After attaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in computer science, the budding entrepreneur recruited Ferdowsi directly from MIT and the commonality of the high standards of the university made the two a formidable team. Subscribe Nowįrom day one of Dropbox, Houston has been its catalyst while he was attending MIT, he conceived the platform as an alternative to his thumb drive. Please purchase a subscription to continue reading this article. In 2020, Ferdowsi left the company amicably, leaving Houston in charge of a team of over 1,000 employees in what has been lauded as a top 50 workplace. From its inception, the cloud-based storage system attracted the attention of industry heavyweights like the late Apple founder Steve Jobs and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but with the help of the Y Combinator startup accelerator, they were able to grow Dropbox organically into a major market competitor. Drew Houston, co-founder of file-sharing service Dropbox and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate, is prepared for his company to rise to the occasion of improving the digital workplace.įounded in 2007 by Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, Dropbox has grown from a two-man startup to an essential utility for over 500 million users, increasing in value steadily as the company, and the tech industry in general, has matured.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionally affected businesses that rely on in-person work, it has also accelerated the adoption of remote work for enterprises of all sizes.

Dropbox ceo