We obviously agree on everything... except the "Dropbox promise". I don't think Dropbox had any competitor when it was founded and I'm not sure it has any now.
Dropbox is not another file sharing software; the application form to YC doesn't even mention file sharing:
Dropbox synchronizes your files between your different computers -- silently, automatically, without you doing anything except turn those machines on.
Nobody did this before Dropbox and still nobody is doing it now (except maybe AeroFS, which is much more difficult to setup and use -- but certainly not iCloud or any other "solution" that is restricted to one OS or company, and certainly no backup solution either).
That's why it was a fantastic idea... which has since been coupled with a brilliant execution, yes. But the idea itself was amazing.
I'm sure there were companies that were doing the same thing as Dropbox at the time that Dropbox was released. To name one example - Microsoft's SkyDrive (apparently called Windows Live Folders at the time), released either around the same time or prior to DropBox, depending on your definition. It's been a while since I've used it, but I remember the functionality being roughly equivalent between the two products (in that they fulfill the base use case of silent synching between two computers)
That isn't to say Dropbox didn't blow them out of the water in regards to execution, but it wasn't an idea that was completely without precedent. Ideas rarely are, even if they seem like that in retrospect due to one company out executing everyone to an insane degree.
> but certainly not iCloud or any other "solution" that is restricted to one OS or company,
This part is important. The Microsoft service only synced to your other Microsoft things. iCloud only syncs to your Apple things. Dropbox syncs everywhere.
Dropbox is not another file sharing software; the application form to YC doesn't even mention file sharing:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html
Dropbox isn't even about cloud storage.
Dropbox synchronizes your files between your different computers -- silently, automatically, without you doing anything except turn those machines on.
Nobody did this before Dropbox and still nobody is doing it now (except maybe AeroFS, which is much more difficult to setup and use -- but certainly not iCloud or any other "solution" that is restricted to one OS or company, and certainly no backup solution either).
That's why it was a fantastic idea... which has since been coupled with a brilliant execution, yes. But the idea itself was amazing.