You can listen to the Bits & Pretzels podcast on this talk here. And you have to take care of yourself, because no one is going to do that for you.” In closing, Drew advised fellow entrepreneurs in the audience, “One thing I would tell my younger self is learn to love the struggle. But we have to start with this shift in perspective.” Hopefully we put a dent in this problem and lots of other companies do, too.

“If you don’t frame the problem that way, you’re not going to design the right products. “What we need is a different mindset: we need to value our time, creativity, and attention more than anything else,” Drew said. And so Houston created Dropbox, a simple service which allows users to store files online while also syncing their files to folders on their PCs, laptops and smartphones.

His current frustration is the problem Dropbox is now trying to solve with the smart workspace. Throughout, he’s been motivated by the things that frustrated him-first thumb drives, and now the increasing lack of focus for knowledge workers and “why we’re using all these apps that don’t work together.” “It’s important to keep your personal growth curve ahead of the company growth curve,” he said. More than 5,000 founders, investors, and startup enthusiasts attended the event in Munich.ĭrew talked about his own evolution from coder to CEO. Other speakers included former president Barack Obama, actress and founder of The Honest Company, Jessica Alba, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. On September 29, Drew spoke at the three-day German tech festival, Bits & Pretzels, that brings together the world’s leading entrepreneurs and investors.

Drew created dropbox