Similarly, both the companies found the necessity in evolution. Change is very crucial in any business and particularly in the tech business. As an entrepreneur and a business owner, you must be willing to transform as well as keeping your products at per with technology and change to customer needs. Finally, just like Method, Dropbox learned a lot from mistakes that surrounded its growth. For example, during the early stages the of the company, Drew Houston and his roommate, the co-founder of Dropbox had no prior knowledge in marketing, and even after dealing with different marketing firms, they still found a lot of mistakes and thought their marketing efforts as ineffective.

An advertisement is a key to the successful growth of any business, however, Dropbox, a tech company has gained a lot of billions yet spending so little on the advertisement. One of the strategies that Dropbox has used in its growth and adoption is the use of social media. Dropbox has used several social media platforms to try to promote its products for the domestic market as well as the international markets abroad. Particularly throw social media, the company uses a strategy that allows each follower to get some give incentive. In addition, Dropbox also applied the easy signup process as a way of improving its adoption. The signup process for Dropbox is a few steps and take averagely shorter time compared to other software products. In addition, the company applied the use of freemium as a strategy capture large group of customers who wants to try the product but are not willing to pay. This strategy is very crucial because it is easy to get gain the attention of many people as long as they are interested in the product. Freemium is also important for startup businesses as is it gives the customers a choice to buy the product having used it already.

Companies can always anticipate the needs of their customers especially in their initial interactions to avoid different complains that often arises later on; however, customers are also human beings, and they vary in terms of understanding and behavior. Dropbox's attitude towards the notion that customers always know what they want is similar to most companies. To the company, customers know what they want therefore its strives on a daily basis to give products that conform to the customers' needs and wants. For instance, in knowing customers' needs, Dropbox often tries to understand the customers first. With this, the company understands the interaction the customer had had with the software and thereby would be able to know if there were issues that were raised previously. The company also has a customer support team who have reliable access to information and resources to help them solve their customers' problem. Similarly, the company tends to think like a customer who is essential as it helps customer support team anticipate what the clients might need. In addition, the company tries to identify trends and create a plan around those trends. Always based on the historical data and the observable trends, the company tries to exploit trends in the market to be able to provide the right features that are appealing to the customers.

Dropbox's approaches to beta testing were such that the co-founders created a private beta program for a limited group of users who are allowed to register in a simple landing page. This page contains almost every feature and a short description of the product. Since the freemium had not been established by then, the company would offer a 2 gigabytes Dropbox at no cost. Apart from the guerilla marketing that the cofounders applied, the company also devised a way to accelerate demand for the prototype, therefore, increasing the potential user base which later became a reality. Compared to Rent the Highway, both companies used the throw-away technique as a means of attracting and increasing potential user base.