DropBox it just works

I was searching for a new opportunity that was more Drop client software to a Windows, Mac, or Linux PC or to an phone, pad, Blackberry, or Android mobile device, the software created a local Drop folder for accessing files of any size or type via an encrypted Internet connection from other Drop-enabled devices or from any web browser. The client software tracked changes in real-time to any file in the user's local Drop folder, then instantly synchronized a copy of the file on Dropsy's servers, updating only the portions of he file that had changed, in order to save bandwidth and time.Likewise, within milliseconds, copies of the file were synchronized in local Drop folders on all other devices connected through the user's account. â€Å"We engineered Drop so it just worked, all of the time,† Drew explained, â€Å"We supported all the major operating systems and handled all kinds of obstacles, from flaky wireless connections to corporate firewalls, which was not an easy task. † The company adopted a fermium business model, that is, it offered both free and premium accounts.Users got 2 gigabytes of storage for free and had the option to ay $10 per month for 50 gigabytes or $20 per month for 100 gigabytes. Industry observers estimated that 2% to 3% of Dropsy's users were paying customers, which implied a $10 million to $15 million annual revenue run rate in mid 2010. 1 At that time, the company had 25 employees, most of whom worked in engineering or support functions. Drop had raised $7. 2 million in two rounds of venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital and Cell Partners.Market Overview Drop was a late entrant to the fiercely competitive online backup and storage services space. The first firms in the space, which had small companies as customers, ere launched in the late asses by startups offering outsourced storage at remote decanters. As costs declined, services also became available for consumers seeking to backup their data online. Most ear ly users were technically adept, for example, college students downloading music from peer-to-peer file sharing services.Few firms in this first wave of services survived the dot. Com crash, but by late 2006 the market was crowded again with new competitors. In July 2007, the tech blob Amassable published a list of more than 80 online backup and storage services. 2 Market research vendors like DC fueled the hype by predicting that the worldwide market for online backup services would grow to $71 5 million by 2011. 3 Investor interest in online storage surged when Muzzy was acquired by EMCEE for $76 million in late 2007.Houston was confident that Drop could succeed in the face of intense competition. He reasoned that Drop would be able to collect revenue from some users, because consumers generally understood that storage cost money, whether it came in the form of a physical drive or an online service. When challenged by endure capitalists to explain why the world needed another clou d backup company, Houston asked them, â€Å"How many of those services do you personally use? † The answer from Vs. was almost invariably, â€Å"None of them. 4 Houston asserted that direct experience with rival services, which often failed to transfer data across firewalls and sometimes balked with big files or large numbers of files, was helpful in innovations that contributed to these advantages: 2 The first generation of cloud storage services was based on a simplistic model, where file accesses were redirected over the Internet instead of to your computer's hard rive. Your operating system and all your applications assume that accessing your hard drive is cheap and fast, but when these requests are instead routed to a server thousands of miles away, they can take an order of magnitude longer.This subtle but critical distinction explains why when working remotely, even simple actions like browsing a directory can freeze your computer for seconds at a time. We needed to t ake a completely different approach by storing files locally and updating the cloud copy in the background using a number of time- and vindications optimizations. Launching Drop It's hard to imagine Tom Cruise in Minority Report sending himself files via Gamma or lugging around a USB thumbprint. Ђ? Drew Houston After his frustrating experience on the bus, Houston started working on Drop full time in late 2006. He said: I needed it badly. I worked on multiple desktops and a laptop and could never remember to keep my USB drive with me. I was drowning in email attachments trying to share files for my previous startup. My home desktops power supply literally exploded one day, killing one of my hard drives, and I had no backups. I tried everything I could find but each product inevitably suffered problems with Internet latency, large files, bugs, or Just made me think too much. To help with the project, Houston recruited Rash Overdose, who dropped out of MIT and later became Dropsy's co-founder and chief technology officer. The pair spent the next four months coding a prototype in a tiny Cambridge apartment. With a working prototype in hand, Houston came up with an innovative approach for testing demand for a minimum viable product. He had produced various recruiting videos for his college fraternity; with this know-how he created a three-minute crassest of a product demo and uploaded it to Hacker News, a popular forum for developers. â€Å"l did this out of necessity.There was no way I could ask for people's files before we were 100% sure our code was reliable. But I had a prototype that showed off the product's best features. â€Å"7 Houston used the screens to recruit beta testers and to solicit feedback on features that Drop might include. He added, â€Å"Not launching is painful, but not learning can be fatal. We got a lot of feedback through that video, so we were learning while we were building. † Houston had another reason for posting the video on Hacker News: he hoped to ND selective Y Combinatory seed fund and incubator program.He recalled, â€Å"l had Just submitted my application to Y Combinatory and as a gambit to get their attention, I submitted the video to Hacker News. I hoped it would work. â€Å"8 It did: in April 2007, Drop received $15,000 in funding from Y Combinatory (see Exhibit 1 for excerpts from Dropsy's Y Combinatory application). In exchange for a small percentage of a startup's common equity-?usually 2% to 10%-?Y Combinatory provided up to $20,000 of seed capital as well as mentoring, workspace, and introductions to other advisors ND investors over a three-month period.Many startups applied to Y Combination's program, which had a track record for matching strong technical teams with elite venture capital firms. 3 Upon conclusion of the Y Combinatory program in September 2007, Drop raised $1. 2 million of convertible debt from Sequoia Capital. â€Å"We fit into Sequoia's sweet spot: we were two youn g technical founders, working out of an apartment, targeting a big market. It helped that we were ranked at the top of our Y Combinatory cohort,† Houston recalled.He and Overdose moved to San Francisco to continue building the many, but despite the capital infusion, they continued to run lean. Drop delivered its service through Amazon's SO cloud storage platform, avoiding the need for infrastructure investments and positioning the company to scale rapidly. The co- founders created a private beta program for a limited group of users who registered through a simple landing page. The page contained a short description of Drop and requested an email address from visitors interested in participating in the beta test (Exhibit 2).Houston commented: There's a spectrum of well-informed opinions about when to launch your product. At one end, Paul Graham tells entrepreneurs, â€Å"Launch early and often† to accelerate learning. At the other end, [respected software guru] Joel Spoo ky says, â€Å"Launch when your product doesn't completely suck. † We were managing people's files, and it's a big deal if you lose or ruin them. That meant moving toward Spooky end of the spectrum and keeping our beta test small. Next, Houston devised ways to generate demand for the beta service.In a guerilla marketing move, he produced another short demo video and posted it in March 2008 on Dig, a site that showcased web content deemed popular by Digs users. Houston felt it was essential to communicate in an authentic manner with the tech enthusiasts who frequented Dig. He sprinkled â€Å"Easter eggs† into the video, for example, references to Chocolate Rain (a Youth phenomenon), TIPS reports used in the movie Office Space, Mitt's Gillian Hall, and the 09 IF key for decrypting Blurry disks (dissemination of which, in the face of movie studio legal threats, was a hacker crusade).With this tongue-in- cheek nod to its tech-sway audience, the Drop video soared to the top of Dig, few days. Overnight, the list for Dropsy's private beta Jumped from 5,000 to 75,000 Ames, far exceeding the team's expectations. Building the Company Make something people want. -? Y Combinatory motto Based on consumer response to the second video, it appeared that the promise behind Drop-? â€Å"It Just works†-?resonated with potential early adopters, especially those who were familiar with the performance limitations of existing online backup/ storage services. Houston shifted his focus to product development.The Drop team was comprised almost entirely of engineers during the first two years of the firm's existence. Early on, board members tasked Houston with hiring a reduce manager to help coordinate engineering efforts and prioritize features. Houston reflected: If you ask ten people what a product manager is, you'll get ten different answers. They tend to fall on a continuum with the end points being â€Å"poet† and â€Å"librarian. † A librarian i s focused on blocking and tackling, coordination, and facilitating communication. This type of PM is inherently organized and follows up relentlessly.A poet PM listens to the voice of the customer during usability tests and focus groups and based on that insight formulates an aesthetic vision, a grand strategy, and a product roadman. Our first product manager was 4 more of a librarian than a poet, because we needed a librarian's discipline: even today we don't have enough of that DNA in the company. But he Just drove people nuts. It was painful, but we had to let him go after six months. For the next year, until Drop hired another product manager, the company relied on Houston and Overdose to drive the product roadman.Development proceeded more slowly than Houston had originally expected. In his April 2007 Y Combinatory application, Houston had projected availability of a version that he could charge for thin 8 weeks, but launching Drop to the public actually took 18 months. Houston said, â€Å"As a result of doing a few things well, we left a lot of other things behind. We had no business people, we were terrible at getting mainstream PR, and running fast and loose didn't make for the most predictable engineering organization. 9 Public Launch Drop opened its beta to the public in September 2008 at Outstretched, an annual competition showcasing high-potential startups. Drop was one of 50 startups selected to present at the event from a pool of over 1,000 applicants. ND also provide a product development deadline for the team. Houston mused that since Drop was following a tried-and-true blueprint for launching a consumer Internet service, his next step would have to be devising a marketing plan. Drop retained an online marketing consultant to help with this task.Houston said, â€Å"What do most web companies do? Apply to Outstretched, check. Buy Towards, check. Get real marketing people, check. â€Å"10 Early on, Drop attempted to acquire new customers throu gh paid search advertising. However, incumbents had bid up the cost per click for obvious search keywords. As a result, it cost Drop more than $300 to acquire a paying customer (Exhibit 3). This was not sustainable, since an annual subscription for 50 KGB service was priced at $99. Drop had tweaked its sign-up process to increase the conversation rate from free user to paying customer.The company also experimented with hiding the free service option for visitors who arrived via search ads. Houston recalled, â€Å"Our average acquisition cost per paying customer went from thousands of dollars to hundreds, but we still had a problem with our economics. And we didn't feel good about doing sneaky things to our users to get them to pay. 11 Sequoia Capital and Cell Partners subsequently led a $6 million Series A round of financing in October 2008, but even with additional capital in the bank, relying on paid search would not be a viable long- term option.In addition, the team had experim ented with display ads and affiliate programs, but these efforts also yielded unacceptably high acquisition costs per paying customer. Houston realized that with a fermium strategy, optimization of marketing messages and pricing would be critical to Dropsy's success; consistent with this priority, the company hired an analytics engineer as its eighth employee. Inspired by the Backbone â€Å"growth† team dedicated to user acquisition and engagement, Houston later assigned 30% of engineering resources to optimizing customer acquisition efforts.This team closely tracked metrics across Dropsy's conversion funnel by cohort,a for example: the percent of landing page visitors who registered as free users; the percent of registrants who still were active free users after X months; and the percent of free users who upgraded to paid subscribers after Y months. Houston said, â€Å"We run our business based on the ‘Startup Metrics for Pirates' framework developed by investor Dave McClure. He says firms should a A cohort was a set of prospects or users acquired at the same time and/or via the same marketing method. Closely track metrics around the acquisition of landing page visitors; activation of those visitors into users; retention of users; referral of new visitors by satisfied users; and revenue earned from users. † The team used A/B testing to fine tune page layouts free storage given to users. Analytics showed that gigabytes were not necessarily the best measure of value for Drop users. â€Å"We had all kinds of people paying us for Drop but not even bumping against their quota,† Houston said. Analytics likewise revealed that few users were accessing past versions of their files, all of which-?including deleted files-?were being permanently stored by Drop at a significant and rapidly growing cost. The company modified its policy, offering 30 days of undo history free of charge and making unlimited undo history a premium option. Houston sai d, â€Å"Just a tenth of a percent improvement in conversion rates, or a small decrease in the cost of serving a customer can have a huge impact on profitability. Premium is a spreadsheet game-?one you win with lots and lots of little moves . â€Å"13 Fourteen Months to the EpiphanyDespite improvements through analytics, Houston and his colleagues struggled to make the company marketing programs profitable. Nevertheless, the service grew rapidly, reaching 200,000 users ten days after launch and 1 million users seven months later. The vast majority of these users were acquired through word-of-mouth referrals and viral marketing efforts, rather than paid advertising. A relentless focus on ease of use and reliability had paid dividends in the form of loyal users who encouraged friends, family, and co-workers to try Drop. Houston commented, â€Å"The power of focus can't be understated.If you look at a feature matrix of Drop versus everyone else, we would never come in first. We woul d rather do a few things well rather than present Drop in a confusing way. â€Å"14 To identify ways to improve ease of use, the Drop team tracked support forums closely. Houston said, â€Å"We get feature requests for things we already have. These are particularly bad because it means that even though we've implemented something, our users can't find it. We pay close attention when that happens. â€Å"1 5 The company also maintained a â€Å"Vote† on its site, allowing users to vote and comment on treasures they would like to see added.Since the team gained insight on users' preferences through support forums and the Vote, the company did not conduct regular consumer surveys, but it did conduct occasional usability tests. In one instance, the entire team watched as not one of five typical consumers recruited from Scraggliest could successfully install and interact with the application. Houston recalled: Watching them fail was excruciating. Imagine if your coffee maker Just spit coffee all over the counter every third time you used it or your car stopped in the middle of the road. That's the computer experience for a normal person.The PC is always conspiring against you to lose your stuff or break in some weird way. You have no idea what happened or what you did wrong. Watching those five consumers struggle to try to figure out how to use our product was probably the most painful day we ever had as a team, but afterward, we created a list of 70 things to fix. B A/B tests divided a set of similar individuals into a control group that experienced a status quo product and a test group that experienced a product with one modified element, to determine if the modification yielded a statistically significant DropBox it just works I was searching for a new opportunity that was more Drop client software to a Windows, Mac, or Linux PC or to an phone, pad, Blackberry, or Android mobile device, the software created a local Drop folder for accessing files of any size or type via an encrypted Internet connection from other Drop-enabled devices or from any web browser. The client software tracked changes in real-time to any file in the user's local Drop folder, then instantly synchronized a copy of the file on Dropsy's servers, updating only the portions of he file that had changed, in order to save bandwidth and time.Likewise, within milliseconds, copies of the file were synchronized in local Drop folders on all other devices connected through the user's account. â€Å"We engineered Drop so it just worked, all of the time,† Drew explained, â€Å"We supported all the major operating systems and handled all kinds of obstacles, from flaky wireless connections to corporate firewalls, which was not an easy task. † The company adopted a fermium business model, that is, it offered both free and premium accounts.Users got 2 gigabytes of storage for free and had the option to ay $10 per month for 50 gigabytes or $20 per month for 100 gigabytes. Industry observers estimated that 2% to 3% of Dropsy's users were paying customers, which implied a $10 million to $15 million annual revenue run rate in mid 2010. 1 At that time, the company had 25 employees, most of whom worked in engineering or support functions. Drop had raised $7. 2 million in two rounds of venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital and Cell Partners.Market Overview Drop was a late entrant to the fiercely competitive online backup and storage services space. The first firms in the space, which had small companies as customers, ere launched in the late asses by startups offering outsourced storage at remote decanters. As costs declined, services also became available for consumers seeking to backup their data online. Most ear ly users were technically adept, for example, college students downloading music from peer-to-peer file sharing services.Few firms in this first wave of services survived the dot. Com crash, but by late 2006 the market was crowded again with new competitors. In July 2007, the tech blob Amassable published a list of more than 80 online backup and storage services. 2 Market research vendors like DC fueled the hype by predicting that the worldwide market for online backup services would grow to $71 5 million by 2011. 3 Investor interest in online storage surged when Muzzy was acquired by EMCEE for $76 million in late 2007.Houston was confident that Drop could succeed in the face of intense competition. He reasoned that Drop would be able to collect revenue from some users, because consumers generally understood that storage cost money, whether it came in the form of a physical drive or an online service. When challenged by endure capitalists to explain why the world needed another clou d backup company, Houston asked them, â€Å"How many of those services do you personally use? † The answer from Vs. was almost invariably, â€Å"None of them. 4 Houston asserted that direct experience with rival services, which often failed to transfer data across firewalls and sometimes balked with big files or large numbers of files, was helpful in innovations that contributed to these advantages: 2 The first generation of cloud storage services was based on a simplistic model, where file accesses were redirected over the Internet instead of to your computer's hard rive. Your operating system and all your applications assume that accessing your hard drive is cheap and fast, but when these requests are instead routed to a server thousands of miles away, they can take an order of magnitude longer.This subtle but critical distinction explains why when working remotely, even simple actions like browsing a directory can freeze your computer for seconds at a time. We needed to t ake a completely different approach by storing files locally and updating the cloud copy in the background using a number of time- and vindications optimizations. Launching Drop It's hard to imagine Tom Cruise in Minority Report sending himself files via Gamma or lugging around a USB thumbprint. Ђ? Drew Houston After his frustrating experience on the bus, Houston started working on Drop full time in late 2006. He said: I needed it badly. I worked on multiple desktops and a laptop and could never remember to keep my USB drive with me. I was drowning in email attachments trying to share files for my previous startup. My home desktops power supply literally exploded one day, killing one of my hard drives, and I had no backups. I tried everything I could find but each product inevitably suffered problems with Internet latency, large files, bugs, or Just made me think too much. To help with the project, Houston recruited Rash Overdose, who dropped out of MIT and later became Dropsy's co-founder and chief technology officer. The pair spent the next four months coding a prototype in a tiny Cambridge apartment. With a working prototype in hand, Houston came up with an innovative approach for testing demand for a minimum viable product. He had produced various recruiting videos for his college fraternity; with this know-how he created a three-minute crassest of a product demo and uploaded it to Hacker News, a popular forum for developers. â€Å"l did this out of necessity.There was no way I could ask for people's files before we were 100% sure our code was reliable. But I had a prototype that showed off the product's best features. â€Å"7 Houston used the screens to recruit beta testers and to solicit feedback on features that Drop might include. He added, â€Å"Not launching is painful, but not learning can be fatal. We got a lot of feedback through that video, so we were learning while we were building. † Houston had another reason for posting the video on Hacker News: he hoped to ND selective Y Combinatory seed fund and incubator program.He recalled, â€Å"l had Just submitted my application to Y Combinatory and as a gambit to get their attention, I submitted the video to Hacker News. I hoped it would work. â€Å"8 It did: in April 2007, Drop received $15,000 in funding from Y Combinatory (see Exhibit 1 for excerpts from Dropsy's Y Combinatory application). In exchange for a small percentage of a startup's common equity-?usually 2% to 10%-?Y Combinatory provided up to $20,000 of seed capital as well as mentoring, workspace, and introductions to other advisors ND investors over a three-month period.Many startups applied to Y Combination's program, which had a track record for matching strong technical teams with elite venture capital firms. 3 Upon conclusion of the Y Combinatory program in September 2007, Drop raised $1. 2 million of convertible debt from Sequoia Capital. â€Å"We fit into Sequoia's sweet spot: we were two youn g technical founders, working out of an apartment, targeting a big market. It helped that we were ranked at the top of our Y Combinatory cohort,† Houston recalled.He and Overdose moved to San Francisco to continue building the many, but despite the capital infusion, they continued to run lean. Drop delivered its service through Amazon's SO cloud storage platform, avoiding the need for infrastructure investments and positioning the company to scale rapidly. The co- founders created a private beta program for a limited group of users who registered through a simple landing page. The page contained a short description of Drop and requested an email address from visitors interested in participating in the beta test (Exhibit 2).Houston commented: There's a spectrum of well-informed opinions about when to launch your product. At one end, Paul Graham tells entrepreneurs, â€Å"Launch early and often† to accelerate learning. At the other end, [respected software guru] Joel Spoo ky says, â€Å"Launch when your product doesn't completely suck. † We were managing people's files, and it's a big deal if you lose or ruin them. That meant moving toward Spooky end of the spectrum and keeping our beta test small. Next, Houston devised ways to generate demand for the beta service.In a guerilla marketing move, he produced another short demo video and posted it in March 2008 on Dig, a site that showcased web content deemed popular by Digs users. Houston felt it was essential to communicate in an authentic manner with the tech enthusiasts who frequented Dig. He sprinkled â€Å"Easter eggs† into the video, for example, references to Chocolate Rain (a Youth phenomenon), TIPS reports used in the movie Office Space, Mitt's Gillian Hall, and the 09 IF key for decrypting Blurry disks (dissemination of which, in the face of movie studio legal threats, was a hacker crusade).With this tongue-in- cheek nod to its tech-sway audience, the Drop video soared to the top of Dig, few days. Overnight, the list for Dropsy's private beta Jumped from 5,000 to 75,000 Ames, far exceeding the team's expectations. Building the Company Make something people want. -? Y Combinatory motto Based on consumer response to the second video, it appeared that the promise behind Drop-? â€Å"It Just works†-?resonated with potential early adopters, especially those who were familiar with the performance limitations of existing online backup/ storage services. Houston shifted his focus to product development.The Drop team was comprised almost entirely of engineers during the first two years of the firm's existence. Early on, board members tasked Houston with hiring a reduce manager to help coordinate engineering efforts and prioritize features. Houston reflected: If you ask ten people what a product manager is, you'll get ten different answers. They tend to fall on a continuum with the end points being â€Å"poet† and â€Å"librarian. † A librarian i s focused on blocking and tackling, coordination, and facilitating communication. This type of PM is inherently organized and follows up relentlessly.A poet PM listens to the voice of the customer during usability tests and focus groups and based on that insight formulates an aesthetic vision, a grand strategy, and a product roadman. Our first product manager was 4 more of a librarian than a poet, because we needed a librarian's discipline: even today we don't have enough of that DNA in the company. But he Just drove people nuts. It was painful, but we had to let him go after six months. For the next year, until Drop hired another product manager, the company relied on Houston and Overdose to drive the product roadman.Development proceeded more slowly than Houston had originally expected. In his April 2007 Y Combinatory application, Houston had projected availability of a version that he could charge for thin 8 weeks, but launching Drop to the public actually took 18 months. Houston said, â€Å"As a result of doing a few things well, we left a lot of other things behind. We had no business people, we were terrible at getting mainstream PR, and running fast and loose didn't make for the most predictable engineering organization. 9 Public Launch Drop opened its beta to the public in September 2008 at Outstretched, an annual competition showcasing high-potential startups. Drop was one of 50 startups selected to present at the event from a pool of over 1,000 applicants. ND also provide a product development deadline for the team. Houston mused that since Drop was following a tried-and-true blueprint for launching a consumer Internet service, his next step would have to be devising a marketing plan. Drop retained an online marketing consultant to help with this task.Houston said, â€Å"What do most web companies do? Apply to Outstretched, check. Buy Towards, check. Get real marketing people, check. â€Å"10 Early on, Drop attempted to acquire new customers throu gh paid search advertising. However, incumbents had bid up the cost per click for obvious search keywords. As a result, it cost Drop more than $300 to acquire a paying customer (Exhibit 3). This was not sustainable, since an annual subscription for 50 KGB service was priced at $99. Drop had tweaked its sign-up process to increase the conversation rate from free user to paying customer.The company also experimented with hiding the free service option for visitors who arrived via search ads. Houston recalled, â€Å"Our average acquisition cost per paying customer went from thousands of dollars to hundreds, but we still had a problem with our economics. And we didn't feel good about doing sneaky things to our users to get them to pay. 11 Sequoia Capital and Cell Partners subsequently led a $6 million Series A round of financing in October 2008, but even with additional capital in the bank, relying on paid search would not be a viable long- term option.In addition, the team had experim ented with display ads and affiliate programs, but these efforts also yielded unacceptably high acquisition costs per paying customer. Houston realized that with a fermium strategy, optimization of marketing messages and pricing would be critical to Dropsy's success; consistent with this priority, the company hired an analytics engineer as its eighth employee. Inspired by the Backbone â€Å"growth† team dedicated to user acquisition and engagement, Houston later assigned 30% of engineering resources to optimizing customer acquisition efforts.This team closely tracked metrics across Dropsy's conversion funnel by cohort,a for example: the percent of landing page visitors who registered as free users; the percent of registrants who still were active free users after X months; and the percent of free users who upgraded to paid subscribers after Y months. Houston said, â€Å"We run our business based on the ‘Startup Metrics for Pirates' framework developed by investor Dave McClure. He says firms should a A cohort was a set of prospects or users acquired at the same time and/or via the same marketing method. Closely track metrics around the acquisition of landing page visitors; activation of those visitors into users; retention of users; referral of new visitors by satisfied users; and revenue earned from users. † The team used A/B testing to fine tune page layouts free storage given to users. Analytics showed that gigabytes were not necessarily the best measure of value for Drop users. â€Å"We had all kinds of people paying us for Drop but not even bumping against their quota,† Houston said. Analytics likewise revealed that few users were accessing past versions of their files, all of which-?including deleted files-?were being permanently stored by Drop at a significant and rapidly growing cost. The company modified its policy, offering 30 days of undo history free of charge and making unlimited undo history a premium option. Houston sai d, â€Å"Just a tenth of a percent improvement in conversion rates, or a small decrease in the cost of serving a customer can have a huge impact on profitability. Premium is a spreadsheet game-?one you win with lots and lots of little moves . â€Å"13 Fourteen Months to the EpiphanyDespite improvements through analytics, Houston and his colleagues struggled to make the company marketing programs profitable. Nevertheless, the service grew rapidly, reaching 200,000 users ten days after launch and 1 million users seven months later. The vast majority of these users were acquired through word-of-mouth referrals and viral marketing efforts, rather than paid advertising. A relentless focus on ease of use and reliability had paid dividends in the form of loyal users who encouraged friends, family, and co-workers to try Drop. Houston commented, â€Å"The power of focus can't be understated.If you look at a feature matrix of Drop versus everyone else, we would never come in first. We woul d rather do a few things well rather than present Drop in a confusing way. â€Å"14 To identify ways to improve ease of use, the Drop team tracked support forums closely. Houston said, â€Å"We get feature requests for things we already have. These are particularly bad because it means that even though we've implemented something, our users can't find it. We pay close attention when that happens. â€Å"1 5 The company also maintained a â€Å"Vote† on its site, allowing users to vote and comment on treasures they would like to see added.Since the team gained insight on users' preferences through support forums and the Vote, the company did not conduct regular consumer surveys, but it did conduct occasional usability tests. In one instance, the entire team watched as not one of five typical consumers recruited from Scraggliest could successfully install and interact with the application. Houston recalled: Watching them fail was excruciating. Imagine if your coffee maker Just spit coffee all over the counter every third time you used it or your car stopped in the middle of the road. That's the computer experience for a normal person.The PC is always conspiring against you to lose your stuff or break in some weird way. You have no idea what happened or what you did wrong. Watching those five consumers struggle to try to figure out how to use our product was probably the most painful day we ever had as a team, but afterward, we created a list of 70 things to fix. B A/B tests divided a set of similar individuals into a control group that experienced a status quo product and a test group that experienced a product with one modified element, to determine if the modification yielded a statistically significant

Managers responsibility Essay

The mangers most basic responsibility is to focus people toward performance of work activities to achieve desired outcomes. A manager is someone who works with and through other people by co-ordinating their work activities to accomplish organisational goals. (Robbins, Stagg, Coulter, 2003, p.10) This definition states, the fundamental responsibility of a manager, is to accomplish the organisations objectives by ‘getting things done through people’. There are however several ways of conceiving managerial responsibilities, as a ‘manager’ can be viewed from many different positions. Kontz (1999:179) argue that management is the process of setting and achieving goals through the execution of four basic management functions that utilize an organisation’s resources. These functions are planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. Goshal and Bartel (1995:89) however argues that the responsibility of manager cannot be clearly defined as planning, organizing controlling etc, and are better described by looking at the managers responsibility in their working environment. According to Goshal and Bartel (1999:183), the responsibility of managers varies according to their level of status within the organisation and the skills required in performing managerial duties change accordingly. I will discuss that managerial work can be classified into both organizational levels, basic skills and the four management functions that lead to the fundamental responsibility of a manager, – to effectively accomplish organisational goals by focusing people toward performance of work activities. cofa far sefafaw orfa Wood (1998:402) argue that the most important asset in effectively achieving desired oraganisational outcomes is people. It is argued that people are flexible, versatile, intelligent, durable and appreciate in value to the organisation through learning experiences. According to Wood, (1998: 397) the best way people can be used in an organisation, is through the decision making process directly related to management functions, – planning, organising, directing and controlling. It is a managers resposibility to understand the significant effect each sub-ordinates commitment has to these  functions, and actively carry out the functions of management in a way that best achieves this. Planning involves defining organisational goals and proposing ways to reach them. Managers establish an overall direction for the organisations future, identify and commit the resources required, and focus people towards their working activies to reach organisational objectives. After managers have prepared plans, they must translate these abstract ideas into reality. Organising is the process of creating a structure of relationships that will enable employees to carry out management’s plans and meet organisational goals. By organising effectively, managers can better coordinate human, material, and information resources. The manager has to make sure each sub-ordinate knows their individual goal and how they are going to achieve it. A successful plan may only be reached if management can utilize the organisations resources efficiently and effectively. Foucault After management has made plans, created a structure, and hired the right personnel, someone must direct the organization. Directing involves communicating and motivating others to perform the tasks necessary to achieve the organization’s goals. Interraction between the manager and sub-ordinate is the key for creating a focused working environment, and is critical in achieving a desired outcome. Directing provides leadership that from a manager/employee working relationship perspective is the raising of an employees performance to a higher standard, – beyond its normal limitations. The process of managerial leadership can be thought of as influencing others to direct their efforts toward the pursuit of specific goals. Knouse, Stephen, and Giacalone, (1992:375) back up this statement by claiming that managers who lead effectively establish three initiaitves from employees that is crucial in improving their work activities and decision making capabilities. Initially they gain the trust of sub-ordinates, – allowing people more freedom to act on instinct and make decisions. Second, leaders must clarify the direction in which people should be headed to satisfy organisational outcomes, through clear, consistent communication. This effectively helps employees feel confident in their decision making  abilities. Finally it states that effective leaders encourage others to take risks, further enabling peoples ability to think, create and make decisions. Control is verifying the actions of the organisation’s subordinates in accordance with the plans, instructions, and the established standards of performance. A manager should attempt to prevent problems, or to try to determine and solve them as soon as possible, if they happen to occur. Through constant control of focusing people towards work activities, the manager keeps the organisation working effectively.cofe fe As it can be seen, managers are required to be able to plan, organise, direct, and control. Goshal and Bartel (1995: 91) argue however that deviding a managers responsibility into tidy, discrete functions such as planning and organising is not relevant in todays working environment. It is argued that management is ‘messy and continuous’, particularly planning which is conceived as an ongoing process, rather than a separate bounded activity. According to Goshal and Bartel, the nature of manegerial work is better classified in terms of organisationl levels and basic skills. Robert L Katz identified three types of skills, – technical, human and conceptual which he writes are required for all levels of management. Robbins, Stagg, Coulter, 2003, p.13-14) Technical skills are those needed to perform the work in a specialised area. These skills involve the knowledge and ability to apply techniques, procedures, methods, and tools in a specific field. Interpersonal skills, include the ability to work with, understand, lead, and motivate others, and effective managers require interpersonal skills to get ‘the best out of their people’. Conceptual skills include the ability to plan, coordinate, and integrate all of the organization’s interests and activities. Also involved is the ability to understand how a change in a given part of the organization or its environment, can positively or negatively affect the focus of employees in their work activities which interrelates with the organisation desired outcomes. Katz found the relative importance of these skills varied according to the managers level within the organisation. Organisations can be viewed as having three basic levels of management with operational employees not requiring any manegerial duties. The manegerial jobs at the first level are known as first level management and are charged with overseeing operative employees. Technical skills are important at such lower organisational levels in which the manager needs to know the mechanics of how the work is done. Ghoshal, and Bartlett (1995:92) argue that first line supervisors (first level managers) are responsible and accountable for directing the workforce and for meeting production and service scheduals and quality standards. The responsibilty of first line managers to ensure employees are focused on work activities is therfor crucial in achieving a desired outcome. Middle managers are usually responsible for the performance of a particular organisational unit and direct the activities of other managers and sometimes those of operative employees. They implement strategic plans set fourth by top managers by establishing divisional objectives and operational objectives that will guide unit perormance to achieving desired outcomes. Technical and conceptual skills are required for effective middle management, but as is the role of first level management with operative employees, their basic responsibilty is to ensure these first level managers and to a lesser extent, operational employees are aware of what is required in achieving set objectives. Top managers have the broadest responsibilities and have the authority to develop plans that shape the overall direction of the organisation. Ghoshal and Bartlett (1995:93) argue that the time of a top manager is typically devoted to human relations and conceptual tasks. From a survey of some of America’s most effective corporations Goshal and Bartell (1995:93) found that leading executives of these firms spent approximately 85% of their time interracting with people on the phone or in meetings. It is also argued that of this 85% a large proportion of time is spent updating and ensuring middle managers are informed and focused on the work activities required to ensure the objectives of the organisation are achieved. In conclusion, managers are very important in a structured organisation. All  organisations operate in complex social working environment conditions where managers need to be developed in their interpersonal or people skills if they are going to be effective. Technical and conceptual skills vary in importance according to their managerial heirachy, however the one skill that remains constant at all levels is interpersonal. Goshal and Bartell (1995:93) argue that progressive organisations only look for people who possess a special predefined set of competencies relating to attitude, personality and behaviour for employement in management-leadership positions. These competencies guarantee that formulating business strategees and organisational goals will be met through the ‘coaching’ and interraction of managers and employees. Managers have the responsibility of planning, organising, directing and controlling the organisations activities that can only be effectively achieved through the use of efficent working employees. The four management functions require creativity, reasoning, and judgement to make decisions and it is the basic responsibility of a manager to direct people towards their specific role or task to ensure organistional goals are achieved. When a person is familiar with the subject and has the required data, they have the confidence to make effective decisions. This is the most basic responsibility of a manager, to focus people towards performance of work activites to ensure a desired outcome is achieved. References Ghoshal, S. and Bartlett, C. A. (1995), â€Å"Changing the Role of Top Management: Beyond Structure to Process†, Harvard Business Review, p 86-94coec ecr Knouse, Stephen B. and Giacalone, Robert A. (1992), â€Å"Management Decision Making in Business: Employee Issues and Concerns.† Journal of Business Ethics. 11 (51) pp.369 381. 6QbDHfKG ndd fodd dd! Kontz, H, (1999) ‘The Management Theory jungle’, Journal of the Academy of Management, 4, p174 -188codc dcr sedcdcw ordc dck indc fodc dc. Robbins, S, Bergman, R., Stagg, I. & Coulter, M. 2003, Management 3rd edn, Pearson Education Australia, French Forest Wood, D. J. (1998), â€Å"Social Issues in Management: Theory and Research in Corporate Social Performance†, Journal of Management 17(2), pp.383-406cocb cbr secbcbw orcb cbk incb focb cb.

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Healthy Grief - Essay Example There are several differences in the exact stages, but one of the most commonly used is Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (Pastan, 1996). This essay uses Kubler-Ross’s grieving process theory to analyze the stories of Job and Dan. Job has been blessed by God with a prosperous and contented life. But his faith is tested by God by allowing Satan to take away all the precious things Job has, such as his huge belongings, livelihood, and his beloved family. This massive loss has brought too much grief to Job. However, Job’s grieving process does not rigidly follow Kubler-Ross’s five-stage model. His first response is ‘acceptance’, which should be the last phase. He completely accepts that all the things taken away from him belong to God and only God has the power to take them. Eventually, while his sufferings pile up, Job became angry. His anger is rooted in his belief that he has done nothing wrong and thus does not deserve the sufferings he endures. But when God comes up to him, Job bargains by asking for forgiveness. Similarly, Dan, who is facing death, initially accepts the reality of dying by objectively looking at his situation. He accepts that his time has finally come and that it is time for him to answer for all his sins. Afterward, he becomes angry of himself for trying to kill Joseph and for all the evil deeds he has done throughout his life. The only difference between Job and Dan is the cause of their grief: Job witnesses the death of his beloved family while Dan faces his own death. However, what is fascinating about these stories is that even with the presence of grief joy still blooms in the heart of Job and Dan. Their grief develops from a painful acceptance of what is most important to them; whereas joy relights in them the marvel of God’s salvation through acceptance of their tragic experiences. Thus, according to Archer

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Jonathan Weiner The Beak of the Finch - Essay Example spread and what they do to our biological system. For example, in medical science the understanding of evolution has allowed scientists to develop moulds such as penicillin that helps destroy bad bacteria. Prior to the development of antibiotics such as penicillin and probiotics such as those used in vaccines humans were only subjected to the random laws of nature. Those who were the 'fittest' survived through natural selection. Antibiotics help destroy bacteria, on the other hand probiotics are small amounts of bacteria exposed to the body to allow slow reactions where the body will develop its own immunity against the bacteria strain. In the long run, these exposures will help the body withstand against the attacks of such strains such as influenza, polio or tuberculosis for example. However, because of abuses such as the overuse of antibiotics to combat minor diseases certain virus strains could become stronger and stronger because they themselves could develop immunity against the antibiotics thus rendering them as dangerous as prior to the invention of penicillin. Another understanding of evolution can be seen through the use of pesticides in agriculture. For example, due to the overuse of pesticides in agriculture, garden pests are becoming more and more resistant towards the pesticides are being used. They have evolved against the surrounding which has naturally selected their most 'fittest'. 3) Think about the requirements of Darwinian evolution (variation, natural selection, reproductive isolation, etc.) and argue either for or against the following statement: The human species is still evolving biologically and will be substantially physically different in 10,000 years. True or not Defend your opinion by... 2) Why is an understanding of evolution important to the well-being of human society and human activities Discuss two examples in detail of how evolution affects us economically (e.g. agriculture) and medically 3) Think about the requirements of Darwinian evolution (variation, natural selection, reproductive isolation, etc.) and argue either for or against the following statement: The human species is still evolving biologically and will be substantially physically different in 10,000 years. True or not Defend your opinion by discussing whether natural selection still applies to most of the human population.

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Career plan - Essay Example The selection of which career path to pursue should be informed by a number of things. Firstly, I should select a profession that I am passionate about. The statement explains why I am not keen on pursuing an accountancy route. Although they command a lot of respect in the society, accountants do routine work that does not appeal to my desire for constant improvement. However, I appreciate that the advice follow your passion is overrated. Human beings have the capacity to develop interest in the activities that they are engaged in. Second, the level of compensation. The high cost of living makes it a necessity to find a profession that will enable me to pay off my student loans. In addition, it should provide an opportunity for realizing economic and social mobility. My interest in finance can be attributed to my belief that money can be a force for good if it is managed properly. The finite resource plays a significant role in determining the ability of people to have access to opportunities for economic and social mobility. There is a popular saying that money causes all the evils in the world. In contrast, I believe that the inability to manage the money appropriately causes a lot of misery in personal lives. On a larger scale, the mismanagement of corporate and public funds can lead to the collapse of businesses and the loss of jobs. As a result, the critical profession is important in ensuring that the society achieves economic and social progress. The first career option that I shall focus on is banking. The banking industry plays a significant role in the international economy. The 2008 global recession was caused by the collapse of a few banks. As a result, it is evident that banks support the global economy. The industry involves a lot of pressure to deliver good performance. The pressure is rewarded with a generous compensation package that is determined by the performance of the individuals. The payment structure is appealing

Christianity and Non-Christian Religions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

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Critical Evaluation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Critical Evaluation - Essay Example Focusing too much on Pacheco’s argument that Behn’s novella is ‘Eurocentric’ and ‘class-biased’, the review fails to provide a balanced view of Pacheco’s commentary, and leaves the reader clueless about Pacheco’s objective in writing the essay– exposing the political agenda underlying Behn’s novella, and its failure in achieving an ideological closure. The review begins with a clearly stated objective of exploring the main points of Pacheco’s essay and analysing its strengths and weaknesses; however, proceeds to describe Pacheco’s arguments and illustrations that suggest Behn’s hero as ‘Eurocentric’ and ‘royalist.’ A significant portion of the review is spent on summarising Pacheco’s viewpoints, and presents little attempt to analyse or interpret Pacheco’s observation in the backdrop of her thesis or the primary text. At many places like when describing Pacheco’s comments on ‘Europeanizing the African’ and Behn’s approach to slavery, the reviewer simply repeats Pacheco’s words as in a simple narration of the article, without quoting the author, or interpreting the implications of Pacheco’s observations. The review is totally oblivious of Pacheco’s commentary on Oroonoko’s treatment of honour and its instability withi n the upper-class/royalist discourse due to the religious implications, which according to her eventually leads to the undermining of the novel’s royalist ideology. While the review provides crucial insights into the perspective of Pacheco’s analysis, it does not endeavour to assess or evaluate the strength or weakness of her claims or offer a comprehensive framework for the readers to make the assessment themselves. Though the reviewer make a note of other works that substantiate Pacheco’s thesis such as that by Guffey, the commentary fails to provide a comparative perspective with other works for the reader to assess the merit and significance of Pacheco’s study. The