From the YCombinator blog:
Congrats Dropbox!
, March 23, 2018
I wrote Dropbox their first investment check on June 26, 2007. What strikes me as I look at a copy of the check is that Drew and Arash must have been fairly effective at getting all their incorporation paperwork completed. I often had to chase startups well into July.
Little did I know back then what a momentous check this one would be: that 11 years later, Dropbox would be the first Y Combinator company to go public.
I wish I could say that Paul, Robert, Trevor and I knew this would be one of the big ones when we interviewed Drew and Arash on April 21, 2007. They were the first interview of the day, at 8:30am. Though it was a long time ago, I remember we all agreed that they seemed good, and it was an easy decision to fund them. Trevor had already looked at the software and was impressed by it.
We’d met Drew the year before. He’d been Adam Smith’s big brother in MIT’s Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Adam was a founder of Xobni, which was in the Summer ’06 batch, and he’d brought Drew with him as a guest to a YC dinner. We also met Drew at YC’s Startup School in California in March 2007. He came to the afterparty at our house and showed us an early prototype of Dropbox. I remember him being likeable, earnest, and very energetic.
When Drew applied to YC, he applied as a single founder. After we invited him to interviews, Paul sent him an email suggesting he’d be better off with a cofounder. By interviews, a few weeks later, he’d found Arash. That worked out well....MUCH MORE
