Dropbox's Drew Houston: How to take on Goliaths and win

When Drew Houston founded Dropbox, he knew he faced some fierce competition (hello, Google, Apple and Microsoft). But he didn’t back down. Why? Because he believed in his product, and he knew he had an advantage those big, cumbersome competitors could never exploit: Dropbox was lean, focused and fast. Hear how he outmaneuvered the big guys – and what's next for Dropbox. Cameo appearances: Mark Pincus of Zynga, Shellye Archambeau of MetricStream. Music: "Exciting Trailer" by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Books mentioned in this episode: Competing Against Luck, by Clay Christensen and Karen Dillon The Effective Executive, by Peter Drucker The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz Becoming Steve Jobs, by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire, by  James Wallace and Jim Erickson Founders at Work, by Jessica Livingston High Output Management, by Andy Grove

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Award-winning business advice from Silicon Valley and beyond. Iconic CEOs, from Nike to Netflix, Starbucks to Slack, share the strategies that helped them grow from startups into global brands — and to weather crisis when it strikes. On each episode of our classic format, founding host Reid Hoffman — LinkedIn cofounder, Greylock partner and legendary Silicon Valley investor — and a stellar lineup of guest hosts prove unconventional theories about how businesses scale. Guests share their stories of entrepreneurship, leadership, strategy, management, fundraising. You’ll hear the human journey, too — failures, setbacks, learnings. From our Rapid Response format, you can expect real-time wisdom from business leaders in fast-changing situations. Hosted by Bob Safian, past editor-in-chief of Fast Company, these episodes tackle crisis response, rebuilding, diversity & inclusion, leadership change and much more.